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The Portland Trail Blazers will carry a 9-7 record into their game with the Houston Rockets on Thursday. More importantly, they’ll carry a half-dozen injuries to upper-rotation players, carnage not seen this side of Indiana. Portland may have entered the season claiming roster depth as a strength, but now their most prized characteristic will be hanging onto the vine while dangling over the edge of a cliff like a hackneyed movie hero.
Dia Miller and I spent a fair amount of time in this week’s Dave and Dia podcast talking about these developments. You can hear the full conversation when it drops tomorrow, but let’s just say that we examined the situation from multiple angles and came up with the same conclusion: things aren’t going to change here, or at least not easily. Maybe Portland will pull off a big mid-season trade. Maybe they’ll skate by the injury interlude and excel when CJ McCollum, Jusuf Nurkic, et al. return. Those are thin rays to pin hope upon. Either way, it’s out of our—and mostly out of their—control.
When facing situations like this, we’re left with two choices: be miserable or change your expectations. Since nobody likes to be miserable before, during, and after most games, changing expectations seems to be the way to go.
We need to ask the question, though... from what, and to what?
Dia and I have our opinions, of course, but we didn’t really offer a solid answer in the podcast. We’d like to, though. For that, we’re recruiting your help.
Today we’d love for you to share with us two things:
- What were your expectations of the Blazers heading into the season?
- What are your expectations of them now?
If you want to include nuanced reasons for the change beyond injury, or even if you want to let us know why your expectations are NOT changing, we’d appreciate either. We’ll use some of your responses on the podcast next week. Who knows? Maybe you’ll provide the answer that we couldn’t and change our changing of expectations!
Have at it in the comment section below.