Blazer Thoughts

Moving Day

2006-08-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

The news today is not so much about the Blazers as the Blazer Blog universe. As you may or may not know, there’s been a little bit of a shake up in our blogging world. The long and short of it is that Lance Uppercut can no longer run the blog at Blazersedge.com and I will be taking over that site effective today. The details of the switch are mundane. Basically when he found out he couldn’t continue Lance wrote and said something to the effect of, “I’ve grown this blog from its infancy and if I have to leave it, I want you to be the one who takes over.” Having become attached to this blog after only five months of doing it, I could empathize with how he feels. And frankly, when somebody asks you that way you don’t say no…at least not in my world. It was an honor to be asked. So I agreed to make the change.

Hopefully this won’t affect the community we’ve formed too much. It will mean bookmarking a new site and re-registering your name if you want to keep your moniker. Blazersedge does allow anonymous comments if that’s more your style, but I’ve been registered there for months and I’ve never seen any ill effects from it. The biggest positive is that the audience will be a little wider and thus we’ll have more potential for conversation. We’ll also be connected to a nationwide network of NBA team blogs which should open up new avenues for synergy. This could be really neat when the season starts. Finally, because the site is attached to a professional organization, there is opportunity for a little financial compensation for the work, which frankly never hurts.

I’ve talked with Sportsblog Nation, the parent company that owns the Blazersedge site, and they’ve assured me that they’re both familiar with and appreciative of the work here and don’t expect the style of blog to change at all. (Please bear with and have empathy for the Lance fans for whom this will take some adjustment though.) Believe me, if I had any doubts about being able to do the blog my way--which basically means inclusive, respectful, and as fairly and thoughtfully as possible--I would not have taken the opportunity, extra readers and compensation or no. I’ve never been a person to chase those kind of things for their own sake and I never will be. I’ve never even had a visitor counter up at this site…that’s how concerned I am with numbers. The most important measurement to me is how wonderfully and well you respond with your comments and e-mails. More than any particular brilliance of mine, I’ve always seen the passion you guys put into what you say as the best feature of the site, and that “facilitated conversation” focus will not change. I simply see this as an opportunity to take the conversation we’ve had here and open it up to more of the world. I still maintain that at this point in time opportunities to connect and converse like this are important in the Blazer universe. Many, many of you have introduced yourselves by saying, "I can't talk Blazers with any of my friends." I hope this blog has brought you some new ones.

This site will remain up and functional as an archive spot, though this will be the last new post here. There is absolutely no way to express my heartfelt thanks to all who have written and commented as the site has grown. I have become very attached to all of you and I hope you will be willing to make the switch along with me. It wouldn’t be the same without Jorga, The Prophet, Sean, Dr. Dave, Ken, Ignacio, Scott R, TP43, Earl, Eli, Noah, Robert, Marc, SchoolMarm, and of course Fatty…and all the rest of you folks too. Part of the underlying thesis of this little blog experiment was that fans really can and do make a difference, and you guys have proved that in spades.

See you at the Edge!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

GM Talk

2006-08-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

All the GM/President/Team Official talk both here and elsewhere over the weekend got me thinking...

In many ways it must be a royal pain in the butt to be an NBA GM. Here are guys who have dedicated their whole lives to studying the game. Sure there are a couple of former-star-player GMs out there but for the most part guys still come up the hard way: coaching in other leagues, becoming a scout, maybe serving as an assistant coach or in a minor front office job with more hours than power or pay. Let's face it, you never hear the names of most eventual GMs until they actually take the main seat. That's because they spent the last ten years taking notes on a clipboard in places like Minot, North Dakota or Eastern Europe (take your pick which is more hospitable) or teaching your 11th man how to set his feet properly or watching 92 hours of tape a week and hoping to get a word in at the meeting. In many cases they've taken away from their families, their homes, their finances, and everything else in their lives to pursue this passion and goal.

Most people would be overjoyed to be in the top 10% in the world in some endeavor. Being in the top 1% would put you in another stratosphere. When you're an NBA GM you're sitting somewhere around the 10 millionth percentile. That's how fully ensconced in the elite you are. And yet with all that, any and every yahoo with a mouse, keyboard, and a head full of incomplete information is fit to criticize your work. And they will...constantly. Every time one of your guys underperforms, every time some other team makes what looks like a flashy deal (whether you had any chance to go after that player or not), every time somebody likes the draft pick from their alma mater over the player you selected, and every time (heaven forbid) you just make an honest mistake like everyone else in the universe, you will be skinned, shish-kabobed, and grilled over an open flame with hate sauce.

How many of your critics have scouted one game in Minot, watched one hour of tape, or even know proper footwork when they see it is up to debate. That you're their target is not. I imagine it's frustrating. Even if you had the time and energy to defend your work you couldn't. You'd have to divulge information that fans can't know (like who you're interested in or willing to trade) or that fans don't want to know (like what's really wrong with their favorite player off the court). And even if you did lay it out there for all to see, half the people wouldn't understand and a good portion of the rest would disagree. So you learn to keep your head down and your mouth shut, isolating yourself from the criticism while trying not to appear distant or uncaring. The best GMs successfully walk a tightrope, balancing good public relations with keeping their sanity. It's no accident that most of the best GMs are relatively quiet and nondescript, flying below the radar until there's something tangible to announce.

And we haven't even tackled the potential problems in dealing with your owner, who may be a meddlesome fan looking over your shoulder and pushing for a fantasy-league approach or may be a businessman for whom winning is an incidental convenience as long as the bottom line is good. Nor have we talked about dealing with your coach, who more often than not is strong-willed, demonstrative, and completely convinced of his own vision, which may or may not coincide with yours or that of the players you've acquired. He has greater access to the media (and sometimes your owner) and half the time he's thinking he could do your job too. And don't even start with the agents, constantly angling for sweet deals and more exposure for their clients whether it's in the best interest of the team or not. And there you are, at the crux of all of it...relatively powerless to affect any individual part but largely responsible for making sure it all works together.

Maybe the appropriate question isn't why we don't have a GM yet. Maybe it's "Are you sure you want to be one?" I hope I'm at least a semi-knowledgeable fan, but I know that I fall so far short of what would be needed in that position that I'm like a sub-atomic quark on the butt of a giant. It's easy to pick out one or two examples of people who have failed in the position and say, "I could do better than THAT" but that's not reality.

I imagine that the Portland GM position at this point is fairly complex relative to the rest of the league. We may be headed in a positive direction, but we're still a long way from normal around here. The fact that we're even dealing with the GM issue and nobody knows what's going on (just like nobody has for the past five years) illustrates the point. Do you see other teams having these kind of discussions/issues? The good ones don't. We're reminiscent of a recovering junkie who's off the stuff but whose life is still so full of wild extremes that you don't quite trust him yet. And we're looking for somebody to come in and be the conscience and guiding force in this mess. That isn't going to be easy. In fact if nothing changes I'd presume a very high rate of failure for whoever takes the job.

I'll be glad if Pritchard does get the spot, but in reality probably more for us than for him.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

More PR

2006-08-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

As I sauntered to and fro through Stumptown on my vacation, a few more possible Blazer PR ideas occurred to me. Maybe these are obvious to some, but keep in mind I haven't frequented the city for more than a couple days in...oh...probably five years or so. Having lingered a while this time, here are my impressions/suggestions:

1. It seems nowadays that the most visible symbol of what's right and vibrant in the city is the MAX system. So why isn't there a Blazer-themed MAX train or two? Everybody else seems to have them painted up, so you know it's possible. How cool would a black train with red and white highlights look? The Blazers could also request it run past the Rose Garden on game nights.

2. Despite the growth/renaissance in certain sections of the city, others look quite dilapidated. The I-84 and I-5 corridors are particular eyesores. There are any number of cold cement bridges, overpasses, underpasses, and business buildings with ugly facades facing the freeway. A little public art is called for here. Forget investing big time into TV ads which are unlikely to astonish anybody. (Who's forgotten that the Blazers exist? The problem is people see them as disconnected to the community. TV ads address the former, not the latter.) Why not commission some artists to decorate those structures with murals of past and present players? You know that grain elevator by the Steel Bridge that Amazon.com has an advertisement scrawled on? How great would that look with a 100-foot tall Martell canning a jumper on it? You could go all up and down the freeway corridors with a Blazer hall of fame. When you ran out of room there you could start placing murals all over the city. Eventually it could become a neat project trying to track them all down. (Have you found Lloyd Neal yet? I hear he's somewhere on Killingsworth.) All you'd need (besides the funding from your budget) would be for the city and/or businesses to give permission. And who wouldn't go for that? You'd be beautifying the town and giving it distinction as well as getting your name out there. Plus you'd be employing some local artists. It's a win all the way around, and something I really think people would grow to appreciate.

3. I've seen a few plaques around public buildings and institutions crediting the Paul G. Allen foundation for its public donations. That's nifty and I'm glad Paul has done those things for the city. But if he's really intent on owning the team long-term and really wants to connect them with the people again, wouldn't it help if those donations were made in the name of the Portland Trailblazers? I know they're handled through a charitable trust and there are rules about that kind of thing, but how hard would it be to do? The reasoning is simple. When folks see Allen's name up there I'm sure they appreciate it but they also think, "Eh...he can probably afford it." In fact some crass people might think, "$50,000? What's that to Allen? He should have financed the whole building!" But every time the people see the Trailblazer name up there they get reminded that the organization is an integral part of the community.

I'm not sure how practical any of these ideas are, but again these are the type of things the Blazer PR department should be throwing around in their internal meetings...

Back from vacation Monday.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Friday Guest Spot Part Four

2006-08-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Dr. Dave (just like me but with a better degree) has some interesting thoughts in our Guest Spot today. I'll let him speak for himself...

---------------------------------------
Oregon Trailblazers

Let it resonate... give it a moment to sink in...say it slowly a couple of times. It does roll off the tongue quite nicely. If your reaction was negative, I understand. I can almost hear the choruses now; "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Or "It's always been that way!" Or perhaps "Please, no more controversy". Yes, I'm proposing an idea I'm sure has been batted around before: let's change the name of the team to reflect the loyalty of fans all over the state. From one who resides in the southwest corner of Oregon, it seems perfectly natural and right.

I understand why the franchise probably chose the name of Portland in the beginning. No one at that time could have predicted the huge following of fans outside the city limits. In the glory days of Blazermania and Rip City, I can tell you from experience there was hardly a vale or burg in the state out of range of the voice of Bill Schonely's narrative. Now, less than half a dozen stations outside Portland carry the games. Yes, interest has waned of late. Some of that is due to the recent downturn of the organization. Some is due to Trailblazer management underestimating the fan base outside the metro area. Not to mention the invisible political wall which separates Portland/Salem from the rest of the state. Keeping the Rose City's name associated with 'our' team inadvertently perpetuates that division. As things are, fans living outside Portland are excluded in a sense from the Trailblazer identity.

In my proposal, Portlanders would not be excluded since we're all Oregonians. (Note to those Blazer fans living outside Oregon: that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Please submit your own proposal.) Right now, as the team is re-tooling with young players and a fresh outlook, it would be a good time to make the change. Let the kids come to know and love Oregon as well as Portland. The Trailblazer name itself refers to the first pioneers who made their way west on what would become known as the Oregon Trail.

I'm sure my bias in this matter is in full bloom now. However, I do speak for many Trailblazer fans who are feeling somewhat shunned. Remember that in the great expanse between Seattle and Oakland there is no other top level professional team we can call our own. It would be nice if the Blazer PR guys got a little creative in trying to recapture a huge following out here just waiting for an excuse to jump back on board. In reality, I know there's not a cat's chance in a kennel that this will happen anytime soon. I'm sure there must be some contractual snag that would prevent it. And my optimism for the future will not diminish even if it never happens. I'm just sowin' a little seed. Lord knows we have some fertile minds in here, right?

C'mon... say it one more time...O-r-e-g-o-n Trailblazers.

Ain't it sweet?
--------------------------------------

Hmmmm...I'm not sure how I'd feel about that, but it is a different proposal and Dave makes some good points about the fan base. Comment below or to my inbox.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Over/Under

2006-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

One more vacation-type question and then we have what I think is a very interesting (and perhaps controversial) Guest Spot Friday on a topic that I've never heard broached before.

Question of the day:

Who do you think is the most underrated Blazer of all time? Who is the most overrated?

As usual you can use any criteria you want but please keep in mind that underrated and overrated DON'T mean "good" and "bad" respectively. A lot of people would probably name Clyde as the all-time best Blazer, but it'd be hard to argue that he was underrated. Similarly (as heretical as it might seem to some) folks might think Terry Porter was a really good player but got more credit than he was due on those early 90's teams, especially when compared to Buck, Jerome, etc. (I wouldn't say that, but I could see where someone could make that argument.) That doesn't mean that they think he was a bad player.

I almost hesitate to comment on this one because being on shore leave I haven't researched very thoroughly, so understand that I'm shooting from the hip here. But I'll try anyway.

I have about four candidates for underrated. I'm going to choose one and see if anybody names any of my other three. I'm going to go with Geoff Petrie. I know he was big in his day, but when you list all-time great Blazers now his name barely ever gets mentioned. His career was only six seasons long, but in those six seasons he topped 24 points per game three times. He also gave you around 5 assists and 3 boards. He shot over 45% for his career too. To put things in perspective, we're all excited about Zach's offensive potential because he once averaged 20 points for a season. Petrie averaged that for his career.

Overrated is much harder. I think I'd have to go with Billy Ray Bates though. He set our imaginations on fire, that's for sure. And there was that one, glorious alley-oop. But he wilted as soon as the league figured him out and even in his great year had more flashes of brilliance than substantial contributions. He's one of the great quirky characters from our team's history and our mythology would be poorer without him, but probably more is made of him than his play strictly warranted.

Your candidates?

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Worst Moments

2006-08-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

Still updating from vacation and depending on you guys to do most of the heavy lifting as far as comments and such. Today's the second half of the mother of all Blazer questions: What is your worst Blazer moment? Again it can be a game, a season, an event, or some personal reflection/experience having to do with the team or its effect on your life somehow. Again I'll grease the wheels with my Top 3:

1. The ball slips through Cliffy's hands in the closing minutes of the 4th quarter of Game 6 of the '91 Western Conference Finals. Big comeback, forced turnover, two-on-one break, Jerome has the ball and a lane but opts to pass to Cliff. The pass was a little late, Cliffy didn't expect it or follow through...it's nobody's fault...it's everybody's fault. We ended up losing the game by one. With it came the end of the series and of the best season the Blazers have ever had. And we lost to the Lakers no less (who went on to play pathetically against the Bulls in the NBA Finals). I'm not sure any single moment has elicited such a simultaneous groan from Blazer Nation as this one. It kind of encapsulates every dream that should have come true but didn't.

2. The news breaks that Clyde is traded. I know he wanted it and I know it was time, but that didn't stop the empty feeling. And somehow it just wasn't possible to get that excited about getting Otis Thorpe in return. It was the end of a very good era.

3. The Blazers lose in the first round against Seattle in '78. This will be beyond the memories of some of you young-ins. Indeed, I was just a kid myself. We had won the championship the year before. We were 40-8 to begin this season. Walton went down late in the season, made a brief comeback, but couldn't bring it for the playoffs. Surely we'd win anyway, right? Wrong. Since I had only started watching the year before and since I was innocent to the cruel ways of the world, this was my first introduction to everything not going exactly as planned. I still remember the feeling. "Did that really happen?" If I had known that almost 30 years later we'd still be looking for that second ring I might have cried.

What are yours? Listening ears and sympathetic shoulders abound...

