What's the problem?

This three game skid has really exposed some of the Blazers shortcomings. The root of the problem has to do with injuries. Losing Batum and Outlaw has severely dampened our depth, flexibility and athleticism. With Batum starting at the 3 last year, he drew the assignment of guarding the most potent 2 or 3 on the other team. Now, Brandon or Webster gets that assignment and neither is as good a defender. I know Nic only played about 18 minutes a game last year, but his length, hustle and athleticism have been sorely missed. While his shortcomings have been greatly explored on this site, Outlaw does bring a lot to the table. He can score. We won 54 games last year, and he had a hand in a lot of em. When you have another dynamic scorer out there, you can't always stick your most athletic defender on Brandon which is what teams have been doing. These injuries have led to Nate using more three guard lineups with the combination of Blake, Roy, Andre, and Rudy. This causes all kinds of mismatches but not in a good way. It leads to Quentin Richardson posting up Blake and Brandon guarding Marvin Williams. These are not great matchups for us.

So what's my point? Before we fire Nate or start Bayless or bench Brandon or whatever, we gotta realize that we got a bit of a short deck this year. I think any team that loses a starter and a 6th man will struggle. As a Blazer fan, I gotta believe they'll right this ship. Us bashing on Nate or Brandon or Blake isn't gonna help.