What's Going Wrong For the Trail Blazers?

The only way to fix this is to get the club back to a more stable place.

The Blazers have started the season slow.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Here in Salem, we’re big fans of basketball, as the town proudly celebrating twenty exciting years of Hoopla back in 2019 proved. We love supporting our closest NBA team, which is the Portland Trail Blazers, who are located about an hour’s drive away from Salem.

They play their home games at the Moda Centre, located in the Rose Quarter of the city of Portland.

We love supporting our closest NBA team, which is the Portland Trail Blazers, who are located about an hour’s drive away from Salem. They play their home games at the Moda Centre, located in the Rose Quarter of the city of Portland.

Although the Trail Blazers haven’t been the most successful team since they were founded in 1970, they have managed to capture one NBA championship, winning in 1977.

They’ve also managed to qualify for the playoffs for thirty-seven seasons out of their fifty-one season existence, which is certainly impressive.

Now that the 21-22 NBA season is a few months underway, it’s a decent time to take stock of how the Trail Blazers are shaping up.

Unfortunately, it’s not been great so far, with the Blazers slumping to seven losses in a row, and they’ve lost ten of their last twelve games. Yikes. So, lets focus on what exactly is going wrong for the Portland Trail Blazers right now.

There’s no doubt that it has been a turbulent time for the team, not only on the court, but off it as well. The franchise just recently fired their general manager of nearly ten years, Neil Olshey, after an internal investigation found he’d violated the team’s code of conduct.

They have now chosen Joe Cronin, who was previously the director of player personnel, to become the interim general manager, whilst they search for a suitable permanent candidate.

That’s not the only big change though, as the Blazers also fired their longtime coach Terry Stotts at the conclusion of last season.

The new replacement, Chauncey Billups, has so far got off to a rocky start, but the inexperienced coach does talk a good game, and he definitely has his supporters.

Whether he will turn it around, remains to be seen, but at least he does seem to acknowledge where the struggles lie and what he needs to do to try and change them.

Bookmakers don’t seem to be as confident though, as the Blazers are now priced at the long odds of 81.00 to win the NBA Championship in 2022. You can find the best sports betting sites, where you can place bets on everything from cricket to basketball, over at Asiabet.

They feature insightful reviews that will help partner you with an online bookmaker that offers everything you desire from a gambling website. There’s also a whole range of free bets on offer, so you won’t even have to sink a fortune to have fun.

We’re hoping for more fire on the court as the season develops. Photo: Unsplash.com

Every NBA team has their star player, and for the Trail Blazers, that’s Damian Lillard. The now thirty-one-year-old was drafted by the Portland franchise as the sixth overall pick in the 2012 draft.

Since then, Lillard has sure made an impression on the league, becoming known for his insane vertical leap ability, that allows him to catch some serious air-time, despite his (for an NBA player) shorter stature of 6’ 2”.

His most famed talent though, is his mastery of buzzer-beating long-range clutch shots that tie-up or win games, earning him the nickname ‘Dame Time’.

Sports Illustrated recently wrote an interesting article about how Dame Time was born, which all fans should read.

He’s even been voted into the league’s All-Star team six times. This ties him with the other Blazers’ legend, Clyde Drexler, for most appearances in the All-Star game.

So, when you have a player as accomplished as that leading your side, you have to make sure that everything is set up for him to play as well as possible, and that’s just something that doesn’t seem to be happening as much as it should yet.

Lillard has managed to look disinterested and relatively lethargic in most of his games so far this season.

Pundits have theorized that this is probably due to all the chaos and disorder that is swirling around the franchise at the moment, making the star feel both uncertain and unfocused.

The only way to fix this is to get the club back to a more stable place, and then just watch ‘Dame Time’ strut his stuff out on the court. Plus, the good news is that Lillard has not asked for a transfer, so it does seem that the club is still in his heart, and his future remains at Portland.

Hopefully, all these problems will be smoothed out within the next few weeks, and the Blazers will go on to have a fantastic season to entertain all the local basketball fans.

Source: Salem-News.com Special Features Dept.