The offseason break might have been shorter than in the past, but there still seems to be an awful lot of people glad that it’s coming to a close.

Does baseball bore fans of basketball? Is the stuttering nature of NFL play too much for NBA fans to stand? Quite likely so.

As for the NBA, this writer believes it’s becoming too much like NASCAR—millions of fans are hoping for injuries that will call the outcome of the season into question, instead of confining speculation to the finish of four superteams and one perennial overachiever… among whom the expected candidate came out on top in June.

Ideas: The Blazers

It’s really quite hard to predict how the Blazers will fare.他们通过他们的指甲刮进入季后赛s last season and didn’t improve over the summer, say the pessimists.The team’s barely kicked the tires on Jusuf Nurkic, say the optimists,who almost put the Blazers over the top in a playoff game against the Warriors on limited minutes and in pain.

Both the pessimists and the optimists are correct in their judgments. The point here is to explore the factors that will win the argument for the optimists—or the pessimists.

Jusuf Nurkic—all by himself!—turns the Blazers into a vastly better team at both ends of the floor.

Apart from the win percentage—which leaps from .500 for the season as a whole, to .700 for the games in which Nurkic took the court—it’s hard to find a statistic that explainsexactlywhat Nurkic does for the Blazers. That leaves the eye test, and based on that test consider:

On offense, Nurkic covers more court in less time, sets more effective screens by virtue of his build, and with his physicality opens up the court in ways that a third shooter cannot.It was obvious in 2016 that Stotts and Olshey were happy to attempt a duplicate of the plan that won the Mavericks a championship, that exhibits success in Houston more recently: blow the court wide open by putting five guys on it who threaten to score from practically anywhere below the apex of the three-point line. Nurkic, for his part, creates space differently—his size allows him to keep the lane open for the backcourt, and his court vision provides him with opportunities to put the ball where defenders aren’t. Finally, his elite rebounding allows the marksmen the opportunity to shoot from distance with confidence that Nurkic will scoop up misses and either put them back, or feed the ball back out. Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum can now worry less about being forced into the post, because opposing defenses have no control there, either.

Just as Nurkic opens up the court on offense, he shrinks it on defense, by at least a little.A short look at cumulative stats shows the Blazers’ opponents at the foul line rather less often when Nurkic plays. From that, it appears likely that opposing shooters are hanging back to avoid Nurkic’s Paint Patrol and prodigious blocking ability. Opponent field goal percentage doesn’t change with Nurkic on the floor, which suggests that the Blazers generally don’t work to contest mid-range attempts as well as they could—providing the team with one obvious andsimpleavenue for improvement in this new season.

Note further that all of these numbers exist in the context of 20 games during one season. Imagine, if you will, a season that includes 60-plus games with these strengths in play.

Turner wasn’t the plug-and-play third option everyone was hoping for, but he’s got skills even so.

…And skills enough that we can expect to see Evan Turnerrunning the offense more frequently.

That tidbit tells us that Stotts better trusts Lillard and McCollum to play up to their potential off the ball, and it’s easier to feel confident about Turner turnin’-’n-burnin’ up the middle to his sweet spot on the corner of the post, than about Dame or CJ worming their way out of a trap along the right baseline. That latter (frequent) disaster made for unwatchable basketball, and we can hope that it’ll become a thing of the past, now that the coaches are ready to let Turner play to his strengths.

Watch for Napier to break out on offense, if he’s given the chance.

When this writer switched unawares to a preseason game last year, his first thought was that he was watching C.J. McCollum, only to realize that the number printed on his uniform wasn’t 3.

Does that snap judgment mean that Shabazz Napier can become just as good? That seems supremely unlikely, and what seems in fact likely that he’ll never amount to much on defense.

Whatever his shortcomings might be, Napier can get to his spots and shoot. If he manages to do just that, the team will already be halfway to replacing Allen Crabbe’s production.

The Blazers drafted two excellent shooters and passers with first-rate court vision.

After two preseason games, it doesn’t at all seem this point needs to be argued. We’ll see what happens to Caleb Swanigan and Zach Collins against elite defenses, but the initial signs look promising well beyond all early expectations.

Here we have another reason to believe that opposing defenses’ days of meet-trap-done will come to an end sooner, rather than later—and not a day too soon, when they do.