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Best Moments

2006-08-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation IRL this week and I can't do much extensive blogging without getting "The Glare" from the old ball and chai...uh...I mean my dearly beloved. There will still be posts every day, but my interactivity level (comments and e-mails) will be lower until next Monday. I'll depend on you guys to fill in the gap a little with your comments and stuff.

So let's get this started with one of the two mothers of all Blazer questions:

What is your favorite Blazer moment ever? It can be a game, a game result, an acquisition, a specific play, or even just some random childhood memory regarding the team.

I'll give you my top three to get the wheels turning.

1. The Championship. Nothing will ever, ever beat that in my mind. Such a dizzy, wonderful feeling it was. What smiles that put on the face of a little kid.

2. Winning game two of the 1990 NBA Finals. Remember what a thriller that was, with Laimbeer hitting all those shots and us coming back and all? This was in the fairly early days of the 2-3-2 Finals format too, and it seemed like all we had to do was take care of business at home and that title was ours. Who knew that we'd not win another game? Actually at that point I wouldn't have wanted to know, because I just loved that moment of anticipation.

3. Jerome Kersey dunks during the Perfect First Quarter in 1991. Yes, I was there. Yes, it was more than awesome. The Coliseum was SO LOUD that night too. I don't know that we'll ever see another twelve minutes of Blazer basketball like that in one stretch again. And Kersey's dunk just put the exclamation point on the whole thing. The crowd was out of its mind and San Antonio just didn't know what to do.

I have more to say on each of these moments but it'll have to wait until another "story day" post. Register your votes for Best Blazer Moment Ever!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Turning it Around

2006-08-14T02:27:00.000-07:00

Let's assume for the moment that Zach will remain a functional part of this team for the foreseeable future. I've read speculation a few places that this will be a bounce-back season for him. I'm willing to concede the possibility, but I also think such an eventuality would have to include criteria beyond the current, nebulous "being in shape" or "the knee feels better". If Zach does make a comeback, it will almost certainly necessitate most of the following:

1. He has to start showing as much energy/intensity/desire on defense and defensive rebounding as he does on offense and offensive rebounding.

To me, this is precisely where the surgery excuse falls apart. Even last season, even with the gimpy knees the season before, when there are points to be scored Zach all of a sudden brightens up and becomes the man of a thousand moves again. When it's time to get back in transition or grab that defensive board he looks lame. This has been an issue since his rookie year. It has nothing to do with his knees and everything to do with his heart.

2. He needs to have zero tolerance with himself for things like not practicing hard, slighting coach, skipping or being late to team events, and leaving early.

That's part of what being the best player on this team, with these players, with this coach, at this time means. People don't really understand that "best player" is not just about talent or skill (at least if you want to talk about functional effectiveness). It's a relational, contextual concept like "good spouse". You may have inherent qualities that recommend you as a person to marry, but unless those qualities translate into your specific marriage they don't do a lot of good. In other words, it doesn't matter if 90% of the world would love (in theory) to marry you if those qualities they admire don't translate into making the marriage you're actually in good. The relationship you're in informs you what being a good spouse means. Ignoring it is both perilous and a complete waste of time. That's also true of being a team's best player.

In this context, at this time, these things are important to this team. Whether they would be as important in Detroit is immaterial. Zach doesn't wear that uniform, he wears ours. He's not responsible to those teammates and coach, he's responsible to ours.

I think it's also time to put to rest the whole "Zach's a follower, not a leader" excuse. Consider:

A. He pouts and complains when he doesn't get the ball, when he gets pulled out of the game before he thinks he should, when he's not center of attention out there. In other words he shows all the hallmarks of wanting to be the man. But if you want to be the man, you've got to play like the man and conduct yourself like the man.

B. If he's such a follower, susceptible to the influence of those around him, why didn't he follow Joel Przybilla, Theo Ratliff, Steve Blake, Martell Webster, Viktor Khryapa, Jarrett Jack, and Sebastian Telfair last year? Why did he pick the one guy who's an underachieving, disruptive dorkwad to emulate? Reality check: that's not being a follower, that's being an ass. You're making $16 million a year and are the focal point of your team. Time to stop it. Now.

There will always be easy ways out no matter who's around you. Most of us grow up at some point and learn not to take them. Six years in the league is enough time to figure that out.

3. Zach needs to go to Nate and say, "I know much of the offense will still run through me, but I'm also willing to be a decoy. Design some plays specifically to take advantage of that and I will do my best to follow them."

Zach's proven he's a good scorer in this league. He's also proven he's not Michael Jordan. He can't score consistently out of double and triple teams. The threat of his presence can free up other people though. And we now have some very nice shooters on this squad.

4. Of the shots he does take, Zach needs to hit 47%.

If he's not, he's not taking the right shots.

If Zach does get better and have another breakout year, it'll probably be because he did these things. All but the last item are mental/philosophical shifts. They're as simple as him deciding to do it and then backing that up. It's not a matter of can he do it. The potential has always been there. But will he?

If he doesn't do some of this stuff, one more bucket a game and one more offensive rebound a half won't matter. As good as they sound, there's nothing magic about 20 and 9 or 20 and 10. It's perfectly possible for a team to lose a ton and go nowhere with a player amassing those stats. Ask the Golden State Warriors under Antawn Jamison or just about any team Derrick Coleman played for.

If he's here, I hope he not only does it, but does it the right way.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer vs. Blazer VII

2006-08-12T02:24:00.000-07:00

This one's simple: Who's your head coach, Jack Ramsay, Rick Adelman, or (to throw a bone to those excited about the current team) Nate? Why?

Use any criteria you like to make your choice.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Friday Guest Spot (sorta) Part Three

2006-08-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

This Friday's guest spot is simply a question somebody wanted to ask. Sounded good to me!

>>Obviously we'd all like to add a superstar to the roster but right now that's not possible. If you could add one guy to this year's team from anywhere in the league who is NOT a superstar (no 20 point scorers, no Ron Artest or Jermaine O'Neal) who would it be and why?<<

Fire away below or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

PR Department

2006-08-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

I was surfing a bit yesterday and again it amazed me how many Blazer blogs are cropping up everywhere. That made me wonder what, if any, notice the Blazer PR department is taking of this phenomenon. You'd have to be blind not to notice the groundswell, or to ignore the free publicity. All the ad slogans and official statements in the world don't carry as much cachet, or engender as much goodwill, as a corps of grass-roots folks dedicated to doing your advertising for you. And intentionally or not, there's no doubt that these sites are basically commercials for the team, piquing interest on a daily basis.

Many people like to play "If I Were GM", but let's stop for a second and pretend that we are Blazer PR guys. What would you do to take advantage of this growing medium? I know they already have their own site and blogs, but as I said in an earlier post, that only goes so far. The content is good, but it's still the "team site", so what do you expect them to say on it? While it's the best source for people who are already dedicated fans, the Blazers are unlikely to convince any skeptical potential converts through their own site no matter how glitzy it is. Besides, why do all the work yourself when you've got others eagerly doing it for you? It's like that guy in "Lady in the Water" who only works out one arm and not the other.

Here are a couple of my suggestions. And lest somebody think that I'm being self-serving, suggesting the Blazers should do something for me or take notice of what I do, let me say up front that because I live a state away and have a real life job I could not participate in any of these things myself. But I still think they're good ideas.

1. The Blazers ought to have a "Bloggers Lunch", similar to the meet and greets they have for season ticket holders. Let guys sit down with Kevin Pritchard, maybe a coach or two, and a couple of players. Let them ask some questions, even some tough ones. Let them walk on the floor at the Garden and in the locker room. Maybe even let them attend an otherwise closed practice. (Give the players fair warning that everything they do that day is going to be written about several dozen times over, of course.) Can you imagine the stream of publicity that would come out of that one afternoon?

2. The Blazers ought to invite a guy like Eric Marentette to walk with them through the intricacies of next year's draft process, from the scouting to the conversations to the war room on draft night. He'd have to be subject to some editorial control, of course, such as not disclosing sensitive conversations before the draft, but he could post along the way and then write a more complete retrospective afterwards, detailing how we got to that point. They could also cover other events like, "What's a road trip like?" and "What's it like doing a TV/radio broadcast?" Or maybe even, "What's it like to spend a day with [insert player here]?" If they were really, really brilliant they'd hold a contest to select a fan writer who would follow the team all season long just like a beat writer and give their perspectives. You'd have people salivating to do ALL these things...for free! Just pick a person who you think is responsible and whose writing style you like. Post entries on the Blazer website (or O-Live if they'll cooperate) and you're set.

3. You know those cool videos that are popping up left and right on YouTube and other places? Well, the organization is sitting on the biggest vault of Blazer highlights ever known to man. Either have your video guys come up with some compilations or get some internet friends to come in and do it for you. You could do historical packages detailing each year or era, set to era-contextual music. You could also do individual packages of popular players' careers (like Clyde or Jerome). What fan could resist watching 30 or 40 of those? Such memories it would bring up.

And by the way this raises a side point. The overall Blazer PR strategy should be simple. Forget begging people to come back and forget slogans about the team being resurrected and such. What you need to do is visually, emotionally, non-verbally, instinctively draw a connection between the team's deep past (which people remember fondly) and its near future...kind of skipping over or sublimating the recent past. These videos, perhaps with added vignettes, would be an easy way to draw the connection. I've had this nagging idea about a video where disgusted Blazer fans, collectively having had enough, take a trip (probably with their children who should be the next generation of fans) down to Union Station to throw memorabilia of less-than-charming players (Bonzi, JR, Qyntel, etc.) out the "departures" door and onto the tracks. After the catharsis of the purge they all stand there looking forlornly out the door as if not knowing what to do, and the kids especially look sad. You see a tight shot of a little girl standing there, only half understanding what's going on. Then you see a huge hand come to rest on her shoulder. The camera moves up and it's Martell, and standing there are Jarrett, B-Roy, and whatever other young guys you want to include. The girl looks up at Martell, then looks at her dad. Her dad looks at Martell and then nods to her. Martell scoops her up and she laughs. All the other kids and then the adults gather around the players and they start walking out together. A line of people start applauding on one side of the station and it's all the superfans--Dancing Lady, Paint Guy, Hippie Man, Grandma Blazer, the works. Then a line of people on the other side start applauding and it's as many of the good old players as you can gather. Jerome, Buck, Clyde, Duck, Luke, Gross, Steele...you name it. One of the prominent players nods to Martell as he walks by. Martell nods back. One of the superfans does the same with one of the new fans. Then the young players and their new fans walk out the door into the sunrise and the camera moves up to reveal the sign over the entryway which says simply, "Arrivals". Set the whole thing to some music (my personal favorite would be the Brewer and Shipley classic "One Toke Over the Line" but that's probably too edgy and close to home for them to use it) and you've sent your whole message in a three minute video without saying word one.

Anyway, the point is if a schmuck like me can think of ways to use the internet and its interactive popularity to the team's advantage, the team should probably be able to also. If you give 'net users something they can play with, share, or best of all help create and contribute to, they will flock like seagulls at the fishing docks.

Got any nifty PR ideas? Share them below or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

The Old Mule, Skinner

2006-08-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

Not much in the news to talk about today that we haven't already gone over, but I suppose we haven't addressed the Skinner comments and reaction, which has now made it into the Canzano column (which is sure to have things abuzz). Frankly I didn't post about his comments when they happened because I didn't see it as that big of a deal, but apparently it is.

For those who have forgotten, the juicy quotes from the article:

>>Skinner, who was traded to the Bucks in a four-player deal July 31, sounded happy to be free from teammates in Portland who he said simply stopped trying.

"It's contagious, and it carried like wildfire throughout the whole team," Skinner said Monday. "Even players that were really dedicated and really wanted to be there, just made it seem like it was for naught"...

"It's everything," Skinner said. "From the way you just sit down at the dinner table, to how you walk, you can just tell when a player (has) not really lost their passion, but just lost their initiative to go out and try to win. And it just goes through everything. It goes through everything and completely destroys a team."

Skinner said he respected veteran teammates such as Voshon Lenard and Theo Ratliff, but didn't care for some of the team's younger players. Skinner didn't single out any specific players by name for criticism.<<

First of all, though many seemed inflamed by the comments, I agree with hyperbully that he's basically just speaking the truth as he sees it. Some have suggested that the guy's holding a grudge, but how do you hold a grudge against a team you were with for less than half a year? That this might not be the whole truth regarding the team is up for discussion, but that this is the truth as one person sees it shouldn't be. And that person is in a far better position to speak truth about such things than any of us are. I don't see where we'd have much grounds to contradict him. If there's one thing that wearies me a little about this Blazer-fan thing, it's when people want to bend over backwards to explain away any criticism of the team as if it were wholly untrue or motivated by something else besides honest assessment. I love the team, you love the team, we all love the team, but there just might be some things to criticize about a squad that lost 61 games last year.

Second, to whom is this apathy breaking news? We've been talking about the same thing here since the beginning of this blog. I guess this is part of why I thought the comments were no big deal. I rather expected a collective shrug from the fan base accompanied by, "Tell us something we DON'T know..."

Third, while I understood the point of the Canzano column this morning, he should know that the code of silence is neither peculiar to Skinner or the Blazers...it's a league-wide phenomenon. When Kobe and Shaq were putting on their daily soap opera a few years ago Kobe made a public suggestion that maybe Shaq wasn't in the best of shape. The furor the next day wasn't about Shaq's weight (which was obvious for everyone to see) but whether it was ethical for Kobe to "throw a teammate under the bus". The general consensus seemed to be no. And this was regarding an observation that was so patently obvious that any street-corner hack with half an eyeball could have told you the same thing. You're not supposed to rat out anyone on your team for anything, ever. You just don't interfere with a guy's reputation or potential paycheck and you don't risk disrupting locker-room chemistry like that. If, as Canzano suggests, silence is the problem then the whole league is in trouble. To expect a backup player just acquired in a trade with an uncertain future with the team to stand up and break that code is just silly. Who would it have helped?

Furthermore, from what little experience I have I'm convinced that the curtain between players and fans is necessary and maybe even good. These guys live in a different world than we do, both in terms of finances and occupational habits/rituals/requirements. I'm not sure we want too much of a glimpse into what the NBA life is really like on the inside. I suspect it might make it hard to follow a lot of these guys. I wouldn't want behavior like some of them exhibit at my workplace, but then again I'm not a professional athlete. Who knows if it's better or worse than any other team? At the end of the day you hope your airline pilot, your surgeon, and your therapist are wonderful people who do wonderful things, but the more important question is how well they fly the plane, fix your ticker, or listen to your issues about your mother. If the pilot and co-pilot are drinking gin and cruising fifty feet off the ground so they can play "slug bug" that's one thing, but stories of hazing and late nights at Scores probably aren't germane and you don't need (or want) to know them. If something bad-but-not-criminal has happened you hope that they get over it like everybody else does in similar circumstances and do their job. And this, by the way, is the issue Skinner appeared to have: not hazing, not people being annoying or disagreeable, but people not doing their jobs.

I guess the only major question left is to whom Skinner was referring. He specifically excluded Ratliff, Lenard and Blake. I think since Przybilla made many of the same comments and played really hard we can probably exclude him also. Khryapa also seems unlikely and Ha didn't get enough minutes to matter that much. I suppose Jack and Webster could qualify, but from outward appearances at least they both worked hard on their games. To be fair put them in the "maybe" category. That leaves a solid pool of Randolph, Miles, Dixon, Telfair, and Outlaw. Perhaps not coincidentally, all four of the remaining players have been reported in trade speculation. But then again, we could have told you that before the Skinner comments.

