I know that the title of this post is kind of duh around here, but I was just perusing the ESPN standings so far into the season and it gives a positive outlook for Blazers fans.

ESPN NBA Standings

Looking at the all-important Point Differential statistic, we are sitting pretty at 2nd in the league at +8.3, behind only Boston's +10.2.  Right on our heels, however, is Atlanta at +8.0.

Of course, this is a very "noisy" stat early in the season, and is inflated by our somewhat easy schedule so far.  But compared to previous years, I think this is a pretty impressive predictor of success for our team.  Look at all of the teams who have notched a Point Differential of above +6.0 so far:

Boston +10.2

Portland +8.3

Atlanta +8.0

Dallas +7.0

Miami +6.1

Not bad company to be keeping!  Of course, teams like LA and Cleveland will probably climb up there soon enough, but we are off to a legitimately good start, "taking care of business" against bad teams by winning comfortably, and not getting blown out (cough cough L*KERS)

Of course, it also means that we're going to be seriously tested tomorrow by one of this season's hottest teams in Atlanta.  It doesn't help that they're on their home floor, and we're coming to the end of a long road trip.  Many pragmatists are already bracing for our first big loss of the season.

Our 8-3 record is nothing to sneeze at, but it's these Point Differential numbers that are really making me happy this early in the season.  I remember even as early as last season having to sweat through nail-biters against awful teams, wishing that we had the wherewithal to blow them out of the water.  If our recent exploits against Minnesota are any indication (and I think that they are,) then that shouldn't be an issue.  That is the hallmark of a team on its way to being a contender.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow night, but either way we have a lot to be excited about so far this season, despite the injuries and other bad vibes that seem to be emanating across the fanbase.

(An aside: the Point Differential standings also suggest that a number of teams will be truly awful this season: New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Memphis are already at -9.0 or worse!  Minnesota leads the way at -13.8 thanks in large part to our two drubbings.  Feel free to make fun of them in the comments below.)

OK, Hedo dumped us...

Now what?  Well, what do we need from our Free Agent signing this year?  Let's see:

- Veteran presence

- Good shooting

- Ballhandling

- Shot creation

- Playoff experience

As it turns out, there happens to be a couple of guys out there who fit the bill.  One is Lamar Odom, who we probably won't be able to pry away from sunny Los Angeles.  The other one is currently being ignored by most teams, his market price is incredibly low.  He's been in the NBA Finals.  He's averaged 20+ ppg for most of his career.  Yes, he's on the downhill side of his career, but if we sign him to a 2-3 year deal we can use him as an expiring contract.  Oh yeah, and he is a former MVP.

His name?  Allen Iverson.  Granted, there are a lot of questions marks for someone who calls himself The Answer.  Will he be able to fit in the locker room?  Share the court with Roy?  Spot up for shots?  I think if he can be had for a reasonable price, he's better than any of the other short-term free agent options out there.  It would be a BOLD move by KP that would certainly ruffle a lot of feathers.  AI is not a thug.  The guy is a winner.  Remmeber the Olympics when he was the only one who played his heart out while Larry Brown was whining about his roster?  The guy is a warrior and I'd love to have him on my team.

We need to remember a few things as the free agency period winds down: first, this cap space is a ONE TIME opportunity.  "Standing pat" is a BAD idea, because this is the one chance that we get to sign a player without sending anyone else out.

It's going to be a lot harder to get Kirk Hinrich now that Gordon is going to Detroit.

Devin Harris: no.

There's nobody out there who will catapult us into immediate contender status.  This might be the best way to tide us over.

So that's my suggestion: Sign AI to a two-year, $14 million deal ($6m this year, $8m next) and see what happens.  It might not be a great Plan A, but it's not a bad Plan B.

Got better ideas?  I'd love to hear them in the comments.

Yeah, that's right, we won the second half to tie the series at 3 halves apiece.  I think we all had a pretty bad feeling about this game, and in the first half all of our fears were realized.  Yao got the ball early, Scola was on fire, Artest wasn't taking stupid shots ... bad news all around.  11-point deficit at the half.

If we're going to lose a game on the road in Houston, though, this is the way I'd want to lose it.  We got all the bad stuff out of our system early and made a truly valiant effort to get within one point in the closing seconds.  Rudy came to life, Oden looked great out there and Blake was one boneheaded airball from redeeming himself in the eyes of his detractors on the board here.  We flat-out won that second half by denying Yao and playing great defense.

