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Congrats on a great playoff run by the Blazers. Portland was already a likable team, but when Nurkic went down, it became even easier to root for them. Nurkic was so key to everything Portland did on both sides of the ball that his loss was huge, just huge, and to perform this well after that is remarkable.

The Warriors are an all-time great champion. The Blazers had them down in three straight games, but that championship experience, and few bounces, made the difference. I picked the Warriors in six, and it easily could've gone that way. This was far closer and more hard fought than a sweep. I'm a Warriors fan, but go Blazers. Tough losses. Learn from them, get Nurkic healthy, and come back strong.

I was hoping Dame would come out and have a good game to show people his ribs aren't affecting his play. And I was right. He was the same Dame, we just ran into a great defense.

This is the way to go out. I'm perfectly fine with missed shots as long as they play with high iq and make the right basketball plays and not try to play hero ball. Dame missed a shot that would've won the game but it was a good attempt. All good.

This is the probably the 5th season in a row saying this but Olshey needs to get a third wing playmaker badly. Whatever it takes.. Zach, Simons, picks, we need to win now in the next 2-3 years when Dame is in his late prime.

The problem with this team is we have a great group to finish in the top 4 regular season every year, but we don't have enough in the playoffs. If olshey is satisfied with putting fans in seats and exiting in the playoffs every year, he will probably keep this team. Guys like aminu, and Kanter will probably help a ton in the regular season but can disappear completely in the playoffs.

Revived wrote:Oh and there was 3 seconds left on the clock...why is Lillard fading away while running in the opposite direction of the rim instead of a taking a dribble or two before shooting it?

That was proabaly stotts fault. That was as low quality of a shot you could draw. I bet the players just didn't wanna play another overtime and chucked up a 3 to try to win it. I thought they would try to draw up a screen for a cut to the basket for someone unlikely to get the ball like Meyers or turner. Meh...

Oden2 wrote:

The Sebastian Express wrote:

Oden2 wrote:He makes one and we give it to him 10 more times. It feels like the last few game winning attempts in the playoffs we’ve lost 2-3 games that way...

Who else would you have liked to take the shot?

This game? Leonard would be better than Lillard in a triple team. Lillard is the franchise player but it’s too predictable to go to him every time

That's the problem with stotts. He shows no creativity in important situations and every play is so predictable.

Really rerun the final shot of overtime. 1) McCollum was the first option cutting inside Leonard and down the lane; 2) Turner eschewed that option, probably seeing too much congestion; 3) Leonard was held by Green prior to, or maybe just after, Turner's release of the ball; 3) pass made to Lillard and he took the shot with Thompson closing fast. Th strange thing to me is why Turner stayed off court rather than getting near side rebounding position. Time for a tap existed.

One-time impressions are often wrong, even for trained eyes.

Lillard was option 1 and Leonard was option 2 per Stotts. I'm not sure why CJ led the way for Lillard. It seemed to just crowd the space, which there was not much of. Leonard was not an option because Green fouled him and he was not able to get down low as a result. That should have been 1 free throw and the ball out of bounds. I didnt like the shot. I know the corner is supposed to be the easiest 3 point shot and I'm sure they wanted to go for the win, not OT #2. Its too bad. They played nearly well enough to lead this series 3-1.

Roy The Natural wrote:

monopoman wrote:Am I insane or did Leonard just play himself into some team maybe giving us some value for him in a trade? He looked like one of the best Blazers on the court in both game 3 and 4.

Would be nice... but I doubt any team will be fooled into giving up anything of value for him. He may have played himself into bad contract swap territory without incentive though... that would be nice enough. If we could find a slightly less bad contract, and get that for Leonard... I'd take it.

I said it earlier, I think Meyers would be a really good C to pair with AD

Good season Blazers

We'll win the title next year if we can make a move or two.

Roy The Natural wrote:Evan Turner played the final 29 minutes of this game... and I can't figure out why... at all.

Maybe because he's the best ball handler on the team. Makes passes other stars " can only dream of. He has to have an absolute perfect game to not get slammed. I have seen him get terrible press even when did not play. Go figure,

Harkless, Curry,Hood, Aminu and a few others had a bad game, that happens, but I am amazed a few ET haters blame him for everything that went wrong. Turner is not a MVP but to continue to blame him is wrong.

If not for his contract ...

wco81 wrote:If not for his contract ...

Would he be wonderful if he was making 3Mil. per year? Who here would not like to make as much money as possible?

Lots of ISO in the 4th. When this team doesn't know what to do offensively we revert to each player trying to get their own. Having Nurk to play the high post in that situation is missed.

Leonard gave the Blazers a chance to win by hitting those shots. Good counter for the Warriors blitzing Lillard and CJ.

Wickzki wrote:Good season Blazers

We'll win the title next year if we can make a move or two.

If we can retain Kanter, Hood, Seth and bring in a defensive perimeter player for the MLE (Beverly, A. Bradley) I think we’re in a great position to clinch the West.
However, front office needs to be as aggressive as it was last year, cuz if we stay put we might end up having a subpar season.

These are the moves that I would like to see:
1) DON"T extend Aminu
2) Trade Leonard now that his value is at all time high. Ideally, we can get a solid rotation player can play D and shoot 3's.
3) Try to retain (in this order) Hood, Seth
4) Extend Layman (only if cheap)

plyrically wrote:If we can retain Kanter, Hood, Seth and bring in a defensive perimeter player for the MLE (Beverly, A. Bradley) I think we’re in a great position to clinch the West.

the Blazers don't have bird rights for Kanter, Hood, and Curry. unless the Blazers can magically unload a ton of bad salary or those players are willing to take significant pay cuts, retaining all three is very unlikely to happen.

When the Rochester Royals moved to Cincinnati and my living about 1/2 mile from Cincinnati Gardens, I then was able to see many games per year (tv then only did one or two national games per week, generally on Sunday). An early lesson was not to get too high or low when either team led by less than 20, since by the middle of the fourth quarter the game nearly always became a contest. I learned early that the NBA was a game of spurts and that some spurts could wipe out any lead. I also learned that Red Auerbach's Celts would always (or so it seemed) to diminish leads by that mid fourth quarter. Later in life when the NBA got boring to me (and my undiminished anger for the Royals leaving Cincy) I would even watch games on tv until the end of the 3rd quarter. This series reinforced long-ago learned lessons.

A star was born