In the end, this is one of those things that only matters in August. It will be long forgotten by the time training camp opens. (Which is not that far away...YIPPEE!!!)

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Fun, Fun, Fun

2006-08-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

Our esteemed Prophet touched on something in the comment section of yesterday's post that made me think. In reference to watching players develop and hoping for the future, he said simply, "That's what makes this fun." My first reaction was, "That's right!" But in that same moment it struck me that it's been a while since the words "fun" and "Blazers" appeared in the same sentence.

"Fun" is something that's been lacking in the team for quite a while. As I think back, even the 1999 and 2000 runs were pretty serious/stressful because of the characters involved. The only real liberated, joyous moment I can remember is forcing that Game 7 with the Lakers after being down in the series. Other than that there was always a lot of Sheed getting tossed or Rider thumping his chest then disappearing. And those were in our GOOD years. There hasn't been a whole lot of fun at all since the century turned. I think this new squad has a chance to bring back the fun a little.

One of the core elements of having fun as a fan is seeing the players having fun out on the court together and really enjoying what they're doing. Part of the sports experience is living vicariously through the participants. It's no fun at all when it looks like your imaginary life would be a drag. This is part of the reason that the apathy that Brian Skinner referenced yesterday hurts so much. It's not just that you paid to see a sub-standard product, nor that your team is collecting losses...it ruins some of the fundamental reasons for being there in the first place: to forget your troubles for a while, to find something worthwhile to put your heart into, and to have FUN in doing so. If you went to a concert of your choice and the performers skipped half the guitar riffs and muttered their way through the music while staring vacantly off into space it'd leave you bitter (provided that's not actually the kind of music you enjoy). It would also be jarring if the band was angry, stressed, and yelling at people after every third song. The Blazers have been one or the other of those for the better part of a decade.

I'm hopeful that these new players will not only care about the game but find a way to enjoy it. So far they seem pretty enthusiastic. Because they're all coming in at once and because the veteran leadership is relatively weak they do have a chance to define their generation they way they want it. I'm realistic that it may take a while to develop a sterling win-loss record, but I'd like to see an immediate uptick in their enjoyment factor playing the game and of my enjoyment factor watching it. That's both reasonable and possible.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Fridays

2006-08-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed with Ken and TP, the "Friday Guest Spot" thing is pretty cool. I can understand why most people wouldn't take up their own blog. Coming up with...oh...a hundred and fifty posts about the Blazers in the offseason is harder than it looks. But doesn't everybody have at least one or two great thoughts in them? If you want to express yours in the Friday Guest Spot just e-mail them to me at the address below. Eventually they'll probably end up there. The topic can be anything you want (the team, being a fan, whatever) as long as it has something to do with the Blazers.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Rules of Engagement

2006-08-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Wizards have refused to match New York's offer sheet for forward Jarred Jeffries, making him a Knick. This means that maybe the rumored Miles-QRich deal won't be discussed further. (I say maybe because you never know with New York. They don't seem to have a problem duplicating positions and playing styles, as evidenced by Marbury, Crawford, and Francis on the same team.) As you know, I'm fine with that.

We're not at the point of contending yet. We're not even at the point to know when we'll be at the point of contending yet. Far from adding the final piece or two from the puzzle, we haven't even got the straight edges put together completely.

Sit down for a minute and scan the roster. What thoughts come to mind? If you're anything like me optimism and hope abound. But at the same time we don't have a lot of evidence how these players are going to turn out, let alone turn out together. Simply put, we don't know who we are yet. Look at the questions still surrounding the team even after the trades and (hopefully) improvement:

--Is Jarrett Jack a legit starter?
--Will Dickau recover from surgery and how much will he contribute?
--Can Spanish Chocolate play at all in the league?
--Is Martell a 2 or a 3 and is he capable of playing a complete game at either position?
--Will Roy's Summer League success translate into the NBA? (I'm personally pinning a lot of hopes on him but he hasn't played one game yet.)
--Will Dixon be with the team and if he has to play major minutes are we in trouble?
--Will Miles be here? What will his attitude be?
--Can Outlaw earn any minutes?
--Can Zach recover fully and produce/play like a lead player?
--Will LaFrentz play at all? If so, will his contributions be meaningful?
--Ditto Aldridge...
--Is Magloire long for the team and will his attitude be right?
--Can Joel stay out of foul trouble enough to play starter's minutes?

It's not like I had to stretch very far to come up with these questions either. These aren't exactly peripheral issues for these guys...they get brought up every time you think about them seriously. And we don't have a solid answer to any of them.

Given that it's really important to retain/regain flexibility along with talent in any move we make. In some ways we're shooting blind with every trade we pull because we're not sure what we've got, let alone what we need. Therefore I think that any player we acquire needs to fall under one of these three categories:

1. You should be able to envision his number hanging in the rafters someday. I'm not saying it has to be a lock. (We can't get that kind of guaranteed player with what we're offering.) But if you can't see any possibility that a guy could turn into a long-time, core contributor with this team, don't commit major time and money at this point. Players that fall into this category would be Jack, Webster, Aldridge, and Roy. None of them may turn out to be that good, but there's at least a chance any of them could become a lifetime Blazer because they have the skills and the attitude to do it.

OR

2. The acquisition should be a solid role-player who doesn't cost us a lot of money relative to his production. Joel Przybilla, Juan Dixon, and Steve Blake fall into this category.

OR

3. The guy's contract should be expiring or near-expiring. I would say the end of Raef LaFrentz's contract would be the outside edge for commitment if you're trading for contracts. Jamaal Magloire obviously fits this bill.

If a guy doesn't fall into any of these three categories, I'd pass. Decent but long-term expensive players, even if they contribute something we appear to need, might not help us as much right now as they'd potentially hurt us later on when we're saddled with their contracts and maybe don't need their skills or style of play. We're still playing for 2-3 years from now, and we won't know what we'll require then until a one or two of those seasons have gone by.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Just Say No

2006-08-05T02:29:00.000-07:00

Blazer vs. Blazer will return next weekend but I want to talk about the latest rumor that I didn't get a chance to talk about yesterday because I wanted to give Ken his due, namely Darius Miles to the Knicks for Quentin Richardson.

Two words: Ugh. Why???

I know we've all been fascinated and excited by the trade bonanza this off-season (myself included) and I know we're all eager to see the rear of Mr. Miles exiting stage right (myself included) but that doesn't mean that any move is a good move. I wonder if we're becoming the frat boys who, having had six or seven shots, now can't differentiate and will just drink anything that's put in front of them. Sorry, but it's time for somebody to cut us off.

The problems with Quentin Richardson:

--He has a long, semi-expensive contract, almost exactly as long and semi-expensive as Miles'. If we get him we'll be as married to him as we are to Miles now.

--He's a head case people! The next team he's on will be his fourth team in as many years. The Clippers didn't want him. The Suns didn't want him. Now the Knicks don't want him. And he supposedly filled a need for at least two of those teams. (I don't understand why the Knicks got him in the first place with all of those score-first guards already.) Does this seem eerily familiar? It should. Two years ago that was Darius Miles.

--Yes, he can shoot 3's well and yes, he's a good rebounder for a guard, but he's also a black hole and a career 40% shooter. He only shot 35% last season. Didn't we just get done with a bunch of low-percentage shooting guards? Aren't we tired of that yet? Besides, do you REALLY want to see this guy and Zach on the floor at the same time? I can already hear the cries. "Why don't we ever move the ball? Why can't [insert young player here] score? Why don't the guys listen to Nate?"

Everybody remembers the huge 3-point shooting game he put up on us when he was in Phoenix, but that was one game in, what, around 415 for him now? If he did that all the time he would never have been on the market in the first place. He'll put up that number of shots every game if you let him, but they ain't going in like that every game. Which means if we get him you better get used to a lot of, "Quentin for three...miss! Duncan rebounds, outlet to Parker, to Bowen...JAM with authority!"

--He's listed as a guard/forward, but that's mostly because New York already has 96 guards and forward is where they stuck him. He's undersized for a small forward and his rebounding advantage goes bye-bye there. He's really a 2-guard. But we have Webster and Roy both wanting some minutes at that position, plus Webster maybe needing some minutes at the 3 (if you do believe in Richardson as a small forward). Roy needs to handle the ball some to be effective and Webster is supposed to be our main outside shooter, both of which would be inhibited by playing Q-Rich many minutes.

In short, this seems a lot like trading a player who's pretty disruptive off the court and sort of disruptive on it for a player who's pretty disruptive on the court and sort of disruptive off it, with no cap relief included and no improved prospects of making another deal down the road. That's not a good idea.

The Whitsitt era should have taught us that not all trades are created equal. Yes, we want to get rid of Darius, but putting ourselves in a nearly identical situation in doing so doesn't help anything. I'd avoid this deal like the plague.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Friday Guest Spot (Part Deux)

2006-08-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ken writes the following tongue-in-cheek take on living in what he calls a "mixed marriage".

----------------------------------------

I don’t normally make this known, but I live in a “mixed marriage”. I’m not talking about me being a typical geek, aging white boy while my wife is a hot Asian babe, though both things are true. No, I’m talking about me being a loyal Trailblazers fan and my wife being an ardent (gasp) Kings supporter. Perhaps some explanation is in order. After all, she tries to explain me all the time to her friends, now it’s my turn.

I met my wife more than a decade and a half ago in Yuba City, California. I was working for a large company out of Portland for a few months and living in the motel where she worked. When I returned home, she came with me. (There is no truth whatsoever to the rumor she was bound and gagged during the trip and I wish she would quit spreading that around.)

At that time she was not a basketball fan. That soon changed, however, as Buck and Jerome and Clyde and Terry became household names. A couple years later we moved to Reno, NV and things began to change. I began to notice subtle little signs, like the Vlade Divac bobble head doll on the mantle and her sudden affinity for “White Chocolate”. I suppose parts of it were understandable, we were both admirers of Rick Adelman and, living in Reno, you get a large dose of Kings programming, but still it was tough when… well, one day the Blazers were playing the Kings and I suddenly realized we were arguing different sides of a call.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I screamed, rather politely, I thought. “The Kings, whose side are you on?” She answered. This is the thanks I get for introducing her to the game.

Then, horror of horrors, we actually lived in Sacramento for a year. It was a very good year for the Kings, however, and even I found myself rooting for them now and again (but only as a second choice, I swear!) We’ve since moved out of that insane atmosphere and having been out of it for almost three years now, I have returned to my sanity and, once again, only root for the Trailblazers. My wife, alas, is seemingly beyond repair. Late last season it came to a head.

“Better get down here, the Blazers game is on!”

“We’re watching the Kings tonight.” She answered.

“Why would we do that?”

“Because they are playing the Lakers and they are going to crush them.”

Alright! Now there’s something we can agree on.

Perhaps you, or someone you know, are/is caught in a mixed marriage like mine. Here are a few tips for coping (assuming for the moment that divorce is not an option).

1: Remember the good things you share. Basketball is, after all, only three fourths to seven eighths of life.

2: There was a good reason the words “For better or for worse” were written into your wedding vows and this is a good time to remember this.

3: Always try to find common ground such as your loathing of the Lakers and the incompetence of the refs. If that fails, and it rarely does, remember there are good people like Adelman and Petrie in almost every organization.

4: Separate TVs is not a bad idea. Separate houses are recommended only in extreme cases. For instance: your spouse is a Lakers fan.

5: Above all else, remember it’s only a game. Sometimes you have to repeat that to yourself over and over. It’s generally considered bad form to say it through clenched teeth.

Ken Fuller

-----------------------------------------

Do you live in a "mixed marriage" or are a child/parent/friend/significant other of a fan of a different team (or a non-sports fan)? What have you had to do to convince them of the sanity of your Blazer passion (or to join in it)? Any interesting stories? Share them below or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Jaynes Quote

2006-08-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

You've probably already read this quote from Dwight Jaynes:

>>It’s amusing that Patterson and the people at Vulcan have been trying to sell us on this basketball-as-a-business concept. The idea that Allen has to keep an eye on the bottom line and run this team as a business.

But that’s not happening here. What kind of a business move was this? His credibility with the NBA, with potential buyers and with his landlord have dipped lower than the president’s approval rating.

And Allen is not saying what his motivations and plans are. We don’t know what’s going on. In the absence of his excuse we’re forced to dream up our own rationale for some very weird and erratic behavior. Draw your own conclusions, but I’d go with a combination of eccentricity, immaturity and nuttiness. Or maybe just wealthy arrogance.

And let me ask you this: Would you want to do business with him? Do you feel, as a fan, you could trust him with your heart or your money?

I do not see, at this point, how you could.<<

He makes a good point. Part of the fallout from this is that if and when the team is ever offered for sale again mostly you're going to hear the sounds of crickets.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

O-Live Says Allen Not Selling

2006-08-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

UPDATED AS THE DAY GOES BY

Oregonlive.com has gone live with the news that Paul Allen is not selling the team at this point. We discussed the situation extensively last month and there's no need to rehash it now. At least we know the options are narrowed somewhat. To my mind this is a middle of the road outcome, not as bad as selling to a purchaser obviously intent on moving the team but not as good as true local ownership. We do not know, and Allen will not say, what his intentions are until and unless he buys back the Rose Garden or attempts to declare bankruptcy to get out of the lease. One of those alone will be the proof. If I had to guess I'd say this falls farther towards the good side of the continuum but as long as the Garden and the team remain separate entities it's bad for us.

It will be interesting to hear PAM's public reaction. That might tell us something.

I said at the Vegas Summer League that Pritchard didn't look or act like someone who thought he was going anywhere. Apparently that perception was accurate. Expect him to be named to some kind of official job title soon. Whether that's GM, assistant GM, Vice President of Basketball Operations, or whatever we'll just have to see.

Edit: I'll also be interested to see the official Blazer reaction. There has been none so far. Let's face it, you know Canzano didn't get the scoop from the Blazers themselves. If this had been the kind of unadulterated, splashy-PR good news fans hope for it would have been trumpeted all over the Blazer webpage and written about in the Mike Barrett blog instead of appearing first under Canzano's byline. Maybe we're still headed there, but we're not there yet. Likely the official team response will be non-committal jargon, "Paul Allen remains committed to owning the team, admires the passion of the Portland fans, and would like to see a positive outcome to this situation. Blah...blah...blah." It will be interesting to see if they even mention buying the facility as a possibility.

Second Edit: Helen Jung now has the official statements from Vulcan and PAM. The animosity is thinly veiled, where it's veiled at all.

From Vulcan: "No single entity has invested more over the years than Vulcan has in theTrail Blazers - and in that sense, no single entity has more at stake in an outcome that enhances the future prospects of the Trail Blazers as a franchise than we do. We will continue to explore ways to address the broken economic model under which the franchise now operates, while working to ensure the viability of the Trail Blazers as a team and a business."

From PAM: "In June, Portland Arena Management LLC (“PAM”) and Paul Allen began a process to jointly market the Trail Blazers and the Rose Garden arena... As a result of the process, multiple bids were received, a number of which were in a range which PAM found acceptable, and PAM confirmed that it wanted the sale process to continue to pursue negotiations with certain of the bidders. However, Mr. Allen has advised PAM that he does not wish to pursue a sale of the team at this time, and the sale process has been terminated."

Looks like we're back to square one...