For Game 4, we're going to need more on the offensive end.  And we need it from Travis Outlaw.  That guy has not shown up to play yet in this series and we really need him.  Rudy won't be 5-7 on his 3s again on Sunday.  A little offense from Super Trout and I think we can steal the next one on the road.  We have shown that we can roll with the punches, now it's time to go out there and do our thing!

Can't wait for Sunday!

After seeing the news that the Wizards are talking with Flip Saunders about their coaching vacancy, I immediately thought to myself, "that's a move of a team that doesn't have championship aspirations."  It seems like there are a lot of coaches in this league who have been around a long time but never gotten their teams to the top.  In fact, I checked to see what coaches had won a championship since 1987 -- a span of 22 years -- and the list is surprisingly small:

1) Pat Riley 1987-88, 2006

2) Chuck Daly, 1989-1990

3) Phil Jackson 1991-93, 1996-98, 2000-02

4) Rudy Tomjonavich 1994-95

5) Gregg Poppovich 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007

6) Larry Brown 2003

7) Doc Rivers 2008

Most of these coaches are either already retired or about to be (the exceptions being Doc Rivers and Gregg Poppovich.)  Assuming that these two are the only other ones who stick around during our "championship window" of the next 10 years or so, who else could end up on this list?

My argument would be that almost-been-there coaches like Rick Adelman, Jerry Sloan, Flip Saunders, Byron Scott, and Jeff Van Gundy don't belong on this list.  Mike D'Antoni is a borderline case.  Here is my list of potential championship-caliber coaches over the next 10 years, alongside Gregg Poppovich and Doc Rivers:

1) Nate McMillan.  I am so grateful that we have tasked him to take us to the Promised Land.  I strongly believe that he has what it takes.

2) Mike Brown.  He's an underrated aspect to why Cleveland is doing well right now.

3) Stan Van Gundy.  A front-runner for COY this year, this guy has always impressed me and I think he can get a good team over the top.

4) Avery Johnson.  Call me crazy, but if he comes back I could see him taking another team all the way.

If I were a rebuilding franchise, I would be searching for the next Mike Brown or Nate McMillan, not trying to rehire a has-been like Flip Saunders.  Portland tried that with Mike Dunleavy in the late-90s/early 00s and it got us close but not close enough.

Any other nominations for coaches to fear in the next decade?

Now that the Blazers have been playing their best basketball in nearly a decade, some patterns about this particular team are emerging.

First of all, it looks pretty clear that we're going to see a 9-man rotation for the playoffs.  Sorry, Channing and Jerryd, you're going to have to wait until next year.  Sergio will get spot minutes in the 2nd and 4th quarter along with Greg and Trout, while Rudy will play with the bench and finish out the game with the starters (replacing Batum in the starting lineup).

This strategy makes a lot of sense to me, as it maximizes the capabilities of those on the court.  This diagram from PopcornMachine is a nice visual aid:

Blazers-Clippers

The Clippers game is a pretty clear example that our best lineup (the one that outscored them by 30 throughout the game) was Steve Blake, Rudy Fernandez, Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Joel Przybilla.  That's the unit that finished out the 4th when the bench was struggling and gave up a run to the Clips.

We have tried some other lineup permutations throughout the season that have been pretty effective, including Blake/Roy/Trout/LMA/Przy and Blake/Roy/Trout/LMA/GO.  But I have to say I like what I'm seeing if this is the crunch time lineup Nate is going to go with in the playoffs.

What do you think?

Now that we've clinched our first playoff berth since 2003, I figure now is as good a time as any to throw my own playoff positioning analysis angle into the fanposts here.  It's like the opposite of blazer91's "Taking Care of Business" thread: what happens if everything goes wrong for the rest of the regular season?  What feasible possibilities are there?

To calculate this, I assume that the Blazers will finish the season 3-3 leaving us with a record of 51-31 (losses to Denver, LA and San Antonio).  Then I assumed that all of our other Western rivals win all games against everyone except one another.  I left those games as question marks to establish a range of possibility for each of our rivals in the homestretch.  This is what I got:

PDX:

@MEM W
@SA L
vs LAL L
@ LAC W
vs OKC W
vs DEN L

Record: 51-31

SA:

@ OKC W
vs PDX W
vs UTH ?
@ SAC W
@ GSW W
vs. NO ?

