Thanksgiving came and went. I'm Thankful for my basketball team once again being the scrappy underdogs who I love to cheer for, who are genuinely good people without sexual assault arrest records, who play hard every night and hang with teams who are deeper than they are. The Blazers have more what-ifs than any team in NBA history. What if Sabonis had come over in 1989? What about Jordan? Or Barkley? Or Stockton? Or hell, even Sam Perkins? What about Chris Paul, or....gulp...Durant? What if we flipped Raef's contract for Caron Butler? Any one of those go the other way and Portland has multiple titles...as in, 3-5 rings...in my lifetime. As in, we're a spoiled, entitled, obnoxious fanbase (as opposed to just an obnoxious fanbase that we are now!). In a weird way, I kind of like how things turned out.
If you're wondering what happens when teams get everything they ever wanted, take a gander at south beach. Right now the Heat are 8-7 (a worse record than Portland, for those keeping track). While I have no doubt that Miami will eventually be a dynasty given all their talent, I'm not surprised to see them struggling right now. No one knows their role yet. Pat Riley assumed that if he just threw a lot of talent on the floor it would automatically mean titles, ignoring the fact that this exact strategy at the Olympics led to Team USA getting owned by 12 fat guys from Greece who couldn't hack it in the D-League. Sometimes--in fact, most of the time--the team with the most talent loses to the best team. A full house beats three Aces when I play poker. The Heat will win titles, just not this year--and I'm glad I get to cheer for their exact opposite on the court.
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