Last edit: I've seen some speculation that this was all a ploy by Allen...that the team was marked "for sale" in order to determine a fair market value for purposes of Vulcan and PAM reaching an agreement. Even if the tersely-worded statements didn't cast doubt on that assertion, wouldn't that be a rather dumb move on Allen's part? Consider that his bargaining points were that the team was losing money, that nobody was going to buy, and that PAM should cut bait and sell to him at a reasonable price or else he'd be forced to do something drastic. To make that argument work, you'd need to have no valid offers, not a bunch of them. Worse, the Sonics sold at $350 million (and purportedly had a HIGHER offer which they turned down) and they have a broken-down arena and the worst lease agreement in the league (according to David Stern anyway). Last I heard the ballpark asking price for the Blazers was $300 million, but when the Sonics news broke wouldn't both parties assume that the Blazers, in a better situation when both arena and team are controlled by the same entity, would be worth more? Soliciting bidders would only confirm that. If this really was a scheme to determine market value, it looks like Allen only drove the price higher, which was both predictable and colossally stupid. Help me out here...I'm no expert. Is there something I'm missing?

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Marco's Question

2006-08-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

I got a nice e-mail from a fellow named Marco regarding yesterday's post about how much we might improve. He had some great thoughts about our young talent but ended with a sincere question that can be summarized as, "Why don't you think we'll win more this year? Couldn't we make a playoff run?"

My honest answer is that this is sports and anything can happen, but I see the odds as immeasurably long. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if we did, but I'm prepared for substantially less.

If you're talking about an actual run at a playoff seed, we're simply caught in a numbers game. Dallas, Denver, San Antonio, Phoenix, Sacramento, the Clippers, the Lakers, and Memphis all made the playoffs last year. The first six aren't going anywhere. Memphis may slip a little losing Battier and being unsure of Stoudamire, but they'd still have to fall a long ways and we'd have to climb just as much for us to pass them. And whatever you think of the Lakers, Kobe Bryant will carry that team to some wins. That's eight teams that are all but locks to be better than we are and there are only eight playoff seeds. Even if we were the best of the rest we don't make the postseason this year. And I have doubts about us even earning that label.

It takes two things to win consistently in this league: talent and stability. Most of the arguments you hear for us being better this year center around talent, and rightfully so. I think we are improving in that area. But in doing so we are sacrificing short-term stability.

How important is stability? Look what happens with injuries. The team doesn’t just lose talent, but continuity. How many times have you heard said of a player coming off an injury, "It's going to take a while to work this guy back in?" How many times does a team missing its superstar win a few in his absence but then look really ragged and lose his first game back? Players are not automatically interchangeable, no matter how talented. It's no accident that the worst teams in the league often use the most different starting lineups during the season. Part of that is lack of talent, but the converse is also true. Teams that don't develop a rhythm don't win.

There are also plenty of positive examples of the importance of consistency. What makes a superstar a superstar? It's not just talent. A lot of players have that. It's talent combined with the ability to produce consistently. Clyde Drexler gave you 20, 6, and 5 like clockwork. He wasn't spiking 30 and then giving you 5 the next night. That's what made him great. You could depend on him, build your team and its style of play around him. That's why those early 90's teams didn't just win, they ALWAYS won. They knew they were going to win the moment they entered the gym. This was part of the failing of the late-90's Whitsitt teams. They were massively talented, maybe more so than any of their contemporaries. But you remember players complaining that every year we got 3-4 new players and it took months to assimilate them, if it happened at all. There was no steadiness, no continuity, nothing to build around other than we dominated on paper.

Stability is a key to winning. And right now, despite all of the positive moves and good, young talent, we just don't have it.

Probably the toughest thing for a young player to learn is how to fit into the flow of the game--to make others better and to be made better by others in such a way that leads to team success. It's not that they're slow. The last thing a new person in any venture learns is how to merge into the environment. Your first day on the job you were worried about what you were doing. You barely noticed anybody else. New poker players play their own cards, not the cards of others. It's no different for these kids. I expect Jack and Roy, having four years of college experience (and one year of NBA duty in Jack's case) will have a marginally easier time than most, but neither one of them has had the responsibility they're going to get this year. Webster and Outlaw are obviously still in the early phases of their adjustment and Rodriguez and Aldridge haven't even begun it yet. If you go down that list, that's nearly every player people are excited about making a difference. And they will, just not yet, because they don’t even know who they are as individual players, let alone how to make a difference on a winning team in this league.

The fact that they'll eventually get it down doesn't change the steepness of the immediate learning curve. Even the simple things will take time. For instance, between being brand new to the league and our style of play last year, do you realize that for the most part none of our guards besides Dickau and Dixon have ever thrown an entry pass into the post to an NBA center? Theo didn't post and Joel and Ha got waved off every time they tried. Even Zach didn't post much last year and the entry passes they did make to him looked like differential calculus to these guys. This is a basic, rote move that veteran guards could do in their sleep. They'll be learning it on the job. They'll have to adjust to Magloire and maybe a stronger Zach whose games demand such. (If those young guys look off Magloire like they looked off last year's centers he's going to shove a fist down their throat in practice.) And that's just the simple stuff!

This is exactly why Nate is always saying you need veterans to win. Not because the veterans are all that much more talented than young guys, but because they know how to play, both as individuals and in the team framework, consistently enough to win.

Take a long, honest look at where we are right now. We got less stable at the point by trading Blake and promoting Jack. (Again, maybe more talented but less stable.) Plus Dickau is injured and Spanish Chocolate is young and was considered a loose cannon even in a lower league. We're going to get less stable at shooting guard if we fade away from or trade Dixon and rely on Martell and B-Roy. (And Dixon was hardly a paragon of consistency himself.) We're less stable at backup small forward with Outlaw in place of Khryapa. Our starting forwards remain the same but they are also coming off mercurial seasons and are not known for providing stability. Our backup power fowards are both new to the team and one is new to the league. The only position with greater stability is center with the re-signing of Joel and the acquisition of the veteran Magloire who, while new, can't help but be more steady and capable than Theo turned out to be last year. That's two positions in turmoil, two positions shaky, and one slightly improved, albeit by a brand new guy. It's going to take a while to sort that all out.

The point is, we did get more talented, and we are going in the right direction, but the very players we cite as examples are also the players who will, in the short term, lack the stability needed to provide sustained winning either because they're young or because they're new. I doubt we'll even begin to see thing settle down until at least February and I wouldn't be surprised if it took a whole season. That's why I think any chance of a playoff run, or even anything close, would be a miracle.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

New and Improved?

2006-08-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

Let's assume, as per yesterday's post, that barring a miracle we're done trading for the summer, save a minor roster spot addition or perhaps a Dixon trade. Have we gotten better? If so, how much?

At the end of last season the clear problem areas for the team were:

--too short and slow/unathletic overall
--stagnant offense...not a lot of guys who move without the ball or who can score without holding it for five seconds first
--sporadic commitment to defense, often in transition
--poor defensive rebounding
--not enough players with passing skills
--overall lack of basketball IQ
--not enough toughness/meanness
--lack of future cap space to make any significant changes

Let's look at how they've been addressed (if at all).

Too Short and Slow and Unathletic
The first part, at least, is the biggest gain we've made in the offseason. Just starting Jack at the point gives us an inch over Blake and several inches over Telfair. If Roy plays any point he's even taller. Both Roy and Webster tower over Juan Dixon at the 2. Small forward remains essentially the same but LaFrentz and Magloire give us taller options at power forward. While technically we lost some height at center with the departure of Ha and Ratliff it shouldn't matter too much, as both replacements have size. Frankly it will be a relief not to have opposing guards just rise and gun it over us whenever they choose.

As far as the slow/athletic issue, we've made more modest gains. Roy has tricky quickness in every direction. Jack and Webster aren't speed demons but we'll be seeing more of Outlaw and less of Khryapa at the 3, which helps (in this area anyway). Magloire is not fast, but has a good body. I'm not sure we'll be outrunning a lot of teams, but hopefully we won't get outmuscled quite so consistently.

Stagnant Offense
I'm not sure we made any gains here. Roy would be the best hope, but it'll be a while before he has a major impact. Jack is still learning how to play the point, which doesn't help. Magloire likes to score one-on-one. And, of course, the Zach issue still remains. It'll be interesting to see what kind of offensive sets Nate plans and whether the guys actually follow them.

Sporadic Defense, Especially Transition
This is where I have my greatest hopes...eventually. Every player we acquired this off-season who's not a backup point guard has defensive skills. That's a fantastic shift in emphasis. Someday Roy, Aldridge, and Jack are going to provide a very nice defensive lineup. They're also effort guys, which should help in transition. It might not show up this year, but down the line we'll be fine.

Poor Defensive Rebounding
Magloire is the great hope here. The secondary hope is that the backcourt starts defending better, allowing Joel to remain in position for boards. I'd say we got marginally better, depending on how much floor time Jamaal actually sees and how long he's with the team.

Not Enough Players With Passing Skills
Again Roy provides a partial answer...especially upgrading from Dixon. If you look at the guys who will actually be playing major minutes, however, it's still a big area of concern. Our volume scorers are just not good passers. They don't even see the floor beyond the bucket. I think we have some good potential in the backcourt but the reality is the guys who will be touching the ball most also won't move it.

Overall Lack of Basketball IQ
Still a concern. Roy has it, but we still have a long way to go with everybody else, mostly because half the team is young.

Not Enough Toughness/Meanness
If Magloire stays then he'll help address that, but we still have far more finesse/skill guys than legit roughnecks.

Lack of Future Cap Space
With the acquisition of LaFrentz this got worse, not better. We still won't have much wiggle room for the next couple years unless a major move is made.

Obviously it's impossible to remake a team entirely in a couple months. Seriously addressing three of eight problem areas and partially addressing three others is a pretty good start though. I think some optimism is warranted. As I read around the web, however, I see some people already going overboard in their predictions. As somebody said in the O-Live forum yesterday, seven trades is exciting, but exciting does not automatically equal better. The core of our frontcourt is essentially unchanged, save for the addition of Magloire. The backcourt has been revolutionized, but those guys are young. Webster and Jack are just babies, Roy and Rodriguez are younger than that, and Travis Outlaw has this weird "dog year" thing going where it takes him seven years for one year of on-court maturing. That means there's going to be a TON of inconsistency this year as the kids learn. You're relying big time on Zach and Darius in the frontcourt (and they didn't do anything last year to make you rejoice over that) and in the backcourt your steadiest players are likely to be Dan Dickau and Juan Dixon. That doesn't smell like a playoff team to me, or even close. We've taken good steps, but they're still baby steps at this point. We can certainly lay claim to having a mostly new team. Improved may still have to wait a little.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Magloire Analysis

2006-08-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

Great look at the newest Blazer by Henry Abbott. Check it out.

--Dave

Trades, Canzano, and a Poll

2006-08-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

After the spate of trades everybody is wondering what's next for the team. Are we done for the summer? My guess is probably we are, at least in a practical sense if not a philosophical one. I think they'd love to move Darius Miles and pick up a stopgap small forward--in fact as I said a couple months ago I hope they'd be all over themselves to move a contract or two for Jalen Rose, Grant Hill, or Eddie Jones--but it's not likely. I agree with John Canzano that any move before the off-season will be of the Juan Dixon variety, which still could net us a minor piece but won't address our main issues. This begs the question asked a couple times in the comments section of yesterday's post, "How tradeable are Randolph and Miles?"

Regarding Darius, Canzano printed this gem in his blog yesterday:

>>You're not going to like to hear this, but I just don't think Portland is capable of moving Miles at this point. There's something going on behind the scenes with Miles that fans aren't seeing here. The market does not lie.<<

The assertion is accurate. In fact it probably doesn't go far enough. Technically speaking the market didn't lie two years ago when there were no real offers for Darius' services as a restricted free agent. The market also doesn't lie about his trade history. In July, 2002 he was worth a then-sparkling Andre Miller. In January, 2004 he was only worth Jeff McInnis and Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje. I doubt that the decline in his perceived value has stopped.

(Side note: This might also be a caution to those of us banking on the value of Jamaal Magloire. I am not in any way suggesting he's Darius, but he went from being worth Desmond Mason and a 1st-rounder to being worth Blake, Skinner, and Ha in the space of one year. That means Milwaukee didn't get any better offers for him than that. His value on the open market right now is probably due to his expiring contract as much as anything.)

At this point it doesn't surprise me that Darius is virtually untradeable on his own. With $34 million left on a contract that runs through 2010, nobody is going to touch him without a sweetener. You can never say never--after all Raef LaFrentz has more money than that left on his contract and far less production potential and HE got traded--but if you're holding your breath you'd better be David Blaine. Personally I've decided to exhale for now.

Canzano also wrote yesterday's famous article suggesting we trade Zach and spare change to Philadelphia for AI. Plenty has been written in response over the last 24 hours. Frankly I'm less curious about the implications of such a deal (which I don't think would be good for us for various reasons) than if it's even possible in the first place. I have been hoping all along that, despite the enormous contract values, the sweetener for any Darius deal might be Zach. It seems to make sense, as he's the most talented (veteran) guy on the team. But how much of a sweetener is he really? Zach is certainly more productive than Darius and most think he's not quite as much of a torpedo to the team (though I'd argue with that), but he also gets paid twice as much. He's owed $73 million over the next five years. That kind of contract puts a large burden of proof on its recipient when it comes to trades.

A few months ago I made an assertion that Zach was no better than the 9th-best power forward in the league. Since potential trades aren't limited to just power forwards, I thought it might be useful to see where he ranks among all players. Here's the list of people who are clearly more productive and/or more valuable on the trade market than Z-Bo. Admittedly this is somewhat subjective and depends on your need, but in general I tried to set the bar very high to make this list, only including people whom I feel there would be little or no argument about. Another way to frame it would be to say that this is a list of people who, if you called their team and asked about trading them for Zach straight up, you'd almost certainly get laughed off the phone.

Paul Pierce
Emeka Okafor
Ben Wallace
LeBron James
Dirk Nowitzki
Carmello Anthony
Rip Hamilton
Chauncey Billups
Jason Richardson
Tracy McGrady
Yao Ming
Jermaine O'Neal
Peja Stojakovic
Elton Brand
Kobe Bryant
Pau Gasol
Shaquille O'Neal
Dwyane Wade
Michael Redd
Andrew Bogut
Kevin Garnett
Vince Carter
Chris Paul
Dwight Howard
Allen Iverson
Steve Nash
Shawn Marion
Amare Stoudemire
Mike Bibby
Tony Parker
Tim Duncan
Ray Allen
Chris Bosh
Andrei Kirilenko
Gilbert Arenas

In addition you could argue for or against these players being on the list:

Joe Johnson
Rasheed Wallace
Tayshaun Prince
Baron Davis
Ron Artest
Corey Magette
Richard Jefferson
Jason Kidd
David West
Manu Ginobili
Rashard Lewis
Chris Wilcox
Mike James
Mehmet Okur
Antawn Jamison

That's 35 people on the "Certainly More Valuable Than Zach" list and 15 more who get Honorable Mention. That means even giving him the benefit of the doubt, Zach is somewhere between the 36th and 51st most valuable/talented guy in the league overall. This would put him in the top 8-12% of the league, which looks pretty attractive. The problem is he ranks 11th on this list in terms of amount owed on his contract and right around there when measured against the league as a whole. That puts him squarely in the top 3% in the NBA in terms of guaranteed dollars going into his pocket. Clearly his production is not matching his contract or even coming close. At the very least you'd have to say that it would take a special situation for somebody to take Zach. Either they'd have to have a specific need for his game and believe in him a lot or they'd have to not care about money at all.

Nobody is completely untradeable, but we certainly face some hurdles if we want to move either of these guys...especially if we don't want to take poison contracts or give up one of our youngsters in return. When I look at the numbers, I seriously doubt either will be traded until we've seen them play again. I also think that if and when the best-case scenario comes about and EITHER of these guys start doing well we need to avoid falling in love with their numbers and just pull the trigger if someone will take them off our hands.

