Think Division not Conference

is a great goal to shoot for this season. After that, we’ll own the division for a decade.

…It will probably come down to Utah, Denver and Portland again. It might be helpful to examine the respective schedules, especially those games during the stretch run, as division champ will be determined by overall record, not necessarily head-to head games. Then, even the fourth seed will face a good team in the first round.

or January. So, I think we should focus most on just getting wins. At the same time though, winning the Northwest division is something that I think is entirely possible. It will come down to a few game difference between the Jazz and the Blazers in my opinion.

… about a 15-20% chance of winning the division. I think very highly of the team the Jazz have put together, so it will be very tough. Possible though.

If they could come close to that again, we would have to make a really big jump from 41-41. While Utah hasn’t really improved in the off-season, they also haven’t become any worse by losing a major player or so (that could happen next season… hope). It would be a nice goal to get home court advantage and possibly an easier first round opponent, but our first one should be to make the playoffs at all regardless of position.

Utah off-season activity so far:
Players acquired: Kosta Koufos (#23), Ante Tomic (44), Tadija Dragicevic (53) on draft day. Of these probably only Koufos will be on the roster on opening night. Brevin Knight (from L.A. Clippers) for Jason Hart as a backup PG. Knight is the more experienced player, but also more injury prone. They managed to retain C.J. Miles (matched offer sheet), and extended Williams long term.
Williams played well in the Olympics, Boozer not so much (limited time), Kirilenko was pretty bad. Okur opted not to play for Turkey in the EuroBasket qualifier. So as it stands now none of their big guys got any injuries, which will be important.

we should just get wins and more of them than last season. I never weighed in on the “your official prediction” post by Dave but I would put us at around 47-50 wins and 7 th or 8th seed. I Would be satisfied at meeting the Lakeshow in the first round b/c it would be a great series that we have a legitimate chance at winning . The jazz aren’t gonna be any worse. As Norsktroll pointed ot above they are pretty much the same team with no major injuries to their “bigs” so we have a reason to believe they will be big competition.

Sophia

I was big time into rooting for this, last Season. We had the gol dang thing in our hands breifly. We beat the Division Leader (Nuggies) in some big games to get it. Oh yah, I was ridin’ that high for awhile.

The Salty Utes made a move (Kyle Korver) at the trading deadline last year that allowed them to garner the Division Title. These kinda moves will be considered again this year, if your Team is in the battle and has a need.

My LAL hatred stems from them being The Blazers Division rival. Now the Jizz & Nuggies are the ones who stand in our way. I find it easy to envision and despise Sloan’s Morman Desert Camp. Run AK47, Run, run away as fast as you can.

It is a lot easier for me to root for this goal, when I think we have a good Team.

I’d say build on what we accomplished last season. More wins would be great. So would winning the division. Good goals to shoot for. Hopefully we can do both or more. But first we have to prove last season was no fluke.

don’t mean to get all critical here, but here’s how I interpret this post:
“We might get the four spot if we outrank the Jazz – that would be nice”

and most (or some, at least) of the comments I interpret as:
“We should just focus on winning games”

Isn’t that kind of obvious? Shouldn’t “we” (really, the Blazers, not us, but whatever) focus on winning ALL of the games? I don’t think SamGoody was advocating getting more wins than the Jazz and sandbagging the rest of the season – he was just pointing out something interesting. Plus, doesn’t advocating focusing on “winning games” sort of short-sell our aspirations? Isn’t winning games kind of the point?

I mean, seriously, how are these “counterpoints” productive? It’s like saying we shouldn’t focus on winning the game, we should focus on scoring more points than our opponent. It’s kind of funny that people think a winning record is a feat mutually exclusive from winning our division – one often begets the other, no? Case in point, OF COURSE “we” should focus on winning – in fact, it might make us divisional champs. Which is something I heard that SamGoody guy pointed out the other day. Keep the (desperately rare these days) good points coming, SG.

Williams played some min. and even though Boozer didn’t play much, just being there and practicing could have an effect on the two of them down the stretch. It would be unfortunate, for those guys to suffer for being willing to represent USA… but I won’t lose any sleep over it. Speaking of, its late and I have to be at work tomorrow. Good night.

Even with a rough start to their season, the Blazers have a very good shot of beating out the Nuggets (not to mention the Wolves & the Thunder). Getting ahead of the Jazz this season is a tall order. But there’s always that little thing called injuries.

Not to jinx our rivals in Mormon-town, but every team gets hit with the injury bug sooner or later, and this might be the Jazz’ turn. In that case, providing the BLAZERS stay reasonably healthy, “Hello #4 slot!”

Let’s get the NW…

Division? Conference?

Think widening the Broadway Bridge for better parade routing.

Regiment instead of regimen, Division instead of Conference, … :-)