Tonight I'm learning new video editing software after having recorded the next VideoCast (available tomorrow if all goes well). You might say I'm trying to reload in a single evening. Therefore I'm a tad short on time to share deep thoughts about the team and its prospects. However I will share a question that's been itching at me for a while now. I'm curious how you'll answer.
I wonder how much the population here at Blazersedge reflects your average Blazers fan. We're the largest website covering the Blazers, so if the average Blazers fan can be found online you'd have to speculate he or she spends some time here.
Leaving comments and reading our stories are two different endeavors. Nevertheless in the last few weeks our "average" responses have provided quite the barometer. Reading our comment section you'd have learned that most Blazers fans seem to be realistic about the team's current status (somewhat lowly) and sanguine about rebuilding through the draft, taking it as slowly as necessary to get it right. You'd also have experienced a tidal wave of protest against bringing in the wrong veterans, up to and including an acknowledged superstar and singular talent like Carmelo Anthony. Around the corners you'd have heard more mundane things like the noise in the Rose Garden is too loud on your average night, Blazers Dancers were an optional--rather than essential--part of the game experience, and the Junior Dancers really skeeved people out.
Mind you, not EVERY response reflected these views. Plenty of people went the other way. But on average our readership has expressed pretty clear preferences in the areas just described. Granted, the polling process was non-scientific, but still.
I find this curious because the statements coming out of Blazers HQ seem to gainsay these trends. "Reload vs. Rebuild" has been done to death now. In the minds of the Blazers exciting veterans and immediately increasing win totals seem to be the magic recipe to boost ticket sales. And they must think somebody likes all that noise and glitz during games because they keep pumping it and pumping it.
I'm not trying to resurrect any of these debates or issues. Rather I'm asking, do you think there's another body of Blazers fans out there to whom the Blazers' current positions cater? Are we so hopelessly not-average here that the lessons learned from our comment section aren't really applicable at large? If so, where is this other body and what do they look and sound like?
The intent here isn't to present Blazersedge readers as superior, let alone cliquish, though you are surely excellent in every conceivable way. But this isn't supposed to be bait for patting our community on the back. That kind of self-congratulation can easily turn into ugliness. We're brilliant at times, flawed at times, just like everybody else. But is that non-average, or are we pretty representative of Blazer fans as a whole...in many ways a unique breed among their NBA brethren?
To get a foothold here, let us know a few things today:
1. What's your story? Why are you a Blazers fan? Where do you live, how do you follow the team, why is all of this important to you?
2. Do you feel that story is pretty typical or atypical? Do you see yourself as different than Average Joe Blazers Fan or do you suppose you're pretty much the norm?
3. How well do you feel the franchise connects with you, understands your stories, hears your desires? If something's lacking there, is it because they're not listening or is it because they're listening to different voices in their constituency? Whom does the Blazers' message serve?
Have at it below.
--Dave (blazersub@gmail.com)