I don’t think it’s likely or will happen, but even if no more moves are made, it’s possible. It would take Oden becoming an 18-10 player and continued improvement on career best season performances by Joel and Steve. It would also take continued improvement from the other rookies along with the continued meteoric rise of one Brandon Roy.

I think if they get 54 wins again, the regular season will be a success. It’s more about what they do after that.

Regular season wins upwards of the 50s will almost for sure require a good bench (better than Bayless+rooks).

If we try to win 60 something with our awesome starters, we will get them injured from overplaying them. If we don’t overplay them we won’t get 60 something wins.

Where Oden makes the big difference is in the playoffs. Then the rotation shrinks and every game is starter heavy. I’d rather be a better playoff team than focusing on 60+ regular season wins. And, of course, I’d rather have both.

but not necessarily affect the win total. Assuming there’s a roughly finite amount of talent, the only way every team improves is if every team makes mutually beneficial trades/moves (in terms of basketball).

What matters for win total is if the teams the Blazers play more often improved more than the teams that they play less often as well as the distribution of improvement. Having the elite teams improve shouldn’t, in principle, hurt the Blazers a lot. Orlando and the Cavs improved, the Blazers only beat those two teams once last year anyway. The Dallas Mavericks improved but they swept the Blazers last year. Similarly, a team like the Wolves getting worse doesn’t really help the Blazers, since they were probably going to sweep them again next year. Those to teams are at the tails of the distribution:

I don’t see enough of the Blazers peers in the West improving for it to make a big difference. Improvements that would really cut into the Blazers win total are teams like the Clippers, Grizzlies, and Thunder. I don’t think they’ve improved any more than the Rockets or Suns have gotten worse.

Projections will be easier to make when the rosters get finalized, but 60 wins sounds doable to me.

Bank on it.

No one we compete with has improved THAT much, and the bad teams will still be bad and get beat up by us. Anyone who won 20-sumthin’ games last year did not improve as much as Roy/LMA/Oden/Rudy/Batum will. Bayless will have more big, impactful games than Sergio did last year as the backup just by his very nature.

Now we might even beat the Rockets on more than a “lucky” shot. And who has really, really improved this season? Adding Richard Jefferson is fine but their faults that we were able to take advantage of remain the same, the Mavs are our kryptonite anyways for some reason, and none of the really bad teams are going to make the jump to simply bad, over abysmal.

We’ll be slightly better on the road, more consistent and experienced, and win a ton of games.

We’re awesome!

Mortimer

San Antonio has dramatically improved, Boston has improved, and Orlando has improved, and I would say Cleveland has improved. Phoenix will be better but still is in a the lower tier than the blazers. Other than that, I don’t see this dramatic improvement you are talking about.

Logically, if some teams are improving then others are getting worse. The only two ways this could be untrue is:
1. Young talent in the NBA is getting better. Considering how weak the newest draft class is, and that some of the draft classes entering their primes (05 and 06) were also pretty weak, I don’t think this is true.
2. Almost every team is making moves that benefit both teams greatly. Deals like this exist, but rarely. Usually one team gets better and one team doesn’t. (Kidd deal, Iverson deal, Billups deal, and no doubt the Wallace deal are all examples.)

So, if the top teams are indeed getting better, it means the middle/low teams are getting worse.

I want Oden to wear goggles like that.