January 17th

That is the last day that we can trade RLEC and still have his salary come off this years books for a trading team.

Just keep that in mind that the 2nd week of Jan will be a big indicator on how the future of this team may end up being, whomever comes or goes.

and then clicked for trout

(knock on wood)

Sophia

but the fact of the matter is if a game is on the line my money is on BRoy because:
BRoy = MONEY!!!

as of late Joel has been shooting free throws like he has ice in his veins.

Just to note that he shoots much better than anyone thought he would. His jumper in the fourth against the pistons today was not a game winner or anything, but I think that kid is beyond cool, and calm enough to hit big shots. One day..

We may need our depth if the 3 rooks hit any kind of a Rookie Wall. The season can seem so long to them. I can already see a bit of it in Rudy

the observation about Rudy is apt. already the season seems to be wearing down on him a bit. but it’s true that someone else on the team will pick up the slack because we are deep and young. we can keep fresh legs on the court every minute.

Roy is supernatural the way he keeps playing so hard and throwing his body into the lane and drawing all those fouls. How many times a game does he hit the hardwood after taking a foul? He’s gotta hold some kind of record for this.

Rudy is clearly not as durable as Roy, but I have high hopes for his future endurance in the Association. When Rudy develops more toughness and we add an experienced Batum over the next two years… plus a returning (and super confident dead eye) Martell plus Travis and Frye and along comes Bayless. Well, look out is all I can say.

the young teams typically start hot, and then fade. The veteran teams know how to grind it out over a season, often times starting slow then picking it up closer to the playoff push a la spurs. No doubt we will hit a wall at some point and flounder a little bit. However, this team doesn’t feel like a young team. You watch other teams like atlanta, golden state, and minnesota, and they play with a sometimes entertaining reckless abandon, running and gunning, with mixed results. We, however, feel like a veteran team at times. Controlling the pace and adapting to different styles. The question is, which team will show up in late season playoff position games? I have my prediction.

That’s fun & all. But I have to differ with some of your statements in the text. Dario Aregento already covered one of those questionable statements above. That is: veteran teams don’t generally burn out after 60 games. On the contrary, they tend to pace themselves during the first half of the season, then gradually turn it on so that they peak down the stretch and in the playoffs. By contrast, young teams—like last year’s Blazers—tend to flame out early.

Also, the reason for much of the recent trade talk at this site is the obvious minutes crunch that’s coming with Martell’s return. Batum was never expected to play this well this season. But the reality is that he’s playing VERY well—so much so that Nate will seriously hurt the team if he now goes back to Plan A—that is, planting Batum on the bench or sending him to the Developmental League. The fact is, Batum is clearly outplaying Trout, and he’s arguably contributing more than Martell did last season. All the intangiable things that the Blazers have lacked from the small forward postion are now being consistently provided by this teenager. Plus, he’s hitting his 3’s at a James Jones-like rate.

So what is Nate supposed to do: plant Trout at the end of the bench when Martell returns? How do you think Trout will handle that? Competition for minutes is one thing. But having a guy who was already becoming vocal about wanting more minutes this season now start getting virtually NO minutes is a prescription for turmoil. So it’s perfectly reasonable for fans to suspect that Trout may be getting shopped.

Finally, that supposed weakness of this Blazers team—letting opponents get back in games—already appears to be yesterday’s problem. ALL NBA teams suffer from this tendency to some extent. NBA basketball is a game of momentum, and it’s unusual to see a team cruise from the beginning of a game to the end. That’s why critics of the NBA say there’s no point in watching complete NBA games; they’re always decided in the last two minutes. But the Blazers are starting to get wins that aren’t nail biters. They might let teams back in the game, but only enough to make things interesting.

That’s the old NBA “deep hole syndrome”; the opposing team burns so much energy getting back in the game that they have no chance of actually getting over the top. Deep down, you know they have no real shot. It’s kind of like watching a cat toy with a captive mouse. Incredibly, we actually saw the Blazers do that tonight with the mighty Pistons. The Pistons clawed back in the fourth quarter, but then the Blazers’ starters came back in and put them away with ease.

Actually, this goes back to the point I made up front (and that dario argento also made): that it’s YOUNG teams that tend to burn out. One of the reasons for this is that they don’t yet know how to put teams away. Early last season, the Blazers won lots of games—especially during the winning streak—but almost invariably they needed last-second heroics—and even overtime—to do it. They never had the kind of cruise-control, rest-your-starters-in-the-fourth-quarter games that the elite teams have. So by the end of the season the Blazers—and Brandon Roy in particular—were physically & emotionally spent. Had they somehow made the playoffs, they would have been out of there in four quick games.

But all of a sudden, the Blazers aren’t playing like a young team anymore. They’re jumping on top of teams and either staying there or else letting them come back just enough to burn a lot of energy. Then Nate puts the 5 guys who have it going that night back on the court, and they yawn & put the opposing team out of its misery.

for last shot taker on this team.

The Marcus won a game earlier this year, Outlaw won several last year. Rudy, Blake, and Frye would all be good choices for me. – Elgin