53-29 to 55-27

NO:

@ MIA W
vs. PHX W
@ DAL ?
vs. DAL ?
@ HOU ?
@ SA ?

49-33 to 53-29

HOU:

vs ORL W
@ SAC W
@ GSW W
vs NO ?
@ DAL ?

52-30 to 54-28

DAL:

vs. UTH ?
vs. NO ?
@ NO ?
vs. MIN W
vs. HOU ?

47-35 to 51-31

UTH:

@ DAL ?
@ SA ?
vs. GSW W
vs. LAC W
@ LAL W

50-32 to 52-30

DEN:

vs. OKC W
@ LAL W
vs SAC W
@ PDX W

56-26

If we do indeed finish 51-31, then ANY of the Western Conference contenders could pass us.  However, there is only ONE way that this is possible (hence it is incredibly unlikely):

Assuming Dallas wins ALL of its remaining games, they would finish 51-31 and beat us for the tiebreaker.  That means New Orleans takes two more losses to their maximum win number, having them finish 51-31 as well and also beating us in the tiebreaker.  Utah and Houston also take a hit, and Utah will also finish 51-31 as their maximum (and take the tiebreaker due to division record).  San Antonio finishes with their minimum win possibility at 53-29 and Houston finishes right behind at 52-30.

Worst-case scenario final standings:

LAL 64-18

DEN 56-26

SA 53-29

HOU 52-30

TIE: NO, DAL, UTH, POR at 51-31 (POR ends as 8 seed, someone else would have to sort out how the other ones would end up in this scenario)

That horribly complicated scenario would be the worst for us, because it is the ONLY possible way right now that we can end up with the 8th seed facing LA in the first round.  As fun as that would be, we would totally get creamed.  However, this is especially unlikely because in this scenario Denver would have the 2 seed locked up and would probably rest their starters for the final game against us.

In other words, if you don't want to see LA in the first round, ANYTHING that happens BESIDES the above scenario will keep us out of the 8th seed.  If we drop one of our "gimme" games to close out the season, it becomes much more feasible that we could end up with the 8th seed.

I hope that we all learned something from this exercise.  I think what I learned is that April 15 can't come quickly enough!!!!

I noticed that in the wake of our humiliating defeat to the Oklahoma City Losers, there was an understandable amount of consternation in the Blazer's Edge community.  I, too, felt really bummed out after the loss and wouldn't even visit my NBA mainstay sites until a full day had passed.  The loss confirmed so many of our fears about this team: lack of defense, poor first quarters, inexperience, the rookie wall, injuries ... everything just seemed to be going haywire and that loss proved it.

Well, at least we can take solace in the fact that it's all relative.  Taking a peek at tonight's scoreboard reminded me that we're not the only Western Conference team who hasn't been bringing their "A" game recently:

Tonight's Scoreboard

Yes, that's right: three of our division rivals (and the Clippers, but that's no surprise) suffered embarassing defeats this evening.

Our friends in Phoenix apparently are already making plans for All-Star Weekend because they didn't bother to show in Philadelphia, getting hosed in a wire-to-wire rout by the Sixers.  The Rockets lost to the only team in the league that has been more ravaged by injuries than they have, the Bucks.  And the Hornets lost to Memphis.

Granted, the Hornets lost because they still don't have Paul back, and we know how they are without him.  The Rockets and the Suns, though, don't seem like serious threats to challenge us for playoff seeding if they keep playing like this.  And the Mavs are going to struggle now that Jason Terry is out indefnitiely as well.

Currently, we're ranked as the 4th seed by Hollinger's Playoff Odds.  Even with all the struggles we're having, I don't see us falling far from there because other teams seem to be struggling just as much.  Utah won't have their full trio back for a few weeks, so they might make a run down the stretch, but other than that I don't see how anyone is going to bump past us in the playoff seedings unless Paul comes back and the Hornets start to play really well.

And of course, by then we'll have our beloved Blakey back in action.  I don't think the sky is falling, but also I don't think we'll be able to catch LA, SA and Denver.

Considering that coming into the season I was optimistically expecting us to get the 7th or 8th seed, this makes me feel much less bad about that OKC loss ...

I've been thinking about rotations since reading Dave's call for a new starting lineup.  I completely agree that a change needs to be made, as it has always confused me somewhat that we never seem to start our best lineups -- big surprise that we keep getting off to slow starts.

