Surprised that the Blazers have done so well this year. I thought they would be tapering off before now. They are doing the right thing trying to cash in quickly on this strong run to get L.Aldridge locked down long term. Still not convinced they can maintain this strong run of form.
I hope Aldridge waits. He shouldn't jump the gun on this. Wait and see if his team can maintain this. See how they do in the playoffs. Or if they can grow (or not) next season. Jumping into a long contract just because you have had 4 happy months is a bad plan. One that has a strong chance of coming back to bite him on the ass.
I don't see the cause for concern here.
The Blazers have a core of young players who are proven competitive and productive, and there's now a pretty good sample size of those guys playing well together. It's not just this season. The core 4 -- Lillard, Matthews, Batum, Aldridge -- were great last year, too, the Blazers just didn't have a bench.
Defense, lack thereof.
Eh, Matthews and Batum are solid defenders. Aldridge is more to blame for any lack of defense than the other guys I mentioned, because as a big man he has more responsibility there.
And again, these guys have been playing winning basketball for a season and a half now. There's a formula there that will work. Now that they have some better supporting pieces on the bench and a center who can bother shots at the rim a little bit, they're winning a lot of games.
I don't think they'll be quite this successful every season going forward, but I think that's a perennial 50-55 win team at least. The Blazers front office has shown they can make moves for quality supporting pieces, too, so the team should only get better.
The Blazers appear set up to be similar to the Dirk-led Mavs from the mid-to-late '00s. Seems likely to me that wherever Aldridge might go next would be worse than that, not better.
Topic: Lamarcus Aldridge talking extension with Portland (Read 3586 times)