Friday, August 8, 2008

Blazers - rough start will shake confidence (of fairweather fans)

The Blazers will begin the season with the highest level of difficulty of during their first 5 games. They have the toughest schedule in the league during that time based on opponent winning percentage from last year. So how will that affect them? Will they be up for the challenge?

I think they will start out 1-4, but I think that’s OK. It’ll get everyone to calm down a bit and be more realistic. People who are putting the Blazers in the Championship this year are premature. The West is far too deep right now, and the Blazers are not as experienced as they’ll need to be to go deep into the play-offs.

Think about it. Greg Oden has played 1 season in college. A college season is about 30 games. He was partially injured for much of that season so no one has seen him play to full potential since high school. We’ve all placed a lot of hope on someone who has proven nothing at all. He was a good college player, even at sub-par health. He has yet to play a single game against another NBA team during the regular season. How can we gauge the future without that knowledge?

Don’t get me wrong. I love Greg Oden and know he’ll be a perennial All-Star throughout the course of his career, but I think it will take him at least 2 years before he is that good. From what little we know, we can assume he’ll be a dominating force inside just on shear size and brawn. He will block shots and dunk a lot. But I am guessing he will get worked over by big men with solid footwork. He’ll foul out quick against veterans. He’ll turn it over a lot when he gets double and tripled teamed early on. What we really need to see is his learning curve. How quick will he learn to pass out of a double team? How quick will he learn to rely on teammates and not leave his man to try to block shots? How long will it take him to develop a triple motion move to the basket like Tim Duncan has, losing his opponent in the process? How long will it take him to be a leader? Once we know those things, we’ll know a lot more about the future of the Blazers.

There’s also the unknown timeline of the development of Rudy Fernandez and Jerryd Bayless. I’ll save that discussion for a later date.

Great potential but nothing rock solid to go off of. Apart from those unknowns though, I think our known commodities are good enough to get us to the play-offs. Aldridge will be even better, Roy will become a great team leader, Joel Przyabilla will play almost as many minutes as he did last year since Oden will be in foul trouble much of the time. Outlaw might be the 6th man of the year. Webster ended last year rebounding the ball very well for a Small Forward; if he can get in the zone and hit the 3-ball as consistently as James Jones did for us, then we might get 47 or 48 wins this year. Diogu’s rebounding will help too. Lots to look forward to for sure. Along with Houston, Phoenix, and surprisingly enough the LA Clippers, I think Portland has of the deepest teams in the league. That will garner a better record than the Warriors, Mavericks, and Nuggets and set us up against either the Hornets or the Rockets in the first round of the play-offs. Either team we play will take us in 5 games.

No comments: