Jazzfan1971 and FloppyMoose's Season Preview - The Blazers

[jazzfan1971]

Portland Trailblazers

Projected Roster
---------------------------------
PG - Damian Lillard, Steve Blake, C.J. McCollum
SG - Wesley Matthews, Will Barton, Allen Crabbe
SF - Nicolas Batum, Dorell Wright, Victor Claver
PF - LaMarcus Aldridge, Thomas Robinson, Joel Freeland
C - Robin Lopez, Chris Kaman, Meyers Leonard

Trading Block: I don't see much on the trading block. Portland seems content to stick with their guys and whatever help they can get via draft and free agency.

Position Battle: Steve Blake vs. C.J. McCollum. If C.J. can work on his ball handling and vision a bit he could easily move into the backup PG role. But, with so few ball handlers on the team I find it more likely that Blake will hang onto the position out of necessity.

Mystery Man: Thomas Robinson. I remember thinking that Thomas Robinson had a tremendous floor if not much of a ceiling coming into the league. I thought the things he did well in college were bound to translate to the pros. So far, he's proven me wrong. But he does have moments where he steps up and you can see why he was drafted so highly. Maybe he'll find those moments more consistently this season.

Floppymusings: 48 wins. Seems a little low given the excellence last season. As of this writing I've got 3 wins I need to assign by hand (roundoff error in the model). Maybe Portland gets one of them. Jazzfan steals my thunder below - I agree with his comments on health and luck and hitting the ground running. If you look at last years expected win-loss (based on scoring differential), the Blazers were supposed to be 3 notches lower, behind GSW, IND, and MIA.

Jazzfanramblings: I had Portland 10th in the West last season. They exceeded my prediction by a fair amount. I think most of that was I had them too low. I think when you just looked at their talent on the court they surpassed where they should have finished. And that was due to two major factors. Health and continuity.

Good teams often have a lot of continuity. I should know this as a Jazz fan. The Jazz went to the playoffs like 20 straight times with basically the same roster and front office. Year after year changing very little and staying pretty healthy with excellent results. There is a lot to be said for continuity. When you come into training camp you don't have to re-invent the wheel every year, guys all ready know the offense and their roles and can instead work on finer points. That gives you an advantage especially early in the season as your team hits the ground running at near 100% efficiency where teams with new coaches and major parts are still trying to gel.

Portland started the season 25-5.

Health was the other factor in them surpassing expectations. Four of their five starters played all 82 games. The one starter who did miss games was LaMarcus Aldridge. He missed 13 games. But even that slight blemish to health was not as bad as it could have been as 8 of the 13 games were against teams with losing records and according to RealGM poster Wizenheimer all 13 games were played at home.

That level of health will be difficult to replicate.

I don't think Portland did much in the offseason to improve their team and unless they have the same level of health again this year will likely drop a few more games this year.

Projected Record - 48/34

[Shem]

Instead of Victor Claver, you wrote "Victor, Claver" like they're two people with one name like Madonna.

CJ McCollum is more of a SG than PG at this point.

Meyers Leonard is a C, not a PF

Joel Freeland is a PF, not a C.

[Risk101]

The fact that you have Meyers Leonard at 7'1 who hasn't played much PF in his life makes me wonder if you know much about this Blazer team.

Also how do you back track and lose 6 more games than they did last season, 54-28 2014 record, when they essentially have the same team and chemistry? They only lost Mo Williams.

These predications are ludicrous. They have a young team that will only get better with time.

[floppymoose]

Portland can call Freeland whatever they want. To me he's a C.

[WarFan]

Is there a post somewhere with links to all of these previews?

I seem to remember it was easier to follow each one last year, maybe put a spoiler at the bottom of the OP with all the links.

[blazersfan52]

Is there a post somewhere with links to all of these previews?

I seem to remember it was easier to follow each one last year, maybe put a spoiler at the bottom of the OP with all the links.

I like this idea

[monopoman]

Is there a post somewhere with links to all of these previews?

I seem to remember it was easier to follow each one last year, maybe put a spoiler at the bottom of the OP with all the links.

I saw him post the links to his others that were done at the time in a previous one from like a week ago, I guess they must have forgotten to post the links in this one.

[Jugs]

eh its going to be tough out west but I can see them winning atleast 50 games again without injuries

[Village Idiot]

One of the reasons the Trailblazers overperformed last season relative expectations was that Damian Lillard went from being a nice young point guard to a clutch stud. That hasn't changed.