Poll Question of the Day: Who is more untradeable at this point, Zach or Darius? Why?

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Wonderful Recap

2006-07-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, Jason Quick and Mike Tokito have posted a great summary of Blazer movement since the beginning of last season. In the excitement over moves it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, forgetting how different the team looked just months ago. The beat writers list every trade as they point out that ten members of our roster are no longer with us.

If you scroll through this blog's archives somewhere buried in all the posts is a warning not to get too attached to our players because historically few members of sub-20-win teams survive the rebuild. It appears the Blazers are accelerating that process.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

My Blazer Pick

2006-07-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of fantastic responses to the weekend question of which historical Blazer you'd pick to add to this team. The suggestions were:

Arvydas Sabonis
Buck Willaims
Maurice Lucas
Terry Porter
Fat Lever
Jerome Kersey
Shawn Kemp (but not when he was a Blazer, so I don't think this counts)
Scottie Pippen
Kiki Vandeweghe
Larry Steele

You can keep the discussion going, but I thought I'd weigh in with my pick. The criteria were that a player can only be taken after the first time they put on a Blazer uniform, it was to help this year's team, and no Clyde or Bill. I must admit I was sorely tempted to take a point guard or a small forward, and thus Porter, Lever, Vandeweghe, and Kersey were all on my short list. But in the end I decided to trust in our young guys. I wanted someone who would contribute to the games of Jack, Webster, and Roy and make it easy for them to be out on the court. I couldn't bring myself to pick a power forward because this question didn't give me the magic power to trade Zach. That's why in the end I settled with Sabonis...even the older, wearing down version. He was much more spry in his first couple seasons here than the old guy people remember seeing last. He can play on the high post and perimeter on offense, which leaves tons of room for Zach to operate down low. It also draws a man out to guard his long-range shot. If Darius could learn to quick cut when Sabas is holding the ball at the top of the key, Miles could dunk all day long. Sabonis would also be an easy outlet for the guards on offense and would get them the ball back in positions where they could score. He's smart enough to make those kids look better. He also sets picks when needed. On defense he's a nice companion to Joel at the 5-spot. He takes up a lot of space, which is something that's still lacking on this team despite all Joel's effort and shot blocking ability. He shows well and gets back on the pick and roll despite his huge size. Some will complain about him not being able to get up and down the court but I'd argue Sabonis would help our running game better than any big man we currently have. The first step to fast-breaking is rebounding and outletting the ball. You could be pretty sure that Sabonis was going to get rebounds that came near him. Nobody got around that wide body to beat him out. And nobody since Walton was better at getting the ball out after rebounding. He sometimes did it with his back to the play. It wouldn't matter if he didn't make it back for the dunk finish. Darius and Zach and the guards could do that. A first-year-Blazer Sabas would be good for at least 15 and 9 on this team and he'd probably up everybody else's scoring average by a couple of points to boot. For his brains, his unique size, and his skills, he'd be my guy to add to this year's team.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

More Trade

2006-07-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

News is coming out today making the Magloire trade official. There's great conversation about it all over the place. A few things I've noticed that have either been subjects of controversy or forgotten altogether:

--Several people are wondering what positions Magloire can play. He's always been a center and pretty much always been the best center on whatever team he's been on since he's matured. (That doesn't mean he's a savior. He has, after all, been traded several times. If he were all-world that wouldn't have happened.) I think he could also spend some minutes at power forward if needed. Neither Joel nor Raef take up a lot of space in the low post on offense, which clears the way for Jamaal. His quickness could be a liability guarding skinny, quick power forwards (you won't see him on Shawn Marion, for instance) but in cases like Tim Duncan I don't see any problem. Some have mentioned offensive concerns, which is legitimate, but I don't see it as horribly different from what Chicago is trying to do playing Ben Wallace and P.J. Brown together. They have a ton of scorers at the small positions, which is basically how we're evolving. Chicago is a couple years ahead of us in experience and talent development so it will likely work better for them than us. But I can still see it as a backup plan.

--One of the biggest questions is one I raised in the weekend post, namely where Magloire fits in terms of the hierarchy of big guys. Specifically I've noticed what to my mind is an overvaluing of Raef LaFrentz, which is common just after a trade. Forgetting contracts, leadership, and all the peripheral stuff, here is where I see our fours and fives ranking in terms of talent, skills, and production:

Before the Trade
Zach Randolph
Joel Przybilla
Brian Skinner and Raef LaFrentz (tie)
Lamarcus Aldridge (hasn't played yet)
Ha Seung-Jin

After the Trade
Zach Randolph
Jamaal Magloire
Joel Przybilla
Raef LaFrentz
Lamarcus Aldridge (hasn't played yet)

Admittedly the gap is large between Zach and everybody else in both cases. There's also another significant talent gap after Joel in both lists.

Whether you prefer Skinner or LaFrentz in the pre-trade list is largely a matter of whether you like more points, rebounds, and big-body post play or more blocks and an outside shot. Either way they're way down the chart. How much you value Skinner is about how you should see LaFrentz's value. (Which actually ends up being much worse because Raef's contract is downright awful.) In the second list the gap between Magloire and Przybilla is fairly small, but Jamaal has more experience and a little more well-rounded game so I gave the edge to him despite Joel's astonishing blocked shot numbers.

Anyway, the point is that Raef isn't that high in either list and actually ends up further down the depth chart after the trade than he was before. And if you're hoping Aldridge will develop into even a middle-of-the-road contributor, that puts Raef dead last.

--We shouldn't forget in the ensuing media hubbub that AM 1080's Ian Furness broke this story (in the Portland market at least). Furness was taking a lot of flak on draft night for his outspoken criticism of the team, some of which at least he must have had substantiation for from league sources. Apparently his sources are good at least in some respects. I wonder if this will rehabilitate him in the eyes of the fans. And don't forget that the Blazers targeted 1080 pretty hard in their post-draft Courtside show...Furness being the one who publicly talked about Darius Miles trade rumors that the team "debunked" that night. I found it funny that the Blazers' official response to the Magloire story over the weekend was "We don't comment on trade rumors". Ummmm...yes you do. So far we've learned if the rumor is false the Blazers will go public and castigate the people who mentioned it. If it's true they'll say "No comment".

If the team really wants to keep the cards to their vest they probably need a better poker face...

Edit: Eric Marentette is reporting that Steve Patterson will be sitting down with the guys at 1080 from 3 to 4 this afternoon. That is good to hear.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Trade Flash

2006-07-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

I'm breaking into the weekend festivities because the Racine, Wisconsin-based Journaltimes.com. is reporting that the Blazers and Bucks have agreed to a deal sending Steve Blake, Brian Skinner, and Ha Seung-Jin to Milwaukee for Jamaal Magloire. Of course nothing is official before it's signed, but usually when something is reported to this level it goes through.

Magloire averaged 9.2 points and 9.5 rebounds in just over 30 minutes of play last year. He's around a 47% shooter, which is average for a big man. I haven't seen him play as much as I'd like, but I remember him as fiery and pretty devastating when he gets going.

Of concern is this quote from the Journal-Times (via hoopshype):

"Magloire became especially disgruntled with [Bucks coach Terry] Stotts during a five-game stretch in late March, when Magloire never played more than 22 minutes a game...Despite being the Bucks' best rebounder and interior defender, and going against a tall Detroit frontline, Stotts never played the 6-foot-11 Magloire more than 29 minutes in any of the five first-round playoff games against the Pistons."

A change in scenery often fixes attitudes, at least temporarily. Still one wonders if Magloire will be happy playing behind Joel (or if Joel will be happy if he gets benched right after signing with us). Magloire is in a contract year, which guarantees a solid contribution but also means he'll want to be on the floor a lot. Magloire isn't a runner either, so this could show a further commitment to the halfcourt game.

I think the trade does the following for the Blazers:

1. Shores up the center position, which was still a little thin. (I hope Raef wasn't hoping to play much this year though.) It also gives us a little scoring punch in the middle.
2. Provides more rebounding.
3. Lumps three separate contracts (Blake and Ha's both minor and expiring and Skinner's two years at $5.5 million) into a one-year, $8 million deal, providing slightly more flexibility next season.
4. Consolidates the roster, leaving spaces open as management prefers.
5. Makes it easier to make another move, either trading a frontcourt player and keeping Magloire or using Magloire's expiring contract as bait to go along with a bad contract. Because of roster limits it's easier to throw in one player than three. We'll also now have room to take back multiple players for a single one.

I don't know that Magloire is a long-term answer, but he's big, skilled, and it doesn't cost us anything to try him out for a year.

On the other end we don't lose too much we weren't parting with anyway. It feels like management has all but given up on Ha. I think they like Skinner but they have too many PFs already and his picking up the last year option on his contract next season was going to be more of an annoyance than a boon to them. I believe they will be sorry to see Blake go, but I also think they were prepared to watch him walk at the end of the season anyway. They likely would have made him a modest offer to stay, but he likely wouldn't have accepted it.

I know it's been batted around in the O-Live forum, but since it appears to be becoming more real, if you'd like to continue the discussion here you're more than welcome.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer vs. Blazer (vs. Blazer vs. Blazer) VI

2006-07-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

A doozy this weekend. We'll leave it up a little longer to make sure everyone sees it.

Other than Clyde Drexler and Bill Walton, if you could rejuvenate one Blazer from any time in history and bring him back on this year's team, who would you choose and why?

I'll give my answer on Monday.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Friday Guest Spot

2006-07-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

TP43 wrote last week asking for some discussion on a topic I know almost nothing about...Blazer radio commentary. I've been out of the broadcast area for a decade so you can count the number of times I've heard Brian Wheeler on one hand and the number of times I've heard Antonio Harvey work on zero. So I've asked TP to step in with a Friday Guest Column on the topic, which might become a semi-regular feature around here if enough people want to submit opinions/questions. Here's TP:

----------------------------------------------------
In Need of Analysis

With the addition of Nate and the apparent ascension of Pritchard, (still not a Patterson guy) you get the feeling the front office is making progress and rounding into form. The roster is beginning to be populated by hardworking, well behaved, character guys--with two notable exceptions--so you feel like that area is on the right track. There is a third area, the broadcast team, that plays a key role in the fan experience. The rest of the broadcast team is pretty good with Wheels & Rice and I've grown to appreciate Barrett more than I thought I would but the odd man out in my mind is Antonio Harvey. As a person, I like Antonio well enough but frankly he sometimes strikes me as a fill in that didn't quite pan out due to a lack of preparation, ability to articulate, provide insight to what goes on behind the scenes, or nuances in-game.

To me, a radio color guy should be a former long-term Blazer player or coach, someone who "gets" Portland, well spoken, a straight shooter who isn't afraid to criticize if warranted, and is very strong in either of these two areas: the ability to add insight to the inner workings of the team and what it is trying to get done out on the floor in the mold of a Hubie Brown, or be loaded with anecdotes and player insights like a Mychal Thompson type. Not saying these two are my favorites, just handy examples of the general types of broadcasters that seem to add the most.

What about someone like Jimmy Lynam? He spent some time here in Portland, he's very well spoken, he seems to be a stand up guy who will tell it like it is, he's got the obvious X's & O's credentials, and with his long tenure in the NBA he's got a million stories to tell.

What's your opinion of Antonio Harvey, who would you replace him with if he needs to go, and why the new selection?

TP43

-------------------------------------------------------

I would add to that...who is/was your favorite Blazer radio analyst of all time? (Keep in mind that Schonely and Wheels are play-by-play guys.)

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Trade Possibilities

2006-07-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

An astute reader named Marc picked up on the Zach/Darius trade question the other day and took it a little further, offering this:

>>I would welcome exploring the question of what teams might have some interest in either player. Forget, for the moment, what we might get back. – Anything of value would just be a bonus – the pressing issue is to identify teams for whom Zack or Darius might prove to be assets.

>>To begin to answer this question, I think you have to identify the kinds of teams that might have a use for our guys. My thought is they would have to be low playoff teams searching for a way to improve their chances. [I doubt that either great teams or teams in need of a massive overhaul would be inclined to take a chance on talented but flawed and overpaid players]. Also tempted might be teams with acknowledged stars who could presumably establish control over our guys in a way that apparently no coach can. Finally, some teams which may meet the foregoing criteria would not be suitable either because of the solid forwards they presently have (such as Sacramento) or because of their history with Darius (such as Cleveland).<<

I'm more or less on board with that analysis, though I do think there are a couple teams who do not meet those exact criteria who might be interested for various reasons, such as New York or Golden State. But to keep it simple I'm going to simply re-print the list of teams Marc suggested, adding in my own thoughts after each.

As possible suitors for Zach Marc suggests:

Denver
The most talked about possibility is Kenyon Martin. He brings different qualities than Zach but just as many questions and his contract is just as long and almost as high. For that reason I don't think we make that trade. A big part of the reason for trading Zach is that you just can't give a contract that big to a questionable guy.

Technically another possibility after December would be Zach for Nene and Najera. Denver would have to find somewhere else to drop Martin in the process. Nene's contract is significant, but if you liked him enough (and they didn't) it could be a deal at some point down the line. But I'd guess the chances of any Zach trade with Denver to be low.

New Jersey
The only guys that qualify salary-wise are Kidd, Carter, and Jefferson. The first two won't enter the realm of possibility for either side. I think Jersey would view trading Jefferson for Zach as a lateral move at best. We might like it if we were sure Aldridge would pan out at PF and we could draft another center. I think this deal would be even less likely than a Denver trade. The Nets just don't have the disposable salaries.

Houston
A package of Juwon Howard, Bob Sura, and Dikembe Mutumbo would work in a trade for Zach. We'd have to cut one if not both of the latter. Howard's contract runs three more years (assuming he'll pick up his option) at about half Zach's. His production is a little more than half Zach's but nothing to write home about. Essentially we'd be getting about 50% of the player for about 50% of the price for the next three seasons then cap freedom after that. In bald terms it would be just dumping Zach though, and I think Portland likes him more than that. Only if he pulled something awful would we consider doing this.

Philadelphia
This actually is the most intriguing of the possibilities. Randolph and Skinner match salary-wise with Chris Webber. The Sixers have been disenchanted with him despite his production and he's also getting old. I don't know how much Cheeks liked Randolph but Zach did have his best years under him. Zach would also be paired with an established superstar, which may ease some of Philly's concerns about him. We'd be renting Webber and his 20/10 stats for two years as Lamarcus grew. We'd pay $3 million more this season and $9 million more next in exchange for freedom after that. (Alternately we'd have Webber's enormous expiring contract to deal next year.) The timing would also be right for losing C-Webb in that all our recent draft picks would have had 1-3 years to incubate and should be ready to contribute full-time in exactly that year. This seems more probable than any of the other three scenarios.

Marc's candidate to relieve us of Darius is the...

Los Angeles Lakers
The two possibilities here are Miles for Kwame Brown straight up or the much-rumored Miles for Mihm and McKie trade. I doubt we'd pursue the former even if they would. Brown's contract does run out sooner than Miles' but we're not talking major cap relief in either case. I'm lukewarm on the Mihm/McKie possibility given that we're already logjammed with shooting guards and PF/C-types. I guess if we really wanted to move him for the cap space it would be a good deal since both contracts expire after this season. Somehow I don't see the Lakers wanting to get smaller in either case though. And doesn't Odom somewhat duplicate Miles? Now Zach AND Darius for Odom, Mihm, and McKie we could maybe talk about. (That works under cap rules too.)

