well said.

:)

Because it’s pretty clear he’s not. Oden, on the other hand is a massive force and had a bad game. Maybe you should stop expecting your #1 pick who only has 20+ games of NBA experience so far to look like a dominant force every single time he plays, no one is that good this early.

we have the best future in the NBA

LAL beat Boston yesterday and only have 2 guys 30 years or older.

Your comment made my homer-adar go off.

translation 1: You’re a cool guy Norsk. You’ve fitted right in and you’re already feeling like that slightly worn shirt that is extremely comfortable.

translation 2: you post more than TiH. That is scary.

Choose either translation you prefer. Kinda’ like the real translations vs. 92wastheyear’s.

Jscot thanks for taking the time to write such a well thought out reply. +1

I think one of the reasons for the moaning that happens around here is the almost universal fixation on winning. I happen to think that basketball is fun to watch no matter who wins and as long as both teams try their best I’ll be happy. I also expect the GM and coach to do everything in their power to improve the team (and if our GM and coach are better than everyone elses, so much the better) — but in sports I judge based on effort and not so much on results. As long as we’re competitive and attempting to improve (and not making bonehead Whitsitt or Patterson type moves) then I’m happy.

I was calling for people to have something that leads in a positive direction as in “So and so could really add to their game by doing X” Instead of “So and so is really screwing up right now lets have a minute by minute tear down of their game.” Which is what you and many others consistently focus on. It’s a shame because you have a good idea when it comes to some things. Your tone however, has dragged my enjoyment of this site down for quite some time and I was hoping that you could modify it with occasional positivity. All I can do is my part.

and I don’t think your tone is negative it is critical which is different. I wasn’t asking for warm fuzzy just not dwelling on the negative but instead saying for instance. “If Oden works on his positioning during rebounding he will be called for less fouls and I would like to see Blake go through Oden more often to get opposing big men in foul trouble.” As opposed to “Batum has looked really pathetic recently his game is utter garbage and we need to trade that loser if any team will take him off our hands!” You see the difference I assume?

My wife points this out to me on a regular basis.

LOL. I loved this:

Anyhow, you can’t blame them for having black hearts full of hate and anger. They all live in rainy Oregon, they’re snowed in now, and they are smarter than everyone in the Blazers organization. Add all that hate and anger with their huge brains and the fact that no one loves them and they have to take it out on the Blazers.

I say thank God for the Blazers losing games. It gives all the diabolical geniuses something to stew over. If it wasn’t for the Blazers, they would all try to get together and take over the world.

Little know fact, INTERPOL placed the Blazers in Portland after James Bond complained about all the women dressed in flannel. He got tired of visiting Portland once a year to shut down an evil mastermind.

awesome stuff TIH.

maybe i’m a wannabe, but i wanna this to be green.

That way I can ignore yet another fanpost full of useless drivel, like I already do the other two.

Oops, a little too negative…oh well. :)

… who made some terrible calls, but possibly against both sides. The NBA is where terrible calls happen.

I’m just saying that it used to be a majority of postive well thought out posts by the likes of Engineering Problem, Spyderryder, Ojala John and others. Now a days it seems “Vent” threads or out and out bash threads are the mainstay as opposed to the outlier. I remember when fatty was seen as too negative for being critical and often personally insulting (GOOF’s anyone?) and the site went ballistic. In retrospect Fatty’s ouburts were downright tame compared to some of what I see now a days. I think as the site has become more popular some of the quality has been diluted because there isn’t enough representation by those who write well thought out posts. Add to this Junk Drawer and to a lesser extent trade drawers taking up the recc’d slots (or for that matter this post) and quickly the quality is drowned out by the blathering posts. I’m just calling for some restraint on the negativity or maybe grouping it in a recc’d daily vent thread. Theres a good idea a daily steam release thread that all that can go into. Maybe the daily Lightning Rod thread?

people say that and other things all the time.

I think there’s a certain kind of ego involved with a lot of fans. Like: “I’m so smart about basketball that I know better than Nate and Greg and KP and everybody else. I need to be telling them what to do.” I try to be a more humble fan. I’m going to wait and see what happens, and let Nate be in charge of the basketball.

But then we wouldn’t be talking about your fascination with nipples and armpits.

the actual team. Regardless of whether or not we’re referring to the Portland Trail Blazers, there becomes an major disconnect when the players, coach, front office, or anyone associated with a given sports team — no matter if it’s professional or college — are rooted for more so than the organization itself. If wanting a ballclub to succeed comes at the cost of criticizing players, coaches, front office personnel, ownership, et cetera, then so be it. Hell, that’s the cost of doing business.

That was a really well-stated point.

People on this site have been critisizing nate quite a bit which is fair as everyone has an opinion, however i think the guy always does whats best for the team. from what i see he tries to win every game, which is what you want from a coach.