If Davis stays healthy, the magic of 2015–’16 will come back a little. If he doesn’t, we can hope for more of Caleb Swanigan.

Ed Davis was on the offensive rebounding leaderboards during his first season with the Blazers, then faded into the background last season due to injuries. What’s more is that an impressive number of those rebounds were followed by put-backs. All of that second-chance productionvanished—and cost the Blazers quite a few of their 45 aggregate season losses. Of Davis’ DNPs, practically all of the games with a MOV better than -4, and a few of the other losses, become wins in that other universe where Davis plays through the season.

Then there’s the flipside of Davis’ return to health: if it turns out to be a mirage, or if Stotts wants to handle his Xs and Os in a different fashion, the Blazers have Caleb Swanigan and his motor to fall back upon. It seems unlikely that that substitution works out as well as it does to have an elite offensive rebounder on the court, but as consolation prizes go, it’s not too shabby.

Nurkic, Davis, Napier, Vonleh, and Connaughton will be up for new contracts at the end of this season.

The payroll numbers suggest that the five of them together will be paid $16.64 million on the season, an amount that might not even suffice to pay Nurkic alonenextseason—anddefinitelywon’t, if the Blazers defy all expectations and make a deep playoff run on the strength of Nurkic’s play.

However…

The Blazers hold the Bird Rights to all of these players—and using the Crabbe TPE to replace any of them in February will likely incur more expense, in absolute terms, than simply re-signing them. Thus the question is notifthe Blazers will be driven into the luxury tax echelon, by byhow farand forhow much productionin return.

…So. Cheer for the guys to keep developing, to hit their goals, and to make the Blazers a better team in the near term. The alternatives introduce new uncertainties, most likely at a premium of cost.

Others’ lack of wisdom did far more to create the Blazers’ cap woes than any decision of Neil Olshey’s, so please be gentle.

Let’s start with LaMarcus Aldridge.He’s still second fiddle and less productive than he would be in Portland, largely because he’s having trouble maintaining his enthusiasm.Then again, maybe he’d be getting paid even more than Nurkic will be next season.We can travel down the payroll list and conclude that the Blazers would bring a roster on the court just as good or better at the price, albeit older, and probably would've let Meyers Leonard move on.

Next, let’s consider the Association’s refusal to "smooth" the impact of the new television deals on the salary cap.This had the effect of putting a 30% markup on contracts when the Blazers were in a use-it-or-lose-it circumstance, due to C.J.’s pending deal. Since ET and AC got paid, that meant that the team was forced to make offers to Harkless and Leonard that weren’t insulting, under the circumstances.

Thus the Blazers have something like $20 million—and certainly no less than $15 million—extraper season on their payroll, just because they were forced to spend it all at once during the wrong offseason… or not at all. For his part Neil Olshey went out and got the best players he could find on a Dumpster dive. So how is all of thishisfault?

Crabbe’s departure is a gain, since his production—and its collateral offensive rebounds—can be replaced.

Let’s reframe this point in terms of a question:was Crabbe worth what the Blazers were paying him?

The answer to that question isNO.It turns into ayesfor five or six million dollars fewer per season, after better defensive production, or after higher usage with a comparable effective field goal percentage.

As it happens, the Blazers have another denizen of the three-point leaderboard already on their roster in McCollum. Nor is he the only shooter the Blazers have who cares about efficiency, not by—ahem—a long shot.

As if that wasn’t enough, Anthony Morrow shows every sign of being the front-runner for the 15th roster spot by virtue of his lights-out outside shooting, halfway through the exhibition season.

The Blazers show every sign of doing just fine without Crabbe, and the only way they could improve on that circumstance is to call up some sleeper from the G-League who not only delivers that shooting efficiency, but also knows how to provide elite defense in the backcourt.

…Don’t hold your breath—and if anybody pulls that move, it’ll probably be the Mavs. They’ll need the haul badly themselves, with Seth Curry injured.

Some teams appear primed to play small ball with big bodies. The Blazers are one of those teams.

One of the things that makes basketball easy to love is itscapacityforchange[PDF in second instance]. Usually evolution of the rules is reactive, driven by newer, stronger players finding newer and more interesting ways to lead their teams to wins.