Marc also has a couple potential suitors who could swing either way:

Boston
The Celtics have three players under big enough contracts to matter: Pierce, Szczerbiak, and Ratliff. They aren't trading Pierce for anybody right now, least of all one of our two malcontents, so that's out. I don't think we have much interest in Wally anymore. His contract runs three more years and we now have a couple of young wing players who might actually be able to shoot. That leaves Theo. I doubt we would re-acquire him because if we were going to do that, why not just make the player we'd trade for him part of the deal in the first place?

Minnesota
Minnesota's potential names include Ricky Davis, Mark Blount, Marko Jaric, Trenton Hassell, and Eddie Griffin. Any one of them except Griffin would probably match up for Darius (give or take). You'd need two or more to match Zach. But then why would they want Zach with one of the top PFs in the league already on board? All except Davis and Griffin (both expiring in 2008) are signed into 2010 or beyond, which makes them long-term commitments for us. Every one of them has questions either with attitude or style of play. If we really wanted to dump Miles we might be able to do it, but it would be a lateral move for us.

In short, while I agree with the logic behind these potential trade partners, the outlook seems pretty bleak at the moment. I have a hunch we're going to have to think outside the box if we want to move these guys, and we may have to wait until more opportunities arise. If it does happen in the short term, it's likely to be something out of left field.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Zach Pics

2006-07-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

There's considerable conversation today about Zach Randolph's Workout Pics at the Blazer website (via Eric Marentette). He does look a bit leaner than his playing weight at the end of last season. I suppose we'll have a chance to get all jazzed about the possibilities as training camp approaches but forgive me if I'm still underwhelmed. To wit...

1. Unlike many, I have never offered weight as a significant criticism of Zach. With the style he plays a few pounds more or less won't make much difference and to my eyes he's never been that overweight anyway. Skinny, uninspired, two-dimensional play is not much better than hefty, uninspired, two dimensional play. Being lighter might make it easier to give a little effort though.

2. Zach has always come into camp in decent shape, even last year after the surgery. His m.o. is to gain weight during the season.

3. I see the photographs, but I also saw him in Vegas and though he was wearing a baggy shirt that made it hard to tell, he didn't look all that much different than when I saw him midway through last season. That's not to say that he hasn't lost weight, but in person it didn't look like a radical, shocking transformation or anything.

4. Every summer/fall I maintain the same thing: You'll know we've truly made it when we don't have to read even one article about how Player X has reformed his life or Player Y has gotten into better shape this year. Those things should be de facto on a good team. Would it be better if Zach were in great shape? Sure. But getting all excited about it is like crowing over a college kid being able to read. You're a professional athlete! You're supposed to be in shape! I know the pictures are meant to be a positive PR point for the team and all, but the fact that the issue is significant shows as much about what's still wrong with the team as what's getting better.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Much Ado About...

2006-07-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days both Eric Marentette and Henry Abbott have dealt with the "Jailblazers" moniker being thrown around the national media. I understand why this is a sensitive issue to die-hard Blazer fans. Nobody likes to see the team into which you put your heart, soul, and passion branded that way, especially when the tag no longer fits. It's like they're calling you a fool for believing. Every teenager who's ever dated a guy her parents dislike because he once belched inappropriately at her family reunion has felt the same way. But honestly, I think collectively we need to put this one to bed and just let it go. Fretting about it won't do any good. It'll still pop up from time to time. I don't think it's any malice on the part of national media types, it's just human nature.

There's no statute of limitations on sports clichés. Every rounded, over-the-shoulder shot that a center puts up gets called a "Sky Hook" even when it looks nothing at all like Kareem's. You'll still hear old-timers reference the "Boston Bounce" when the Celtics haven't been anywhere near lucky for the better part of three decades. Once a label becomes part of the popular culture lexicon it sticks well beyond the endurance of its originator.

This is doubly true when the label is negative or spicy. Monica Lewinsky is probably somewhere living a rich, full, complex life right now, but what association do you draw with her name? Is that fair? Is it current? But you did it anyway. It's human. Like it or not, this team did go through a time when it either had the colossal misfortune or the colossal ineptitude to acquire the most motley collection of negative-press attractors ever seen in the modern era. That's going to be noticed and that image is going to stick. If you embezzle funds and are caught you may reasonably expect to be known by some permutation of "the embezzler" even after you have reformed and gotten on with your life. You can't blame media people for operating on the same principles.

In fact as I wrote to Eric Marentette the other day, I am actually starting to see a shift among national media folks in their handling of this matter. They are starting to talk about the Jailblazers as an "era" being "recalled" instead of current reality. In fact one could argue that the most current thing about the entire matter is the Portland fans' collective hand-wringing every time the subject gets brought up. I am not trying to bag on anyone who has written or commented...I'm GLAD people have defended the team in that way. But if we really are years after the fact I think we can stop now, let the references pass, and let the team itself prove the point.

Besides, I think we're missing the blessing in disguise in all this. Even more predictable than the media's overuse of cliché is its insatiable appetite for good stories. And everybody falls for the story of the bad guy made good. If and when we do rise again, they're going to give our reform far more attention than they ever gave our fall from grace. I can practically write the copy for them now. You'll just have to imagine the Dick Enberg-like voice doing it...

"They were once known more for arrests than assists, for blotters than buckets, as defendants rather than defenders, but those days are long gone. This is a NEW Portland Trailblazers squad, out to reclaim the glories of their distant past. Led by __________ and __________, they're seeking to challenge the powers-that-be, carving a place once again among the league's elite."

"That's right Dick. They used to leave their fingerprints at the police station but now they've left them all over this conference, compiling a 52-30 record and putting a scare into the more established teams."

"Can these former 'Bad Boys' make good on their playoff dreams? It's Blazers/Suns, and it's next!"

See how that works? Nifty, huh? Just you wait...

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Zach v. Darius

2006-07-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

Wow...I must admit that I am surprised by the results of yesterday's question! Conventional wisdom says if you have to trade either Zach or Darius you keep the more talented/productive guy. So I assumed that most folks would vote to jettison D. Miles and give Zach another chance. But here I read the comment this morning and it's overwhelmingly for trading Zach. (Respect to Ken and TwoDeep for providing the contrary view though.) This leaves me in a pickle because:

1. I was prepared to be all brilliant and counter-cultural and post an opinion why we should go against the grain and trade Zach, but it turns out I am neither!

2. The reasons you stated for choosing Zach were pretty comprehensive, leaving me not as much to talk about.

But hey, we'll give it a try...

My reasoning stems from the conviction that when all is said and done neither one of these players will be happy, healthy, productive members of this team in three years. If you think one or the other will make a turnaround for whatever reason then understandably your opinion will differ from mine. But if you go with my assumption (which I think is pretty solid given the evidence we've seen in the past few years) you have to ask the question, "Which one of these two will it cost less to keep?" In almost every category the answer is Darius.

The most obvious example is contractual, as was brought up in the comments. Miles' contract in its final year is only 75% of what Zach's is right now. He's probably overpaid for what he contributes, but he's hardly a cap buster. In simple dollars and cents, moving Zach frees up more space, which equals more flexibility. (Assuming we don't take on equally bad or worse contracts for either, which we can't do.)

Another theme which came through strongly in the comments was style of play. Zach both dominates and slows down the game, for better or worse. He touches the ball in at least 60-70% of the sets. The plays run for him consist of a guard standing on the perimeter waiting for him to get position and then dumping him the ball and watching him work, perhaps anticipating a return pass if there's no move for Zach. There's little movement of ball or feet. This means Zach tends to score to the exclusion of others even when he has a dominating game. And as long as he is on the court, this will continue to be true. Some wish for a return of the young, hungry, "garbage man" Zach, but why would that happen? That Zach was battling Rasheed for a spot and playing time. This Zach has it. That Zach expected no plays called for him, this Zach complains and quits when he doesn't get the ball enough. In his mind he's earned the right to be the man and he's not going to give up that spot to anybody. That's fine if the team is actually going to be built around him, but if you go with the theory that he's not going to lead this team to the promised land, it becomes a burden rather than a blessing.

One of the most persistent ideas floating around the Blazer universe is that Zach will somehow become a good second option. We've talked about this before but it's worth repeating. It's not going to happen...at least not with this team. He doesn't have the right skill set or style of play. Second options can't hold the rock as much as he does and need to do a lot more away from the ball. And as we just said, he feels like he's earned the right to be number one on this team and he will not settle for a demotion. If he were somehow traded to Miami I could see him becoming second banana because the stars there are already established, but we have no such established stars here nor any means of acquiring any save perhaps trading Zach himself. Have you ever been asked to do something at a job that you simply refused to do, to the point of being willing to quit over it, because you've been through too much at that place to ever do it? Then you get another job and they ask you to do the same thing and you go along without a peep. It's weird, but it's human nature. And that's where Zach is with the Blazers. He might be willing to be Robin to Paul Pierce's Batman, but here he's Superman or nothing.

Darius, on the other hand, has no such mindset. Neither his style of play nor his view of his own position require the action to center around him. Even though he's no more likely to be a long-term answer for this team than Zach, you can play Darius without shifting the gravity of the offense. Also Darius' offense involves a lot more cutting and movement. You don't have to be standing still to get him the ball and he doesn't usually keep it for half of the 24 second clock. As our main veteran he'd still create a ripple, but a lot less significant one than Zach. For a young team with developing players, I think you take the smaller footprint and better overall distribution.

Finally there's the practice/community character issue. Neither guy has shined in this department. But other than the racial slurs directed at Cheeks, Darius hasn't done anything that Zach hasn't also done. Walked out on the team? Both did it. Undermining authority and goldbricking in practice? Check. Disapproving comments and snide remarks in the press? Yup. And Zach has actually done more to harm his community image than the relatively quiet Darius. But the difference is, you can bench Darius for this stuff...in fact you can sit him until the end of time and it wouldn't matter than much. Not so Zach. As soon as you suspend or bench Z-Bo, the whole character and spirit of the team changes because he's your best guy. If Dallas came to down and Jason Terry was benched or Golden State visited and Mike Dunleavy Jr. was suspended it'd get a mention but it would still be basically the same game. With Dirk Nowitzki, Baron Davis, or Jason Richardson not playing the whole complexion of the game changes. And nobody could forget it because the media, commentators, and everybody would be mentioning it every five minutes. There's no way to take punative measures against Zach without also destroying the team and its atmosphere. If the Blazers do keep him, that's just something we'll have to accept. Far easier, in my opinion, to let that be somebody else's problem and deal with the relatively less controversial task of trying to keep Darius corralled.

Unless you believe that one of these guys will reform and become a superstar, when faced with the choice of trading one or the other, I think the clear choice is Zach. On the court, off the court, and on the spreadsheet it just makes more sense.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer vs. Blazer V

2006-07-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the interruption over the weekend but my internet service was down for most of the last two days (insert angry emoticon here). Now that it's back, we'll pick up where we left off by moving the weekend topic to Monday. I was trying to give this a rest for a while, having talked about it quite a bit in the first couple months of the blog, but it was suggested and we need some excitement around here, so here goes...

Let's say you must trade one and must keep one. Who do you trade, Zach or Darius? Why?

Assume that you're going to get decent, but not spectacular, value for either, according to their respective talent. (In other words, no superstars are coming this way but you'll get a medium-good player or a lot of cap space for Zach or a decent or a little cap space for Darius). Consider any issues/reasons you wish.

I'll weigh in with a detailed reasoning tomorrow. Fire away!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer Dreams

2006-07-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

I watch watching a kid shoot hoops at the local park the other day and it brought up memories of my own Blazers dreams…a time when all I wanted in the world was to grow up to be 6’11” tall, red-haired, and start at center for the Portland Trailblazers. I think I shared this last year when subbing for Eric, but I lived on Mt. Tabor right across from Western Baptist Seminary. They had a single hoop in their parking lot…the only place for a little kid to shoot in the neighborhood (my mom not being really fond of the idea of my going up to the park courts alone). The hoop abutted a large briar hedge, which in the days of rubber balls spelled instant doom (thorns) so I learned to shoot very precisely or I lost my ball. I’d go out for hours, shooting in rhythm and imagining I was wearing, as Bill Schonely put it, "the scarlet and black". I would make myself make ten shots from different positions before moving on to the next and ten shots in a row from range before I could go home. I would devise 32-person free throw shooting contests, populating the brackets with players like Tree Rollins and David Thompson but always throwing two or three Blazers in there. They’d go head-to-head, ten shots each, single elimination until someone emerged victorious. (I’d be shooting free throws for all of them, of course.) I was always mad when somebody besides a Blazer won, but that’s how it went. I remember one time Bill Walton and Dave Twardzik ended up in the finals against each other and I was torn who to root for. I was one obsessive little kid.

My big career got temporarily derailed in 5th grade when my mom got a call from my math teacher saying I was 20 or so assignments behind. Apparently my mom was of the opinion I was spending too much time on free throws and not enough on fractions. I tried to explain how I was going to become a Portland Trailblazer and didn’t need math, but she was less than sympathetic. I still think mom and Mrs. Morrison owe me at least a three-year, $8 million deal.

I suspect in our heart of hearts most fans’ secret dreams would center around suiting up for the team, even just once. Wearing that officially-issued jersey with your name on the back would be unimaginably incredible. As I grew up and real life impinged, however, I found my Blazer dreams evolving. Now in my mid-thirties, as slow as molasses on the court, and with the vertical leap of a mostly-used sponge, any fantasy of an NBA career died long ago. In fact I don’t even think I’d want to get on the court with the guys anymore in practice or just to play H-O-R-S-E. It’s not that it wouldn’t be fun for me, but it would be such an embarrassment because of our comparative levels. It’d be like displaying your ‘94 Honda Accord at a car show or taking your refrigerator-scribbled drawing and saying, “Look at this!” to Picasso. Both are fine for what they are, but come on…different worlds man. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have a dream or two though. As I sat down and took inventory, here’s what I came up with:

1. I’d love to have lunch with Paul Allen and ask him what it’s like to own the team, what he’s learned and how he’s grown along the way, and how some franchise decisions evolved. (OK...and about the Civilian Space Project, the Sci-Fi museum, and all that. I swear sometimes that guy is living my life. Except being a computer impresario he's far better at math than I. See above for a possible explanation why.) Most of this I’d love to be able to write about here.

2. I’d like to sit beside a Blazer scout or two on a scouting trip, or maybe Kevin Pritchard during a game, and have them share what they see to make me a better observer.

3. I’d like to watch game tape with Nate with some chips and salsa to share and a lot of time to rewind and analyze. (In fact this may be #1.)

4. I’d like to talk anywhere with Buck Williams for about an hour.

5. I’d enjoy watch a real, live practice and game preparation…not just going to the parts the media are invited to, but to be a fly on the wall during the whole thing.

It’s funny how as I’ve aged the dreams have shifted more to the management/coaching side than the playing. It’s not that I still wouldn’t want to hang with the players, but I suspect they’d perceive an age gap as well as a fan/player gap that might stilt things a little. I mean, Brandon Roy called me “Sir” when I met him. (Bad move, B-Roy…I’m not THAT old! But I remember how 30+ seemed when I was 22, so you get a free pass.)

So what are your all-time and/or current Blazer dreams? Playing, coaching, observing, hanging out? Share them below or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

How Things Change

2006-07-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Contemplating the weekend Blake/Dickau poll it struck me how quickly things can change. For instance:

--1 year ago everybody would have wanted Dickau over Blake.

--2 years ago nobody would have given half a fig for Joel Przybilla.

--3 years ago Zach, Darius, and Theo were the solid core for our future.