Chris Kaman was also a very nice pick-up for the Blazers. Last season behind Lopez you had Freeland who now gets pushed to third string. That alone is a huge improvement.

[jazzfan1971]

One of the reasons the Trailblazers overperformed last season relative expectations was that Damian Lillard went from being a nice young point guard to a clutch stud. That hasn't changed.

Good point.

[floppymoose]

The data I'm using has Lilliard at about 40th, Lopez about 50th, and Aldridge at 8th in the nba. It's quite possibly underrating Lilliard, but it's still giving good credit to Portland's core.

[monopoman]

The data I'm using has Lilliard at about 40th, Lopez about 50th, and Aldridge at 8th in the nba. It's quite possibly underrating Lilliard, but it's still giving good credit to Portland's core.

You have 39 players ranked better than Lillard?

I have no words for this...

[7-12-52]

The difference between Aldridge and Lillard is 32 players? One of the crazier things I have ever read on here.

[Scalabrine]

The data I'm using has Lilliard at about 40th, Lopez about 50th, and Aldridge at 8th in the nba. It's quite possibly underrating Lilliard, but it's still giving good credit to Portland's core.

You have 39 players ranked better than Lillard?

I have no words for this...

Well it averages out by putting Robin Lopez at 50, no?

1. James
2. Durant
3. Paul
4. Curry
5. Dwight
6. Melo
7. Westbrook
8. Dirk
9. Harden
10. Brow
11. Aldridge
12. Griffin
13. Love
14. Al Jefferson
15. Duncan
16. Parker
17. Dragic
18. Noah
19. Wade
20. Bosh
21. Horford
22. Wall
23. Rose
24. M. Gasol
25. Kobe
26. Cousins
27. Ibaka
28. Lawson
29. Lee

The list is not in order but off the top of my head.

I think 30 is pretty much the lowest you could put him and I think you could make a case for him to be better than some of those guys. Maybe Monta, Klay, Brook Lopez, Lowry, Irving, Bledsoe, Rondo, Conley, Milsap, Drummond, Leonard, Holliday, Derozan so that could get him to 40 but it would have to be a pretty specific type of team that I would take those guys over him.

[floppymoose]

So some things to think about are:
1) how many more wins does POR get if you push Lilliard up to say, 20th best player?
2) if he really is the 20th best player, is the amount of error introduced by calling him 50th just offset by some other POR player being overvalued?

Answer to #1 is 2 wins. From 47 to 49.

[Capn'O]

48 seems low. 57 is a likely ceiling. The emergence of Portland's bench or the lack thereof will determine where on that spectrum they land.

[Notanoob]

I don't see the Blazers improving their record. Blake and Kamen are not really any good- in particular, Blake was awful last season and I wouldn't take him over Mo Williams. They had nearly perfect health as well. Barring widespread injuries and a repeat performance on their health, I think that the Blazers will remain stuck in neutral, record-wise.

There problem is that it's hard to see where they could really upgrade, because they have such a solid, balanced starting lineup. They're best off not breaking the team up and hoping for something else to break- a low first round guy they took a gamble on paying off, getting a steal in free agency, and hoping that sheer chemistry can get them farther.

[monopoman]

So some things to think about are:
1) how many more wins does POR get if you push Lilliard up to say, 20th best player?
2) if he really is the 20th best player, is the amount of error introduced by calling him 50th just offset by some other POR player being overvalued?

Answer to #1 is 2 wins. From 47 to 49.

I could see the Blazers dropping that many wins, but I could also easily see them holding at 54 or building on it.

I think two teams clearly got worse in the West this last off-season

Minnesota
Houston

Looking at Portland's division I think they are clearly better than any team in their own division except OKC so that gives them a nice group of teams they can beat up on hypothetically.

The biggest factor on the Blazers is if they can beat up on the East as well as they did last season. The Blazers had a dominant record against the East even when they went on the road over there. They were 31-21 in their conference which was identical to GS, and Houston last year, but they were 23-7 against the East which is clearly dominant. It looks like nearly every top West team last year beat up on the East and the Blazers were no exception.

Losing Mo does hurt in some ways but there were quite a few games where I was just shaking my head at some of the plays Mo would make. He got better at being a passer as the season went along but every once in a while you would wonder why he was taking seemingly every shot at some points.

[Chuck Everett]

CJ McCollum is going to play more than Blake and Barton. That's for sure.

[floppymoose]

I already have a big bump in CJ's minutes factored in.