I'm not worrying anymore

I will be the first one to tell you that upon hearing the news about Greg Oden out for another year, and Brandon no longer having any menisci left in both knees I panicked just like everyone else did, and is still doing. But now that the initial shock is done with, I feel like I'm finally coming to my senses and can think rationally about our team. Hear me out here.

The Blazers had the second most injuries in the league last year(I would argue our injuries were harder to overcome seeing as our players are better then the warriors, and this isn't accounting for our health of our coaches and front office), and we still were a 50 win team last year. We had Juwon Howard playing center for much of the season for us, and didn't acquire Camby until the latter part of the season.

How we were able to still be a very good team last year despite these injuries makes me to believe it's more then just our teams depth, and talent. I think the Blazers are much like the old Denver Broncos running back system for much of the 90's and 2000's under Shanahans control, meaning you can plug in any half decent player and the team and offensive style of play will produce results every single time. Nate has the full backing of a team and a front office who buy into his style of team play, slow calculated high percentage offense and as of recently, a renowned love/respect on the defensive side of the ball. The Blazers don't run a lot of isolation, it's a lot of non-iso, drive, pass out if it's not there, make the defense collapse and get that high FG% shot off. As long as Nate continues to have this team buying into this philosophy, were going to be able to continue to get away with putting less then optimum players in the game and still win.

Help is on the horizon too. There's nothing we can do about Oden being gone, but this team is used to it, and luckily is not reliant on him to make it to the playoffs. a front court of Camby/Pryzbilla and Aldridge/Cunningham is not bad by a long shot, it's actually rather good. Brandon Roy unfortunately will be a worry all year long, but he's not done. He's going to be a good player for us, he's going to start, he's going to have good and bad games just like anyone else, but the good will still far outweigh the bad. It's not like the meniscus disappeared last week, playing in pain isn't something new for Brandon. But boy does Wesley Mathews sure look really good out there? Wesley could start at SG for a lot of other teams, so he's certainly not the one holding us back. He's not the offensive star as Roy is, but where he makes up for that is his aggression, and far superior defense. Couple that with Nic at SF, and Andre continuing to be able to be the teams penetration when called upon, as well as feeding LMA and crew down low is still lookin dirty.

Is this an optimistic outlook? Hell yes it is. There are question marks for every single team not named the Lakers in this league, and we are no different. Watching this new team grow the last 3-4 years has shown me that they can overcome obstacles, and that the "team game" of basketball still does exist in a game dominated by superstars today. Will injuries happen still? Most likely, but the law of averages suggest that these freak injuries have to stop occurring at this ridiculous rate sometime. We do not have a team full of injury prone players. The only explanation I can come up with is this has just been a medical sports anomaly. It just can't keep happening, no medical staff is incompetent and putting these players in jeopardy. Times will get better.

Look on the bright-side guys, we don't have many players who are regressing/getting worse, the Blazers are still loaded with unseen potential and talent.