A quick look at The Popcorn Machine shows that in the past few games, there are a few patterns worth noting:

1) The least surprising -- we suck at the beginning and improve dramatically towards the end of games.

2) We have very different lineups during those two times -- the starters are usually not the same as the finishers.

3) Our "early suck" lineup is usually Oden, Batum, Sergio, Roy and Aldridge, while our "late not suck" lineup is usually Aldridge, Roy, Bayless, and two of the three of Outlaw/Przy/Rudy.

4) Oden has been playing like crap -- we are almost always playing better when he is off the floor.  To a lesser extent, this is also true for Sergio and Batum.

I am of the opinion that stopping these slow starts is of primary importance to this team.  Without Blake, we are really struggling to pull that off, in large part because the skill sets of his backups are very different from his.

In order to accomplish this, I would recommend one of the following starting lineups:

Bayless, Roy, Outlaw, Aldridge, Przybilla

OR

Bayless, Rudy, Roy, Aldridge, Przybilla

I think that option 1 is more likely, personally I'd go with option 2.  The bottom line is that five of our six best players  need to be on the floor to start the game, and right now none of them are named Greg, Nic or Sergio.

That leaves for a nice second unit lineup of Sergio, Rudy, Nic, Aldridge and Oden, or Sergio, Roy, Nic, Outlaw, Oden.  There are some other permutations that could work as well.

Allow me to conclude with a few caveats:

1) This is a dramatically different team without Steve Blake.  In order to maximize the combinations of players on this team, we need to rethink the way we put our lineups together.

2) This is not an indictment of Greg, Sergio or Nic.  I think they are all very talented, and especially Greg and Nic have a lot of room to grow into being important contributers to this team.  But right now, without Steve, it's not happening.  Also, this isn't to say that I think Bayless is better than Sergio or Przy is better than Greg.  It's just a matter of fit without Blake's steadying influence.

3) I understand the cries for player development over winning, that we're destroying Greg's psyche by sending him to the bench.  First of all, if Greg is going to be the franchise cornerstone, he needs to learn early that sometimes he will need to take some lumps in order to benefit the team.  He's not fully developed yet, and it's not all about him.  Right now our best lineup doesn't involve him, but I'm sure that will change by next season.

4) Finally, let's not forget that even with all of our crappy first quarters, we are one of the eight best teams in the NBA right now.  I'm confident that we will weather this no matter what, and of course there will be more tweaks to make once Webster returns from injury as well.  But some tinkering now might mean the difference between a first-round exit and a shot at the Conference Finals.

Keep your heads up, Blazer fans, and let's hope that some kinds of changes happen in the starting lineups SOON.

I just moved to New Jersey a couple of weeks ago and am glad that I made it out here before the Blazers came to town!  I had a pair of tickets right behind the basket (perfect seats to witness the Bayless Jam) and had a great time.  I'm just bummed out that I forgot to bring my Sergio jersey -- obviously the reason he had a lackluster game.

Coming out of the gate, both teams were playing pretty lackidasically.  You could tell that it was the second night of a back to back for both teams.  Neither team was really playing D, and the Blazers were really missing Blake.  But when it came time to put their cards on the table, the Nets struck first putting us in a pretty deep hole.  Nate was trying a bunch of weird lineups and it wasn't really working.  NOBODY could guard Devin Harris.  That guy is a straight up BALLER.  Vince Carter, on the other hand, took the night off.  Fortunately for the Nets, Bobby Simmons had a great game out of nowhere.

Roy tried to keep us in it all by himself for most of the game, but we really made our run when Bayless and Outlaw started to step up.  Travis had a couple of big 3s from the corners and Bayless ... well, enough has probably been said already.  Roy and Bayless are going to be a GREAT backcourt tandem for us for many years, let's just say that.

The Nets arena experience was pretty disappointing -- nothing like a Blazers or Golden State home game, which are other arenas I've seen.  Half empty, pretty dead crowd ... lots of kids having fun at least.  But I'm glad to be able to head home with a win -- and get my picture here on the B-Edge (someone is taking pictures on this road trip?  Look for me and my pal Marty with the Spanish flag around here somewhere ...)

I really felt like we needed this one.  Nate really got the team going when we needed to step it up, so I hope he gets some credit for this W.  He is much, much taller than Lawrence Frank.

That is all.  Go Blazers!