最近几年我们看到这些实际上是a retreat to the game as it was envisioned at the birth of the Association;big players can’t move fast enough to keep up, they’d say. ThenGeorge Mikancame along, and by turns the game got a shotclock. The rules have been constantly adjusting ever since…

…But short of moving the three-point line out by 30 or 36 inches, or removing it altogether, the game as we know it today won’t take to straigtforward rules adjustment.

The Blazers have a couple of old-school beasts in Ed Davis and Noah Vonleh, but they’re a minority in their own frontcourt. Nurkic moves faster than you think, and so does Swanigan. Those two, and Collins, are excellent distributors. Leonard’s a hot mess as a rule, but when he’s not he becomes instead a scary offensive weapon who can actually carry his own weight on defense, as long as he’s matched up with a guy his own size or bigger.

When they’re focussed the Blazers can move the ball with the best of ’em, and ball movement leading to an open shot is the essence of small ball.

…So the Blazers will do fine.

Ideas: The Association

If the Blazers were simply looking forward to a fully-integrated Nurkic helping the Blazers during an unremarkable year, there would be every reason to expect a deep playoff run. Instead the Warriors are a 400-lb. gorilla, three other Western Conference teams have added major talent, and Portland’s not the only franchise to benefit from a Draft class that might not meet 1984’s bar for historic impact, but will excel all the same.

How does everything fit together against this backdrop?

在夏季有赢家和输家,the Blazers didn’t win.

…Then again, they didn’t lose much. They shed a guard whose impact was not in proportion to his paycheck, and got back a Traded Player Exception that might come in handy come February—if the team has a proper chance at a deep playoff run.

On the other hand, the Blazers will play 16 games against teams who made quantum leaps in talent acquisition. If they’re to have any hope of excelling those matchups, the team’s potential for depth will need to establish itself firmly—a circumstance that was unseen last season.

The current roster of the Warriors is the sort of thing we see perhaps once in a generation.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Thunder took the opportunity, when offered, to load up with talent of their own—if for only one season. It’s doubtful that Oklahoma City has the depth to keep up with the Warriors, who enjoy the talents of a gaggle of seasoned veterans on apostrophic salaries.

The Warriors are better than everybody else lineup-for-lineup, and there’s not much us fans of other teams can do about that except to hope they’ll experience an injury or two. Given what the anti-climactic Playoffs did to television revenue last season as measured against projections, there’s some hope for relief… but not in the near term.

The Association is lurching toward an open table, whether fans like it or not.

This summer’s free agency period offers a perfect illustration of an intolerable situation: a conference already struggling to compete lost major talent in droves, and in the receiving conference teams were more-or-less openlyrefusing to facilitate trades to rivals. For Portland fans this last was especially bittersweet: the greased wheel in the trade for Carmelo Anthony turned out to be Enes Kanter, whose matching salary was driven upward by a toxic offer from the Blazers in the 2015 offseason.

目前,东有三个teams-Cleveland,Boston, and Toronto—that could excel in the West if a realignment were to take place magically tomorrow. A number of West teams will be left or sent quickly home from the Playoffs, while at least one or two completely unspectacular East teams will gain a playoff series victory come May.

That this situation persists for a few years at a time is bad enough; that it continues year after year is intolerable, and does awful damage to the professional game’s appeal.

The last realignment did no favors to rivalries, and the simple fact of the matter is that the "negative" impact of trades needs to decrease. For these reasons, be prepared for more schedule and alignment innovation.

How does it all shake out?

It seems to this writer that in spite of the Western Conference arms race, the Blazers will acquit themselves well. On paper they don’t look like much, but they’re ready to let Turner play to his strengths, and the frontcourt is well-supplied with fresh bodies that can defend—or at least rebound well—so that an injury to one frontcourt player will not automatically doom the team to mediocrity for weeks at a time.

If they let Turner and Nurkic be themselves, then they can let Lillard and McCollum play away from the ball. That makes the dreadful traps a thing of the past, and opens up the Blazers’ offense to run at its full potential.

As long as games remain offensive battles, the Blazers have a puncher’s chance. If games turn instead into defensive contests, the Blazers possess the bodies and the shooting efficiency to operate at a slower pace and still come out ahead.

…So the Blazers will do fine.