On this quiet offseason day, let\u2019s talk about the most uncomfortable sports question in the Pacific Northwest. The Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Mariners currently sport a combined 96 consecutive seasons without a league championship. Amazingly, the calculation is easy, since the title-less Mariners played their very first game two months before the Blazers won their first and only NBA Championship in 1977.<\/p>\n
This season, the Blazers front office expects the team to rise around the young core built over the past 4 years. With Deni Avdija, Shaedon Sharpe, Scoot Henderson, Donovan Clingan, Toumani Camara, and Yang Hansen, along with veterans like Jrue Holiday and Robert Williams III, Blazers fans have reason to voice the \u201ceveryone is underestimating us\u201d motto this season.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Mariners made a serious trade-deadline move, picking up two offensive threats as they try to make the playoffs for the second time in four years. Beyond their stars Julio Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh, one of their deadline acquisitions was the uber-popular returning Eugenio Suarez, a local folk hero. With solid pitching and decent hitting, the Mariners could make serious noise this October\u2026 if they don\u2019t collapse out of the competitive playoff race in September. Baseball can be weird.<\/p>\n
Both fan bases have reason to be optimistic, but may be unsure how optimistic to be. So today, let\u2019s ask that uncomfortable question:<\/p>\n
Which team will next win a championship: The Portland Trail Blazers or Seattle Mariners?<\/strong><\/p>\n (Caveat: We\u2019re here to have fun; if your answer is just a sarcastic \u201cneither team ever will!\u201d, get out of here with that stuff and go back to social media. Consider that answer already listed right here in the article. If you really want to talk about the factors that prevent either team from likely winning a title, that\u2019s obviously fair game.)<\/p>\n [Note: We\u2019re going to compare playoff appearances, but the numbers are apples-to-oranges. Far fewer MLB teams qualify for the playoffs every year. Over half of the NBA (8 of 15 conference teams) reaches the NBA playoffs, and back in 1984, a whopping 8 of 12 West teams (!) made the playoffs. However, MLB had only 2-4 teams in each league make the conference in many Mariner seasons, and even now only 6 of 15 teams reach the postseason, with no play-in games. The Mariners were still far worse overall, but it\u2019s complicated.]<\/p>\n Number of total playoff appearances:<\/strong><\/p>\n Number of playoff appearances in the past five years:<\/strong><\/p>\n Best player to be mostly wasted in his prime:<\/strong><\/p>\n Most memorable moment in the past ten years:<\/strong><\/p>\n Worst non-injury moment of the past ten years:<\/strong><\/p>\n Both teams have had their share of heartbreak and disaster.<\/p>\n But enough of the comparisons, let\u2019s send it your way. Which team do you expect to have a parade first?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this quiet offseason day, let\u2019s talk about the most uncomfortable sports question in the Pacific Northwest. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":191883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[104111,104112,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-191882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-blazers-gameday-coverage","9":"tag-discussion-and-gameday-threads","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}