Thought Experiment concerning team loyalty

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Rastapopoulos

Rastapopoulos

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Imagine your least favorite players (presumably non-Blazers). Now imagine that the GM of the Blazers suddenly trades all the current Blazers (unless one of them is one your your least fave league-wide - that one gets kept) and acquires all your least fave players instead. Also imagine that the experiment is a bit of a disaster, and the team performs very poorly.

Do you support the Blazers? Is your support tempered in any way? Do you watch every game or tell yourself "I'll wait for the team to change". Or do you actually make an effort to switch your loyalty to another team?
 
Well, obviously you bitch and moan, as is your birthright, but do you watch fewer games? Do you HATEwatch them, openly mocking the players?

There's probably been periods in Blazer fandom when this has happened (Kenny Anderson, JR Rider, Ruben Patterson), but imagine the entire team...
 
I'd definitely lose interest, but I'd still try to find something I enjoyed watching about the team, like the development of young players or a quirky player I liked to watch or something. During the darkest days of the "jail blazers" I was dangling off of the back of the band wagon looking for a place to jump off but I hung on. I love the blazers.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Imagine your least favorite players (presumably non-Blazers). Now imagine that the GM of the Blazers suddenly trades all the current Blazers (unless one of them is one your your least fave league-wide - that one gets kept) and acquires all your least fave players instead. Also imagine that the experiment is a bit of a disaster, and the team performs very poorly.

Do you support the Blazers? Is your support tempered in any way? Do you watch every game or tell yourself "I'll wait for the team to change". Or do you actually make an effort to switch your loyalty to another team?
Click to expand...

I'll always like and support the Blazers mainly because I think the organization as a whole has good intentions. They intend or have aspirations go win it all. That starts with the owner. As long as he owns the team, I'll support it. So if they were to do what you were suggesting above, I have to believe it is with the right intentions. As Blazer fans we saw this last decade with the Jail Blazers. A bunch of good character guys a decade before were given up for malcontents...when that was blown up I still supported the team because the intentions were good.
 
You gave us a pretty extreme case adding in the "experiment failed miserably" part. In that case I would not watch every game like I do now. And I doubt I would come to this forum. (or any forum) I would wait it out.

Another question might have been: If they traded away my favorite players for my least favorite players, but it made us "contenders". Would I support the team? Absolutely. Most likely I would not hate them anymore. Most players I hate....tend to be really good. (i.e Wade, Cp3, MJ, MJ, Kobe....)

And of course the 3rd option would be it gave us a Championship......No brainer on this option.
 
Team success is the yardstick. Getting too hung up on individual players is just not my style.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
I remain a Blazer fan but post like I was the bastard love child of BGD and Mediocre Man.
Click to expand...

Ditto. After a brief stint where I'm in total denial and trying to make it work in my head, I'll be calling for heads to roll for the good of the franchise, and wringing my hands that Paul's getting ready to sell the team.
 
Always a Blazer fan. I mean, if I'm currently a fan of a team built around LMA, then obviously I'm always going to be a fan regardless of the roster.
I actually PREFER to be a fan when the team is at one extreme or the other - really good or really bad. I have the least interest when we're middling...and right now, IMO, we're just a notch above middling. When we sucked before we drafted Roy I really enjoyed going to the games for $10 and then taking lower bowl seats and heckling the hell out of the opponents.
 
When my Minnesota Vikings almost went to the Super Bowl while led by the player I despised more than any other (Brett Fahv-ruh), I rooted for him to fail, but the team to succeed.

If I hated all the players, I'd root for the team to fail until they made a change.
 
The Blazers have been there, and done that. The Jail Blazers were voted the worst behaved team in sports history.

Patterson:A registered sex offender was arrested for felony domestic abuse against his wife at the time. He also attempted to rape his children’s nanny.

Randolph:Managed a DUI and punched out Patterson during practice, breaking his eye socket. He was one of the laziest players in the NBA. The cops were even studying Randolph’s MTV “Cribs” episode because known felons appeared to be lounging at Randolph’s house.

Stoudamire:Multiple marijuana charges, including speeding while under the influence and trying to gain access through an airport metal detector with 1.5 ounces of the drug wrapped in aluminum foil.

