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wizenheimer said:
* 9 of Portland's 20 road games have been against teams with losing records (10 if you count the 1-4 Rockets). Portland lost 5 of those games, so counting on a bunch of future road wins against losing teams seems a little questionable, especially considering...

* 10 of Portland's remaining 21 remaining road games are against teams with losing records

* if Portland matches their current home and road winning percentages over the rest of the season, they'd end up with 46-36 record. Looking at home/road balance seems on topic in a thread asking if Portland is better than last season...no?



ok...I'm going to call bullshit on that until you can point out what was actually negative about my post. I simply pushed back against the SOS narrative by illustrating home/road imbalance and home/win differentials for the 9 WC playoff contenders. Since when is +1 negative?



yeah, maybe. I think Connaughton was better than Stauskas though

as far as Curry and his 3pt%, that might give him an edge in the Stotts offense, but overall, I question if Curry is better, mainly because Napier crushes Curry in just about every metric other than 3ptFg%. Napier was a better defender as well

one bad thing Napier did was join the Dame-CJ-Turner one-on-one jamboree
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*Portland's playing a lot better than they were earlier in the season but you ignore that context to try to make your point.

*You're also talking about near .500 teams instead of bottom-feeders we have left to play on the road (PHX, CLE, ATL, CHI).

*Portland won't match their home and road winning percentages because they were (1) playing a lot worse earlier in the season and (2) they had a much tougher schedule during those games. You try and point out the road and home imbalance o downplay SOS, but then you make the mistake of isolating home and road games and extrapolating each over an easier schedule. Regardless of road/home imbalance, our home schedule and our road schedule gets easier in isolation, so you can't extrapolate based on early season results.
 
Wizard Mentor said:
As a self-described Blazers Homer, I would say that they are better, but negligibly so.

I don't have the stats to back me up (anyone, please chime in with stats), but our bench seems to regularly have a negative +/- during games.

Random Sample:
Our Bench against NOLA: positive, +/-.
Our bench against Cavs: negative +/- (and we won by 17)
Our bench against Kings: -7.something, we lost by 8.
Our bench against Nuggs: -1.something, we lost by 3.
Our bench vs. Hornets: +8, we won by 31 (bench not needed)
Our bench vs. Bulls: Big +/- (starters were evenish, bench really won us the game)
...
Basically, our bench isn't as good as it should be to compete. Doesn't seem appreciably better than last year.
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I'm surprised nobody has come up with a good bench rating metric yet.
 
Orion Bailey said:
Pretty much my thoughts, except I think Curry is a bigger improvement over bazz. 3pt% alone puts him over.

The only other thing I would counter is the end of the schedule. Though we do have more road games, we play better in the second half as well. I think we are a little better, and have an upward trend. These things combined will get us 49-50 wins but much better entering the playoffs than last year because of another year of growth, development and syncing up.

We need to make it to the second round and then ah==have a good start to next year and go all in at the trade deadline with our expirings.
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Yeah I'd take Curry over Bazz too, because Curry has a good NBA skill while I don't think you can say that about Shabazz.
 
BonesJones said:
Yeah I'd take Curry over Bazz too, because Curry has a good NBA skill while I don't think you can say that about Shabazz.
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Id phrase this differently (just my opinion), I think Curry / Shabazz both have "good" NBA skills, the difference is Curry's shooting is a great overall skill. Whereas Shabazz doesn't have anything "great" in his tool bag.
 
TorturedBlazerFan said:
Id phrase this differently (just my opinion), I think Curry / Shabazz both have "good" NBA skills, the difference is Curry's shooting is a great overall skill. Whereas Shabazz doesn't have anything "great" in his tool bag.
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What is Shabazz good at for a PG?
 
CupWizier said:
Sorry, but I think much of our differences is that you look for negatives and reasons to discount the Blazers accomplishments as I tend to look for the positives. Life is much more fun when focusing on positives rather than dwelling on the negatives, but that's just my opinion.
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It's your religion/ideology. For others, life is more fun when pursuing truth, not just positives.
 
wizenheimer said:
as far as Curry and his 3pt%, that might give him an edge in the Stotts offense, but overall, I question if Curry is better, mainly because Napier crushes Curry in just about every metric other than 3ptFg%. Napier was a better defender as well
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Curry is even tinier than Napier, but somehow seems tougher on defense. And Napier wasn't bad at it, especially in steals. Curry is stickier glue--he stays closer to his man. (It's easy for an ant.)
 
jlprk said:
Curry is even tinier than Napier, but somehow seems tougher on defense. And Napier wasn't bad at it, especially in steals. Curry is stickier glue--he stays closer to his man. (It's easy for an ant.)
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Your wrong about the size but still gotcmy like because i agree with the rest.
 
From the Site:
QUOTABLE
"The one thing when I came to Portland, no matter how bad we had a first quarter, second quarter, or any quarter, there’s always a new quarter and new time. You have to be smarter on decisions and I think Dame helped me out with that a lot." -- Jusuf Nurkić
 
Currently, I wouldn't make any changes. The Blazers are playing solid basketball and all of the recent losses were close ones against good teams. Last night's game was very impressive, Utah is a good to great team at home and the Blazers overcame both a hot run by the Jazz in the third that would have folded Blazers teams in the past, plus the shrugged off a heroic final quarter from Mitchell. If that Aaron Gordon trade became available, I would really be hesitant to say no, but the team looks very dangerous RIGHT NOW. A week or a month could change things, we all know that, but I wouldn't do anything to screw up the flow the team has now.
 
KingSpeed said:
I've been driving like crazy and I've been wanting to start this thread but I haven't been able to until now. What I'd like to ask people is, in light of our performance against the team that swept us in the playoffs, does this point to us being a better team this year? How are we better? Do people feel we have made progress and will be better in the playoffs? Has Stotts improved as a coach? Thank you for your thoughts in advance.
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We are significantly better. Ranked from least to most significant:
  • We are using ET better. He needs the ball. Good passer, liability off the ball.
  • Curry makes our bench better.
  • Aminu is better (by far most underrated Blazer, starter quality player, fans undervalue defense, high IQ yup I mean it)
  • Jake has arrived with promise and hope (love the way he plays, quick, hustle, always on the move, back door savant).
  • Dame is better (every year)
  • Nurk is much better (mostly offensively, FT%, passing, even defense which was already elite, we lucked into Nurk big time)
  • We are playing though Nurk (duh).
Stotts was always a good coach. People are just impatient and blow up when we lose.
 
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