The NBA has 30 head coaches, and every single one of them wants to win every game they play. That’s not just what you want from a coach, that’s a minimum expectation.

What separates the good coaches from the bad coaches are often the simplest of things…

a. The quality of players they have to work with.
b. Their ability to put those players in a position to succeed.

I’m never worried about whether Nate wants to win every night. I’m worried about letter [b] above. Which leads to the next comment.

i love the blazers and understand that every "fire nate" or "bench oden" post can really be tranlated into "im a passionate blazers fan who wants the blazers to crush every opponent" but the entire process will take years.

While I haven’t been yelling either of those things, it’s completely unreasonable to say that if someone wants Nate fired (or Oden to come off the bench), they’re in “win now” mode (or as Tom astutely put it, “a fan of winning”). It simply means they disagree with the current way the team’s being run, and they believe certain changes will have a positive effect, and they may also be taking a very long term view, just like you.

Just because their opinion is different from yours does not mean you’re in long term mode, and they’re in “win now” mode.

It’s such pigeonholing of attitudes (“if you think [x], then you must be a [y]”) that creates a negative environment. Don’t group all people together when they disagree with you. You may actually not be right, yourself.

Rant off, back to short, frivolous posting.

I do admit to being annoyed. If someone’s idea of being a fan is “bashing” players, then yeah, I’m likely to think poorly of them.

Like I said earlier, there’s a difference between criticism and ugliness. I can’t stop anyone from being ugly, but I don’t have to pretend to appreciate it.

Usually when we talk about having perspective regarding the Blazers it has to do with being patient because the team is so young, but it seems like you’re saying the opposite that we should be demanding more than just merely making the playoffs. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I doubt you could find a single fan who is completely satisfied with what the team is doing. Sure we all love the way Przy is playing or how Batum went from for sure D-leaguer to starter, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want Outlaw to D up or Aldridge to stop settling for 20 foot shots. On the other side, many of us expected to the team to have a .500 record or worse by now and to see the Blazers playing better than expected is a real treat, so some people are more satisfied than others.

I think I understand where you’re coming from. You want the team to be the best it can be. You want the team to be in Western Conference contention. And you’re saying that real fans shouldn’t accept mediocrity. I like unlimited optimism, I really do. But are we going to be mad at the team or mad at ourselves when (more likely than not) they don’t live up to those lofty goals we set for them? Most fans seem to get mad at the team for “underperforming” and not at themselves for being a bit overzealous. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a 2 faced fan so to speak. One side of me wants the Blazers to win a championship THIS year and the other side is a bit more realistic and knows that there are a lot of obstacles in the way and it’s okay to be excited about a winning record and an 8th seed.

but they haven’t fit the vision nor the future of this team, and both he and Paul Allen have jointly discussed and then turned them down. We’re talking major superstars. Yet it would involve sacrificing the future. Plenty of teams have done that and regretted it. I’d rather have a 10 year competitive team than a 2 year Celtics-type team.

You have any sage psychobabble based on bad ripoffs of British sitcoms to explain that?

for your post last year about Martell and Dana Sinclair. Is she still with the team?

http://www.blazersedge.com/2007/7/16/937/53326

The whole debate makes me a little cranky. But I feel better after reading your post, especially the fourth paragraph, with the clincher: “We are trying to make sense of that which defies logic.”

Way to tersely explain the situation w/out stepping on anyone’s footises.

the game against the Clippers. I think it was because I thought it was such an easy game and it sucked that the team lost to a sub .500 team. So yeah, I know what you mean. I felt silly after being frustrated to such a large degree by that.

………………………………. so back to my initial point above

If you want happy sunshine positivity, do not read the Game Day Open Threads during a loss. It’s that simple.

I’ve made the suggestion (twice) that instead of there being a “First Half Open Thread” and a “Second Half Open Thread” that there be two parallel full game threads, the “Happy Fans Open Thread” and the “Grumpy Fans Open Thread.” People could pick their desired experience… Dave has likened the open threads to hanging out in a living room with others — it would be TWO living rooms. There would be FAR less friction (this thread would not exist, “dominating” the rec section for a week) and people could watch the game and be done with it.

Some people really LIKE conflict though…

Thanks for the response. I want to be clear this wasn’t a post calling for admin moderation (deleting posts, banning) on the part of you and Ben but rather greater moderation on the part of individuals. I think the popularity of the site has changed its demographics and modified its flavor; some of that is to be expected.

Speaking personally, I don’t mind stupidity, such as ridiculous trade posts involving RLEC for LeBron straight across. In fact, innocent stupidity can be a lot of fun and is far preferable in my mind to intelligent negativity. A comparison between the kind of stupidity you see in a beer commercial and the kind of intelligent negativity that brought us subprime lending and derivatives makes it easy to see which one is the more destructive force in this world.