Woods: Marijuana charge and was also arrested for animal abuse because of participation in a dog fighting operation.

Kemp:Had to leave the Blazers mid-season to enter rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. Has fathered seven children out of wedlock (and the number is actually thought to be higher).

Derek Anderson: was once spotted going through a drive-through window at McDonald’s while his team was playing a game at the Rose Garden.”

Wallace:Aside from his record for most technical fouls, he also threatened a ref after a home game on the loading dock of the arena. Wallace was on a list of the biggest property tax dodgers in the county, he owed more than $150,000 in back taxes. And of course the marijuana charge.

Personally, I stopped watching the NBA for a several seasons, due to the jail Blazers. I have several friends that still refuse to watch, or, even discuss the Blazers to this day. Their position is, any professional team that combines so many players with serious character issues is not worth supporting and should not be allowed to operate within the state of Oregon.
 
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raymond feellikeiweighaton
jamal crawful
james harden
lebron james
greg oden

id probably consider suicide but ultimately lack the resolve to follow through
 
It's hard to say unless that team actually existed.

I would never switch loyalties. It's either the Blazers or nothing. I'm sure I'd still be a fan, but maybe not as much of a die-hard as I am now ... who knows?
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Imagine your least favorite players (presumably non-Blazers). Now imagine that the GM of the Blazers suddenly trades all the current Blazers (unless one of them is one your your least fave league-wide - that one gets kept) and acquires all your least fave players instead. Also imagine that the experiment is a bit of a disaster, and the team performs very poorly.

Do you support the Blazers? Is your support tempered in any way? Do you watch every game or tell yourself "I'll wait for the team to change". Or do you actually make an effort to switch your loyalty to another team?
Click to expand...

So you're saying we should pretend we are Knicks fans.
 
I've stuck with the Mariners and their terrible management for years and I don't even like baseball so I'd have to say I'd still be a diehard fan
 
I've been through this when we traded Miller for Felton. I still watched the games. I think I'd still watch the games.
 
I will say that it would be less likely that I would stick around to watch the team get blown out.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Imagine your least favorite players (presumably non-Blazers). Now imagine that the GM of the Blazers suddenly trades all the current Blazers (unless one of them is one your your least fave league-wide - that one gets kept) and acquires all your least fave players instead. Also imagine that the experiment is a bit of a disaster, and the team performs very poorly.

Do you support the Blazers? Is your support tempered in any way? Do you watch every game or tell yourself "I'll wait for the team to change". Or do you actually make an effort to switch your loyalty to another team?
Click to expand...
I supported them with Felton as the starting pg...nuff said
 
I remember that during the Meet and Greet with Wheels before the start of the season we had Felton he told us that Felton, unlike most players, could be a basket case during contract years. Instead of playing their best to get a big contract Felton would play like crap because he was worried about his next contract.

Sure enough that turned out to be painfully true.
 
Draft, trades, 12th man...it was more interesting in the losing years. I find the scrappy hard-luck journeymen more fun than the entitled Aldridges of the world. When a Blazer gets sent down to the D-League, that's when I start to pay attention to him. Check out this list.

http://www.sportstwo.com/posts/3640095/

You do know who Хряпа Віктор was, don't you?
 
Pretty much what happened when they signed Patterson. Stoudamire - marijuana is not in the same class as rape. Sheed - sweet & sour, mouthed off, smoked pot, not much more. Woods - they did not go out of their way to acquire an animal torturer, he was already on the team, and he was gone after that. Kemp - an asshole but to the best of my knowledge everyone involved was consenting. Randolph - finally grew up, to his credit, after being dumped by 2 (or was it 3?) teams. There is bad behavior, there is stupidity, then there is criminal violence.

But the Blazers deliberately went after a convicted rapist after other teams wanted nothing to do with him. I wrote strong protest letters both by email and to Whitsitt by snail mail. I got identical word for word replies to both, just with different signatures. Shows how much concern they had with fans. Why should that act deserve my loyalty?

I did not got to a game for 2 years. When I did go, whatever Patterson did, I would not applaud.

It literally made my flesh crawl.
 
