Will the Blazers win a Championship?

I say this because every name you listed did not score a point in a game. I would not be against the Blazers changing coaches, however I can’t imagine a coach getting much more out of an injury riddled team than Nate did last season! If you are going to criticize you also have to give credit where credit is due.

wow, that is remarkable when you see it “on paper”

But we still need a new coach.

but…..championships are so hard to come by. Just looking back at some of the good teams there have been in the past decade that came up short:
New Jersey
Portland
Mavericks
Suns
Orlando
Utah
Denver
New Orleans
etc

Just look at the Blazers teams of the early 90’s. Man they deserved to win one. They had all the pieces. They had the coach. But they ran into superior opposition. Only time will tell but I’ll still be watching and waiting.

“a title” implies just one.

I’m not comfortable predicting anything fewer than 3.

Why aren’t we talking about that now? Sure, Greg has taken a step back, but I’m still confident that he will work his way to the place he was at before the injury. Now Andre Miller is free to run the team without Blake unlike last year when lots of people (myself included) thought that it might never work out. Batum has vastly improved and will continue to, we’ve still got Brandon Roy, one of the best players in the NBA, and he’s going to be healthy by the start of the season, and LMA is going to thrive with having a low post guy like Greg. I think this team has a chance to win a championship in the future and I think Nate could be the coach.

we are contenders if those things happen

And the league will always be crooked while he’s in charge. Successful businesses aren’t successful because they make the world a better place. He’s done well for the league while spitting in the face of sports fans. The day Stern dies basketball fans all over the world will dance in the streets. And the word we’re after here is “Parity”

   The tangibility of a championship is always hard to define. Too many variables. Laker fans are already starting the chant of 3-Peat…and it’s far too premature.

   It’s a simplistic fans question to ask Will The Blazers Win a Championship? Because the answer for a Blazer fan will always ultimately be Yes. All N.B.A. team fans exist in either the light gleaming off the O Brien Trophy or in the shadow cast by the O Brien Trophy, but I think all fans chase it, like its just around the next corner and is possible, even if the reality is you are nowhere close to it.

  I think the more precise question is Do you believe The Blazers are being owned and managed with a championship as the goal?….and I would say yes. Argue specific decisions recently or over 2+ decades, but Paul Allens tenure paints a picture of an owner who wants to, and enjoys winning. This is not a team being owned or managed just to be profitable or on the margins of popularly viable and marketable.

  How close is it? Will the current nuculeus be the one that offers us the best chance? Who knows? A healthy Brandon Roy and a healthy and developed Greg Oden certainly would be a formidable starting point. In the past two years has some of the gleaming luster worn off of that dream? Yes, since 2007 our almost innocent and joyous dreams of a big parade being fronted by The Larry O Brien Trophy have been almost cruelly tempered by the reality that it is not easy.

  What allows me to remain a Blazer fan is the belief that the Blazers are not being operated simply to make a profit, or simply to be marketable. Succeed or fail, I need to believe it when Larry Miller, or Paul Allen or whatever Blazer representative says, “Our Goal is to Win a Championship”.

  I can argue and debate the tangible decisions being applied in the reaching of that goal. Sometimes I feel better about it than other times. But it’s the belief that we are heading in that direction that is important.

  By the way? I personally strongly discount the recently common assertation that The Blazers can never win a championship because we are small market or NOT based in Los Angeles or New York or some other major media outlet.

  My observation over the many, many years has been with little but notable exception, that The Blazers have the success they earn. In the 90’s? We lost to Detroit because they had Thomas and Dumars in their prime, when we had Drexler and Porter just coming into their prime. We lost 2 years later, because we met Jordan and Pippen in their prime. But I never felt we did not have a chance because “Portland” was not going to be allowed to win because of the size of our city, or the surrounding population of fans.

   2000 aside, The Blazers have been about as succesful as they have been able to deserve based on the talent we have been able to obtain, create or develop.

   I think the hype and legend surrounding Greg Oden (That he was the next, Shaq, Bill Russell, or Chamberlain type of impact Center) gave us the chimera that a championship was guaranteed, and just around the next corner. Well whether it is or isn’t, the dream was easier held onto, than the reality is to reach.