Slippery Slope

The Western Conference is very tough, this has been established. The goal for the Blazers in this first month is to somehow stay at .500, and they did grab a huge road win over the weekend against a pretty good team out in Jersey. 5-6 is better than I expected, but they are in dangerous territory early in this young season. Consider the slippery slope they are on:

At 5-6, there are only 2 teams in the West that have more losses, Seattle at 4-7, and Memphis at 1-8.

Brandon Roy is out at least a couple more weeks in the boot, starting to look like a season long issue and the Blazers simply can't afford that.

Nate McMillan has decided to start a dreadful player in Graham because he wants his second unit to perform better, then tries to figure out why they start slowly.

The All Star is still holding steady at a 3.88 PER. Good times. Hey Steve, when you do interviews and say that "he's an All Star center"...well...let's just say that's a pretty high level of subterfuge.

Their upcoming games are the Spurs, Nets, Kings, Suns, and Pacers. Yikes. At 5-6, with those games coming up, this is a major danger zone. Somehow they have to win 2 or 3 of these games. If they can go 3-2 in that span and get out of this month 8-8 and get Roy and Joel back, then maybe we can raise the expectation level for this team officially.

Posting could be a bit spotty this week with the Holiday, but I'll try to get some stuff up randomly. I know the Fearless Moderator will be out of town, although we might be in the same place on a few occasions this week, which usually is not good news for the Blazer front office. The two of us, plus booze, usually results in an angry diatribe or two on the state of our once proud franchise.