What I abhor is the incredible amount of negativity, intelligent or otherwise, found in many posts and especially the game day thread. Ironically, Timbo might have the best idea of all: having a game day thread for the cooler headed fans and a “passionate” game day thread. All I know is that I haven’t enjoyed a single game day thread this year where the game was close. Every game that has been close or where we’ve been down for any significant length of time becomes an extreme example of player/coach hate. It’s gotten really old.

I also think that you are wrong about how negative things on this site have become. I’m not looking through "Leave it to Beaver" lenses here, I’m talking reality. The posting might have the percentages you outlined but game day threads have definitely devolved. Last year I was in about 60% of game day threads and I rarely saw a game day thread as full of vitriol as you find currently in any close game or game where the Blazers are down any amount of time. You had people getting upset, people enraged about Jarrett Jack, but nothing like the constant chorus of rage and aggression you see nowadays.

In particular, a few posters are not only consistently negative (as opposed to critical), but they meet any call for reining that in as a personal attack or sign of blatant homerism. There is a large difference between critical posts and out and out negative ones. I think it’s possible that moderation from you and Ben might do the trick, but as you say it’s a fine balance.

Solutions? I think a discussion about this is good as is Timbo’s idea of separate game day threads. Another idea is to have a "Rage Drawer" or daily "Extra Tall Vent(i)" thread to sort of bring into one place the majority of the rage and allow for its release which might lead to a detox of other threads. Moderation might help – it certainly did when fatty got out of control (and I really like fatty!).

Bottom line – as long as posters think that it’s their right to be blatantly negative, as opposed to critical and thoughtful, then we will see more of it. If left unchecked, at some point BE will become akin to O-live. We are closer to that now then we were a year ago.

I usually never read green comments (because they are reced by bias friends that just happen to agree with each other)……but yours will always be the exception…why? because you have the only opinion that is not clouded with perpetual sarcastic bias……And you don’t seem to let self-righteousness take control of your thoughts….
   You have summed up the issue of this post very well and your points should be well taken(even by the ones who wish to monitor your site for you….)
   There are many negative comments in here that have a good presentation and have tons of merit….and the positive ones try to drown them out and use their wit and sarcasm as a weapon to disclaim them. I would think that the cleverness and wit could be used in a more productive manner than trying to guard the Blazer team and fans that sometimes get blinded by homerism….
   It’s like you may have said, many of us can understand quite well what has merit and can chose ourselves on what we agree or disagree with…I find that many negative comments usually come from people that know about the game and have some sort of basketball background to help qualify their comments….I enjoy their comments even if they may be jumping to a conclusion or two at times…
  
    I realize there are knee jerk frustrations out there and not that well thought out, and i am not attempting to defend them in this comment……but they are fans as well, and are really part of this forum just as much as the ones who don’t like their comments….They are no more annoying than the idle chit-chat and often mindless/mindful blather that goes along in the sidebar discussions….So some members of this blog feel they have to continually put up with this as well…..It can be bothersome, but I don’t let it rule my world and realize that you will have this in almost any forum…simply put…it is a “live and let live” attitude for me…..and you must always tolerate things you do not have control over……other people’s opinions being one…..

an interesting point and I think they are related Macrocosm Microcosm, as above, so below.

But no biggie. Large scale mood swings are part of the macro fanbase definition.

Ride the wave, learn to enjoy the negativity for what it is, keep it in perspective, then gravitate to certain posters you trust and have conversations with them during the short term.

Then it’ll all dissipate with a well-played victory over Lakers or some such team.

that we’re not losing consistently enough. It’s like getting poked repeatedly. That’s annoying. That is, it’s annoying until somebody hauls off and gives you a concussion with a 2×4. At that point the poking doesn’t seem so bad. Oddly enough if the Blazers went on a 10-game losing streak I bet by game four people would start to sound more positive and hopeful about weathering the storm.

—Dave

exactly and well said:

what i think bothers some of us
is that every single player (besides brandon and maybe joel) is mercilessly attacked. some players are unpopular with certain prolific posters and are in effect stalked.

i dont watch a trailblazer game in order to ridicule my own team. i just dont. i dont understand that mindset. certainly i never thought that way when i played, and i was on some good teams. sure, if somebody goes 1-12, that’s noticed, but if youre winning even with some imperfect performances… you think in terms of trying to improve those performances, not belittling the player whos struggling though trying hard.

I like this post a lot. Being a bit of a nut for macro-economics and Geo-strategy there is a lot of tasty stuff in here. I agree with what you are saying about vicarious identification and I’m well aware of that within myself. I think that’s probably the biggest problem going on here. Some people feel absolutely crushed and therefore angry when we lose due to the perception that the teams loss means that they too are a loser. The Tradgedy of the Commons is that related to the closing out of the commons during the long 16th century in Britain. I have to admit I’ve heard of this but can’t pull it’s meaning to mind. I must go have a chat with a search engine.