I would still watch them. I even watched the horribly performing 2005 team. However, I have noticed since moving to Seattle, where there is less coverage I really have to work at following the Blazers. This year due to time and other things going on in my life I have watched as a casual fan for the first time in a long time.
 
crandc said:
Pretty much what happened when they signed Patterson. Stoudamire - marijuana is not in the same class as rape. Sheed - sweet & sour, mouthed off, smoked pot, not much more. Woods - they did not go out of their way to acquire an animal torturer, he was already on the team, and he was gone after that. Kemp - an asshole but to the best of my knowledge everyone involved was consenting. Randolph - finally grew up, to his credit, after being dumped by 2 (or was it 3?) teams. There is bad behavior, there is stupidity, then there is criminal violence.

But the Blazers deliberately went after a convicted rapist after other teams wanted nothing to do with him. I wrote strong protest letters both by email and to Whitsitt by snail mail. I got identical word for word replies to both, just with different signatures. Shows how much concern they had with fans. Why should that act deserve my loyalty?

I did not got to a game for 2 years. When I did go, whatever Patterson did, I would not applaud.

It literally made my flesh crawl.
Click to expand...

Millions of conservative men and women feel their flesh crawl when they hear the WNBA is full of lesbians. Those on the political right share your intolerant emotional repulsion you just described, as they deeply believe you are a sexual deviant.

After decades of gays like Alan Turing facing imprisonment while living in hiding, it is strange to watch a new generation of gays demanding the same for others, becoming the latest class of mean-spirited sexual enforcers hovering over us like bats. It's like watching union members become the new suburban Archie Bunker conservative class in the 1970s, a generation after the radical 1930s made them legal. I congratulate the powers-that-be for manipulating another generation of morons to divide and be conquered. It requires perpetual effort.

(Crandc has me on Ignore. But I bet she peeks.)
 
Id still be a blazer fan but id be rooting for bench players to get minutes. Omg what if we got k*be and blake griffin? I certainly wouldn't buy jerseys and id be pretty upset. Only work horses get jersey sales from me. Przybilla, matthews, and if he keeps it up, MyLe
 
It really depends on the players attitudes. If they are playing hard, I'm all about it, even of they are horrible. If they are not giving a fuck and going through the motions like the crawford/felton/camby/etc monstrosity, I tune out
 
Not sure what to make of jlprk defending rape and molestation recently. I must have missed an OT argument or something.
 
oldfisherman said:
The Blazers have been there, and done that. The Jail Blazers were voted the worst behaved team in sports history.

Patterson:A registered sex offender was arrested for felony domestic abuse against his wife at the time. He also attempted to rape his children’s nanny.

Randolph:Managed a DUI and punched out Patterson during practice, breaking his eye socket. He was one of the laziest players in the NBA. The cops were even studying Randolph’s MTV “Cribs” episode because known felons appeared to be lounging at Randolph’s house.

Stoudamire:Multiple marijuana charges, including speeding while under the influence and trying to gain access through an airport metal detector with 1.5 ounces of the drug wrapped in aluminum foil.

Woods: Marijuana charge and was also arrested for animal abuse because of participation in a dog fighting operation.

Kemp:Had to leave the Blazers mid-season to enter rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. Has fathered seven children out of wedlock (and the number is actually thought to be higher).

Derek Anderson: was once spotted going through a drive-through window at McDonald’s while his team was playing a game at the Rose Garden.”

Wallace:Aside from his record for most technical fouls, he also threatened a ref after a home game on the loading dock of the arena. Wallace was on a list of the biggest property tax dodgers in the county, he owned more than $150,000 in back taxes. And of course the marijuana charge.

Personally, I stopped watching the NBA for a several seasons, due to the jail Blazers. I have several friends that still refuse to watch, or, even discuss the Blazers to this day. Their position is, any professional team that combines so many players with serious character issues is not worth supporting and should not be allowed to operate within the state of Oregon.
Click to expand...

Yes and then you forgot Felton. I was really unfit for society when we acquired Felton.
 
3RA1N1AC said:
Not sure what to make of jlprk defending rape and molestation recently. I must have missed an OT argument or something.
Click to expand...
SERIOUSLY! I usually think he's tongue-in-cheeking a lot (all?) of his comments, but even if that's the case here I find it totally unacceptable to equate rapists to homosexuals. That trolling is way over the line.
 
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