--Last summer Ha and Travis were rumored to be in trade deals that we turned down because we liked their potential.

--At the beginning of the season we were sure our future included a Russian or two. In fact four weeks ago Viktor was a fan favorite and likely long-term backup.

--In September we had five small forwards: Miles, Patterson, Outlaw, Khryapa, and Monia. Now most are looking forward to having just one, and they're not even sure about that one.

--A month and a half ago Webster had a 95%+ approval rating among fans and was the consensus future of the franchise. Now some are starting to see him as expendable.

It just goes to show you why it's good we're not in charge of things. (Although I suspect some NBA GM's also operate on similar principles.)

Add some if you wish...

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Where Are We?

2006-07-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Time to shift the focus back onto the court for a little while. Eric Marentette (link at right) posted pieces from John Hollinger and Kerry Eggers questioning the futures of Travis Outlaw and Ha Seung-Jin respectively...neither of which came as a surprise if you read the summer league stuff here. We've talked about it in bits and pieces along the way, but it seems useful now to recap where the Blazers are vis-a-vis the availability of their players. This is my best guess. Obviously if a LeBron or Dwayne Wade were available all bets would be off, but we're remaining withing the realm of reason here. (And mind you, this is not necessarily how I feel about them, but how I think the Blazers feel.)

Basically Untradeable (in order from least likely to be traded to most)
Brandon Roy
Jarrett Jack
Lamarcus Aldridge
Martell Webster

Not Exactly Untradeable, but Won't Be Traded Because They Just Signed
Joel Przybilla
Sergio Rodriguez

Available for the Right Offer (but it's not forthcoming)
Zach Randolph

Available as a Throw-In
Travis Outlaw
Steve Blake
Dan Dickau
Brian Skinner
Juan Dixon
Ha Seung-Jin

Could Be a Throw-In but His Contract's Too Big
Raef LaFrentz

Actively Shopping
Darius Miles

Notes:
--Roy's play has shifted Webster's stock a little, but don't worry, he's still untouchable. If they were forced to trade one of those four at this point, though, it would probably be him. Funny how that switched.

--To me the decision to pick up Travis' option for one more year is a no-brainer. First of all we give him another year to cook. Second, if he's part of a trade his contract is low and doesn't matter much in terms of cap space. Nobody will see his expiring contract as valauble, they'll want another year with him.

--I'm a Blake fan too, but in the end his contract situation, management's love of Jack (and maybe Roy) at the point, and his talent/salary value to other teams makes him expendable. Don't shoot the messenger.

--I don't think we should waive Ha as Eggers speculated, but management likes the flexibility that carrying only 14 players gives them so they just might.

--I also don't like the idea of moving Skinner just in case we do trade Zach and because his contract expires next season, but I expect that possibility is on the table. He'd actually make a significant throw-in.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Tum-Tum-Tum-Tums

2006-07-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

The net is abuzz about the Sonics sale and its implications and a couple of interesting questions came in via e-mail from Jon, “A-2”(?), and Amie. (Edit: That should have been "Annie". Sorry.)

“How would you feel as a Sonics fan?” (Apparently one reads this blog, which is cool.)

I feel great empathy for Sonics fans this morning. I really hope a suitable deal gets done that keeps the team in Seattle. That’s where it belongs. I can only imagine the sick feeling in the stomach considering the alternative…in fact I don’t want to imagine it much because it may come to Blazer fans as well. We’ve had a strong, good rivalry over the years and other than the Blazers there’s no team I’d like to see moved less.

If I were a Sonics fan I’m also pretty confident that the Blazers moving north would be a poor substitute, as would be the reverse. If I’m a Seattle fan I grew up on Jack Sikma, Freddy Brown, Dale Ellis, Gary Payton, and Ray Allen, not Bill, Clyde, and Rasheed. I don’t want all that history flushed down the tubes just to get another team, as if they were interchangeable. If anything I might want an expansion franchise someday to start again and carry on the memory unblemished, but I’d find the idea of adopting the Blazers vaguely nauseating.

“Do you think Portland becomes a regional team if the Sonics move?”

No, for the same reasons I just stated. Green and gold is not red and black. Portland’s never had an MLB or NFL franchise so it’s easy for us to root for the Seattle teams in those sports. But imagine if the Blazers left town…would we suddenly convert to Sonics fans en masse? Not a chance. Why, then, would Seattle folks do the reverse? In fact to the extent they were passionate about the Sonics they’re less likely to adopt the Blazers, not more. (How many diehard Cleveland Browns fans do you suppose became Bengal Boosters when their team moved to Baltimore? And they’re in the same state!)

“You just said you liked the direction management is going. Don’t you trust them?”

Depends. In the post on Kevin Pritchard I basically said I trusted him to do his best to build a good team, be passionate about doing so, and be gracious to the fan base. That makes no judgment on which fan base we’re talking about. In fact while I hope he has some connection to Portland in particular, I doubt his tenure here has been long enough that he couldn’t easily shift that allegiance to the people of Seattle or wherever he was made a General Manager. That’s his job.

Despite things apparently being more palatable in the management department, it’s still pretty obvious that the organization is operating under an “us against the world” assumption in many ways. It comes out strongly in the dealings with the media, but I guarantee you there are some (and maybe plenty of) people in the organization who see fans either at best as dupes (or marks) and at worst as annoyances…either way firmly planted in “the world” end of that equation. I had a friend once in the ministry and he was a nice enough guy but his attitude about working in a church was, “This would be a great job if it wasn’t for all the people I have to deal with.” It’s perfectly possible to execute your job duties competently, maybe even excellently, without evidencing any particular connection to the people whom you serve. This has been part of the Blazers’ culture for a while now and I don’t think it’s completely changed.

Let’s face it, for the last decade the team has been less the “Portland Trailblazers” and more the “Trailblazers who happen to play in Portland”. I think there are people on staff who would like to remedy that, but I don’t think there are many prominent ones with long enough tenures or enough connections to the city who would complain, protest, or even feel great remorse if the effort were shifted wholesale to a new fan base. There are no Terry Porters here, no Clyde Drexlers or Bill Schonelys. In fact it’s pretty likely that some folks would actually be relieved to be dealing with new reporters, new politicians, and new fans.

In short, I do trust that people at Blazer HQ want to do their job conscientiously and well. I trust that they are basically people of integrity. I do not think that they have always shown they perceive this particular community as critical to that integrity, nor do I trust that any such bond would prevent them from being just as happy moving somewhere else. I do hope that as the team and community grow together again that bond will re-form. I also hope that the one guy with the most potential for the intimate connection because of his tenure and past emotional involvement—namely Paul Allen himself—feels that bond strongly. As many have pointed out, however, it’s difficult to know what Paul is thinking at any given moment.

“How likely is it that the team will move?”

I wouldn’t say it’s likely at this point. Too many dominoes have to fall first, including the team ownership situation being resolved, the Sonics actually moving, bankruptcy being declared and cleared in court, and the NBA approving a move. That’s a lot of hurdles. This is kind of like being married for a while and your spouse starts spending a fair amount of time with a co-worker of the opposite sex. Is an affair immanent? Probably not. But it’s still not a great sign and it’s something you’ll want to keep your eye on.

At the very least everybody needs to get out their antacid of choice and start a steady diet, because until Allen actually buys the Rose Garden back or sells to someone who does, this is going to be a constant issue and will almost certainly be used for leverage whether or not there’s any serious intention of moving the team. Necessary for business…not fun for the fans.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Sonics Sold

2006-07-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you've heard by now, the Seattle Supersonics are being sold to a group of investors whose head is from Oklahoma City. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that with the arguments over the lease and the loss of money in the organization a permanent relocation is possible. That would end our oldest and most consistent rivalry, which would be sad. It also brings up the specter of a Portland move. We're still facing the same basic problems. But now if Seattle loses its team we have to worry not only about "foreign" investors but about Paul Allen moving the franchise three hundred miles to the north if he keeps the team. At this point you've got to believe that Paul and the staff are more in love with the team than this city, its media, and its fans. And the NBA is sending signals that it's more than willing for such things to happen. Nothing will go down this year because the Hornets are already playing in Oklahoma City, but the possibility lurks in years to come.

I don't want to jump at shadows, but I'm of the opinion that no movement is good movement and I do not welcome this news.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Race and the Blazers

2006-07-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

In the months leading up to the draft I read comments in several online venues which both disturbed me and made me think. Every once in a while a post would come up saying Portlanders favored Adam Morrison over everyone else because he was caucasian. I tried not to respond in a knee-jerk fashion because I felt the issue needed some thought and probably some space. I don't even know if I should be tackling it now, well after the draft. I'm probably not in the best position to know, being caucasian myself and living outside of the Portland area for about a decade now. But it seems to me something needs to be said, if not in the interest of rebutting the claim at least in the interest of productive thought and conversation. It doesn't seem fair to just let those assertions hang in the air as if they were unadulterated truth (even if there is some truth in them).

I think the first and fairest admission to make is that yes, there is racism in Portland, both individually and institutionally. I don't know whether it is better or worse than other comparable cities, but I do know that as Portland has become more multi-cultural over the past few decades it has experienced revelations that have brought those facts to life...revelations that maybe other places had decades ago but we are just experiencing now. It is my sincere hope that the city is learning and growing from those revelations, but I am not naive enough to think that the process is, or will ever be, complete. Racism IS a problem...a crippling barrier...which affects all of us. Nobody is exempt.

Nor can one claim that enjoying watching people of different races on an athletic field is proof that racism doesn't exist. Sports are their own world with very specific rules and boundaries. Among the most important are the lines marking the borders of play. On one side of those lines lies unbridled spectacle...energy and violence displayed for the entertainment of the people on the other side of the line. At least for the duration of the game the two worlds do not mix. This is why we get a vicarious thrill when something leaks over those boundaries, like a foul ball in baseball or when a player slaps our hand while walking out the tunnel. We get to touch, experience, and keep a little bit of that "other world" and its excitement without actually being in danger ourselves. This is also why those barriers breaking down completely in the case of the Indiana/Detroit brawl a couple years ago made national news for days and was met with such shock and horror. It wasn't just the violence...we see that every day in boxing matches, ultimate fighting, and even bar brawls down at the local dive. It was more like another world impinged on ours, like chaos swirled through what was supposed to be an orderly society. The point is, saying, "We like those players" in the context of the game means, "We like those players as long as they're in another world, separated from ours." This doesn't eliminate the possibility of racism, any more than a Roman citizen saying, "I like that gladiator" would show equality in that society.

Without letting us off the hook, though, I think there is some evidence on the other end of the scale also, both in the specific case of Morrison and in general.

First of all, it became evident as the draft approached and even more evident after it that the supposed support for Morrison was overblown. Yes, a lot of people liked him, but not necessarily to the exclusion of other players. In fact from the comments I read and heard, as many people favored Roy, Thomas, and Aldridge as A-Mo, just not as vocally or with catchy music. After the draft 99% of the comments were positive in favor of Aldridge and Roy, while the anger at losing out on Morrison was barely a blip on the radar. Clearly some Morrison fans converted instantly, which would pretty much preclude race being the main issue here. I would bet that most of the people who supported him would talk about his emotion or the fact that he won the college scoring title long before they would mention his ethnicity. That's not to say it didn't play any factor, but I doubt it was a significant one for most people and certainly not for the fan base as a whole.

In fact if you broaden the question and look at the most popular Blazer players in history, race doesn't seem to be a determining factor in that popularity. I only go back to 1977 so I can't speak for the Petrie-Wicks era, but since then I would judge the following players among the most enduringly revered:

Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas, Jim Paxson, Billy Ray Bates, Clyde Drexler, Buck Williams, Jerome Kersey, Terry Porter, Drazen Petrovic, Arvydas Sabonis, Brian Grant, Jermaine O'Neal

Before all is said and done I bet that Martell Webster and Brandon Roy both end up on that list too. Only two of those players are American-born caucasians, two are Eastern Europeans, and the rest are African-American. If you polled people on the most popular Blazer of all time Clyde Drexler would win hands down. Jim Paxson, though popular in his era, would barely register. It doesn't make a lot of sense that a fan base aching for the next Clyde would refuse to accept him unless he were also white.

Though we said you cannot assume any kind of general equality based on the public's opinion of players on the court we must also say that Portland as a whole has historically been very invested in welcoming players into the community, even in the "bad old days". Kenny Carr, Kermit Washington, Kevin Duckworth, Mychal Thompson, and many more ex-Blazers remained Portlanders long after their playing days. This does not in any way imply that people have been more accepting of African-Americans as a whole in the community--that's a separate issue. But as far as Blazer players, the people of Portland (at least in the popular perception) have seemed quite willing to go beyond that "sports barrier", maybe even more so than in other towns. Again, it doesn't make sense that the community would turn around in the draft and say, "Whites Only".

One of the residual topics hanging over this discussion that I see mentioned all the time is the treatment of Rasheed Wallace. One of the popular lines of thinking seems to be that we ran him out of town, possibly with the implication that race, or honesty about race, had something to do with it. Maybe I'm all mixed up on this, and I am willing to be corrected if I am, but I honestly don't see it. Casual fans in this town loved Rasheed...LOVED him. The Garden would rock with "Sheed" chants every time he touched the ball. The initial thing that cause people to question him was the 50,000 technicals, especially getting tossed in the San Antonio WCF series in 1999 for jawing at Mike Mathis in the 4th quarter. At that point you started to hear a few boos when he'd get worked up and was cruising for a "T". But that didn't inhibit the cheers one bit. The second big incident was the freeway bust in the Hummer with Damon and the pot. Again I would argue this was less a racial issue than one of common restraint. James Edwards was African-American and our center for a couple of years, and he had the nickname "Buddha" for a reason and everybody knew it. Nobody said a thing. This town would have jumped at the chance to get Robert Parish at any point in his career, including after his admission that he used marijuana. But both guys were basically able to control the partying and keep it in private. Sheed didn't. Given that, I don't think it would have mattered if he was Kiki Vandeweghe...the negative attention still would have been there.

Either way, neither of those straws broke the camel's back. Rasheed did not want to be here in the last year of his contract. He did not want to re-sign here. In his last season he started taking large breaks on the court. He also started giving quotes like "CTC", guaranteed to infuriate any fan. Only THEN did you hear the boos rain down. And you know what? It was still 50/50 in the Garden, and remains so today when he visits. To the best of my ability to discern, neither the cheers nor the boos have much to do with race. In fact all-time Blazer hero Bill Walton got (and gets) basically the same response and all he did was come up with a foot injury that caused his Portland career to end.

In short, I don't see that anybody ran Rasheed out of town in the first place. And if they did, I don't see how it was because of race in particular.

I don't deny that racism is an ugly, tragic reality in our society. I don't think, however, that in the venue of professional basketball there is justification for painting Portland fans as more racist than any others. It bothers me that the assertion is just thrown out there casually. In this day of media licentiousness and word pollution, anything that is repeated enough starts to take on an air of truth. I don't think such claims do justice to the players or the community and it would bother me to have fans or players read them and just assume their veracity without any reflection.

I don't know if this post will engender a lot of comments or a collective "Meh". As I said, I am hardly the expert on this subject and I welcome divergent views. I would ask, however, that folks be very intentional about what they say and how they say it, as I have tried to be. Be mindful that all kinds of people are reading and please be respectful of others as you comment.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Seven Reasons

2006-07-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this blog you probably don't need encouragement to follow the team this year, but maybe you have friends, neighbors, spouses, or siblings that you have to convince to hop back on the bandwagon (or at least convince of your sanity for doing so yourself). So after this long desert drought in which excuses to NOT to love the team were as plentiful as grains of sand, here are seven reasons to start following the Blazers again this year.

1. Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge
Neither one of them is going to be a superstar this season, or maybe ever. In fact they may not even get that much playing time in their rookie campaign...especially Lamarcus. But as I said from Vegas, what you do see of them you will love. They are different than most of the rookies we've acquired in this decade. They're well-rounded, play defense, and can score in a variety of ways. They make an effort to play right even if they don't always succeed because of their youth. They also seem like decent people and are unlikely to let you down in the public relations department. Dare I say they might bring back a little of that Blazer community pride? Perhaps that's going too far, but one can hope. Even if both turn out to be good-but-not-great players, the picks will have been worth it, especially in this relatively weak draft year. It's always fun to follow and speculate about rookies. This year will be good in that respect. (Let us make a communal pact to save the "Why doesn't he play Aldridge more?" chants though. Let them grow at their own pace.)

2. Martell Webster
He's pretty fun to root for all on his own, but I also think he may become a big key to the Blazers' future. And I say this not because I think he's the next Clyde Drexler. To the contrary, I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the realization that he's not. Of course he will improve and I expect his game at the end of this year will look light years better than at the beginning, but realistically he probably will never be comfortable handling the ball or taking people off the dribble for the majority of his points. He's going to need a lot of help from teammates to shine. But we'll need him to shine in order to win. That means his colleagues will have to play unselfishly. Big men will need to set him up with screens, guards will need to watch for him and get him the ball, and he'll have to hustle to take advantage of both. He'll also need to work hard and do the little things on the other end of the court in order to justify all that help. In short, if you see Martell contributing big it'll probably mean we're playing good team ball on both ends of the court. His advent could finally put a wooden stake into the heart of that old "give one guy the ball and watch him work" style of offense. And that funeral is long overdue.

3. Nate McMillan
We'll go easy here because Nate was the main publicity point last year, but that doesn't change the fact that we've got a good, good coach. The national media recognizes it, Team USA recognizes it, we should too. Even though he wanted veterans, part of the advantage of going young is that Nate and his staff will be able to mold these guys more freely. What this team looks like in three years will be largely due to his efforts. It'll be fun to watch him try and build them into winners.

4. Plenty of Intrigue and Drama
And thank goodness it's ON the court this year. Other than Zach's downtown drag race, last year was clean as a whistle as far as Blazer incidents. I don't think many people noticed that. I don't expect that will change this year, so it's time to retire the off-court problems talk until further need. There's still plenty on the court to keep fans busy though. How will Zach handle the influx of new talent and the maturation of our sophomores? Who wins the point guard spot and who gets the backup minutes there? Can Travis Outlaw step up and earn some consistent small forward minutes? Who backs up the big spots? And, of course, who gets traded and who comes in? Mind you, controversy is not a good sign for a winner. In fact if you think back to the early-90's teams and the '77 championship squad, there was none. Let's face it...drama like this is a sign you're bad. But it also makes being bad a lot more interesting.

5. The Tickets are Cheap Still
I don't know if you noticed last year, but the Blazers were giving away tickets for next to nothing...sometimes literally free. After 21 wins and not adding any brand-name talent there's no basis to change that. While most of the world still hasn't noticed them, this is a chance for you early birds to get in on the cheap. You can probably get half price tickets at Bi-Mart or Costco or wherever they were selling them last year. You can probably get another couple with a fill up on gas. You're not going to see LeBron, Shaq, or Kobe, but truth be told those aren't always the most interesting games anyway. (OK...the Lakers are always interesting.) I'd look for games against Seattle, the Clippers, Charlotte, New Orleans/Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, or Toronto. Those are going to be as exciting as any big-name franchises coming through. If you're really excited and if they're available again this season, I'd get three of those three-game $76 packages they keep offering on the TV...one at the beginning of the year, one mid-season, and one at the end. You'll get a good chance to see how the kids develop over the year and you'll see roughly a quarter of the home games in person for a little over $230.

Also, if you do want to go to a few games, with the relative paucity of people you have a great opportunity to become the next Dancing Lady, Hippy Guy, or Grandma Endzone superfan. Got a schtick, gimmick, or even just a cool sign or two? You know you're going to get noticed. If you're one of the new-century hipsters who believes your life isn't real until it's on TV, this is your big chance!

6. Keep It on the Down Low, but Possible Upswing Ahead
I don't want to overstate this, because many folks will start to go bananas with predictions as the season approaches and most will overestimate in favor of improvement. I remember the indignant uproar when John Nash foretold 20 wins last season. I also remember the cries of 35, 40, 45! Guess what? Nash was right. And despite the optimism over the draft nothing much has changed since April. Nevertheless, this is the first year since 2000 that we can even think about saying with a straight face that the Blazers have a chance to do better, or at least not sink. It's not the light at the end of the tunnel, but it might be the bend before it. No matter what the win-loss total says at the end of the year, I expect you will see players playing better, harder, and more as a team. And that bodes well for seasons to come.

The big question will be "When do you think the Blazers will actually BE better?" With due credit to Chuck Woolery, my answer to that is simple: 2, 2, and 2. Two trades, two acquistions (likely one from those trades or free agency, one from the draft), and two years. At that point I think we'll be able to talk about the Blazers making a run at a low playoff seed and maybe being considered an up and coming team.

7. Joel Believes, Why Don't You?
No explanation necessary.

Something I missed? Add your own below or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer vs. Blazer III

2006-07-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

Something a little more current this weekend. Assuming both are injury-free, who do you want as your back-up PG, Dan Dickau or Steve Blake?

E-mail or comment below.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Kevin Pritchard

2006-07-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

I got the chance to observe the Blazers' GM-in-waiting during the Courtside Monday Night broadcast last week. Seeing him in person was informative. Heretofore he's been more of a shadowy figure than Steve Patterson, who himself was less visible than John Nash. Since most readers probably haven't seen or heard much from him, I thought it might be interesting to share my impressions. I am not claiming to know the man in any way, nor to have talked to him beyond what I'm going to describe here, so don't take this as "inside" information or gospel on him. It's just one person's observations from a couple hours of watching and one conversation.

The first thing I noticed about Pritchard is that he has a neat combination of being unassuming, yet somehow commanding the room. When he walked in the door and sat down, you pretty much knew it. But it wasn't an obvious, "look at me" thing. One national media guy in Vegas was unmistakable because he strutted around like a peacock listening to the Bee Gees. It was really funny, in a gym full of testosterone, to see a guy acting like he had the most walking with a notebook in hand instead of a basketball. Pritchard wasn't anything like that. He was quiet, didn't say much beyond acknowledging the broadcast crew, but the minute he sat down he was the unspoken center of gravity in the room.

He was either facing backwards or sideways to the fans for most of the proceedings, but you could still tell a couple of things. One, his rapport with his colleagues was respectful, but easy. They really seem to like him a lot and be comfortable around him. They defer to him though. He is the question answerer, even off mic. When he speaks you can hear a pin drop. (I mean I know it's just the broadcast crew, but still, they don't have to respect him like that.) Second, he was generally relaxed through the proceedings, but the line of his shoulders, his back posture, his hand movements...everything just went to another level of intensity when any of the kids were on the air. He seems really, really invested in the players he's drafted. It's great that he's that passionate. It also tells you that this is a guy who, at least right now, doesn't think he's going anywhere, which may tell you something about the ownership and management situation. (On the other hand he may just be the kind of stand-up guy who has decided to give it his all no matter how long he's there, but if that's it he's damn good at it. There was no way he looked like an interim or lame duck in there.)

If you heard the show (or the podcast on the Blazers' site) you heard the things he talked about...culture, family, and the like. He seems honest about that, and as I said before the players and staff are starting to adopt that language, so he's clearly having some effect. He comes across as a guy with a clear vision and enough passion and communication skills to convince others to come along. From what I gathered of the off-air interaction, much of which I saw rather than heard, he listens to those around him. But he also doesn't strike me as the kind of person to suffer fools gladly. You get the sense that he's going to get his way. If he is named GM this will not be a nebulous, John Nash type reign. Right or wrong, his stamp will go on things.

Business management has been moving towards the "lead strongly from among instead of above" theory for years. Pritchard seems to be able to pull it off.

I did get a small chance to talk to him after the proceedings. It wasn't much because I didn't want to disturb him, but he was kind enough to rise from his seat when I approached even though he didn't know me from Adam, which showed something about the kind of guy he is. I didn't introduce myself as being from this blog because...well...that seemed a little tacky, like I was trying to self-promote or something. I mean I love doing this and I'm amazed at all the energy you guys put into reading and responding, but I have no illusions about the cosmic importance of what we're doing here. Introducing myself like the next GM of the Blazers should notice a speck in the online world like this seemed presumptuous, especially with real media people like Barrett, Harvey, Wheeler, Rice, and Marentette in the room. Anyway, I asked him a couple questions, he took the time to answer, and that was it. He didn't treat it as an inconvenience. He actually seemed like the kind of guy who just liked to talk basketball, no matter who it's with, which is strangely familiar to me...

So all in all I was impressed, and my guess is we should be comfortable if and when Pritchard is named as the next GM. I guess the only concerns would be if his passion would blind him to reality (like being really invested in a guy who turned out to be not as great as he hoped or invested in his guys but not other people's), but everyone's strengths are also their weaknesses, so that's no special fault. It will be interesting to see how the team and the organizational climate fare under his watch.

EDIT: 2forLarue asked in the comment section and a couple of others have asked by e-mail what questions I asked Mr. Pritchard. I am 100% sure that he didn't tell me anything he would not have told anybody...I have no secret, privileged information. But fair is fair and I did not approach him saying I was going to put his comments in a blog, and even in such a small forum as this I don't feel comfortable doing so without having let him know that first. I have a big pet peeve about people who go into a public forum and say, "Here is the conversation I had with Person X" and then reprint the whole thing. It feels self-indulgent...like "Look at me! I'm so special!" Mr. Pritchard didn't talk to me because I was special, he talked to me because he was gracious and kind enough to do so. I'd feel crass even giving the appearance of turning that kindness around for my advantage at his expense. It seemed important to add the conversation into the post in an era where management has been known for being distant and out of touch. But I'd prefer to leave it as being about him rather than what was said. I hope that's cool with everyone. To ease your minds though, we just talked about a peripheral player who is unlikely to affect the course of the team. Nothing revolutionary.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Vegas Wrap Up

2006-07-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to talk to a couple coaches and former players not currently associated with the Blazers. Since I didn't tell them I was asking questions for a blog I'm not going to narc them out by revealing who, but the general collective wisdom included:

--Jarrett Jack is the real deal at point guard and will be the future at that position.
--Roy is an adequate PG for summer league but probably won't see many minutes there at all in the regular campaign.
--Some think the Blazers will have a problem in the future because Roy and Webster play the same position.
--Others think that Martell will make a living on the wing, and since most shooting guards slash through the middle or come off curls at the elbow, he'll end up being more of a 3 because he'll be able to defend small forwards outside and just run from wing to wing. (That should make Ken happy, he's been saying it for a while.)

Not being a GM or scout myself (or having any pretensions that I am good enough to do either) these summations should be taken with a grain of salt, but based on what we've seen at summer league here's my best guess about the strengths/weaknesses of each player and their prospects...

Martell Webster--He's starting to expand his game and do the little things necessary for him to earn playing time in the NBA. His defensive effort was far better than we saw last season, as was his court awareness. His shot is easily the best on the team but he still has problems scoring when he has to handle the ball himself. Catching and shooting off a curl screen is automatic for him, dribbling or hesitating messes him up. He also disappeared a bit when he wasn't involved in the offense. He's putting more pressure on himself than the coaches are on him, at least in terms of frustration level. This will definitely be another year of learning for him. Expect to see improvement, but don't look for a transformation into stardom just yet.

Travis Outlaw--He still shows flashes of brilliance and his performance increased over the last couple of games. He's lost out there too much for a guy beginning to move into veteran status, however. His defensive performance was marginally better. His offense is still really streaky. He's reverted to shooting five different ways instead of banking on one or two solid moves. Nobody flies or makes spectacular plays like him though. If the Blazers have more patience expect him to see backup minutes. If their patience has run dry he could be traded.

Lamarcus Aldridge--Nobody should describe this kid as "raw". His game is actually quite smooth and polished. He just needs time to make the adjustment, especially with his body. He's got good offensive tools and good defensive instincts. He just needs to see where he can contribute. Expect him to get pushed around a lot this year, maybe to the point of disappearing from time to time. I don't think he can play center yet unless we're just running up and down the court. Don't expect huge minutes or huge production, but watch him grow into his role. Plan on loving him big time in 1.5-2 years.

Brandon Roy--This was Roy's summer league. Had the team centered the offense around him he would have scored as many as Foye. He was unstoppable. He's slippery on the dribble and has a great sense of where and how to get his shot. He plays credible defense already and can pass some. This is just summer league and he'll have several levels of adjustment to make. He'll need to learn to deal with quick-handed and big-bodied guards both, and I expect that to be a struggle. But he will also contribute right away, likely at the 2-spot.

Ha Seung-Jin--Has hasn't changed much, which is bad news. My gut says he will be waived or traded. If he's not, he'll not see much court time.

Joel Freeland--His biggest asset right now is his speed. He runs exceptionally well for a big man. He needs to add both bulk and strength before he can even think about playing the league at 6'10" though. His offense is decent, if a little limited. He's still feeling his way on the defensive end. If he puts in the required work, expect him to get a look as early as next season. The Blazers have already said he's going back to Europe this year.

Hector Romero--He showed the ability to score, some hustle, and a little bit of rebounding. He also has grit and a stout body. He's a little undersized for his position though and caught in a numbers game here. The Blazers seem high on him so expect him to get an invite to camp. If Ha is cut or Skinner is traded he could even make the team, but it's a long shot. I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a team somewhere though.

Kevin Pinkney--He showed a lot of hustle and became a player that the coaches relied on during summer league. He's pretty versatile. He's caught in the same trap as Romero, however. The buzz is that he needs to add some strength and get another year's experience before he's ready for the league.

Marque Perry--He did a fine job running the squad for summer league and showed some shooting range, but his defense was suspect and his shot spotty. We already have our steady guard in Blake and a prospect back up in Rodriguez. Perry only gets an invite to camp if they need another warm body.

Fred House--Provided a little energy and got a decent look, but like Perry I don't see him figuring into future plans.

Brandon Bowman--Tall, but not as versatile, polished, or productive as Pinkney and Romero. Probably won't get another look this year.

Nedzad Sinanovic--We saw less than four minutes of him, so maybe this isn't a fair judgment, but from what we saw I'd say he's like Ha, just without the talent and quickness.

(Yup, I said that.)

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Summer League Wednesday

2006-07-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sure the final game has been wrapped up a couple places by now, but just in case...

--This was Aldridge's game to shine. That was nice to see. He got a few touches in the first half but the second half was really his time. Basically we were getting whipped because we didn't get back on defense and got outhustled to nearly every rebound and loose ball. Lamarcus took it upon himself to say, "Huh-uh." He rebounded hard. He had a couple of really nice blocks (including one when he was on the way back DOWN!) and several strong defensive possessions, including showing strong on help defense. On offense he showed some nice touch from the outside, some deft passing (even once from the high post), and some silky low post moves when he could maintain position. He helped change the course of the game, which is something you hope he'll eventually do in the big leagues too. I understand there's a lot of speculation going around about Aldridge. I wouldn't put too much pressure on him early, but in the end we're going to be happy with this pick.

--Roy had another good statistical outing, but got taken out of his game a little. By that I mean he was defaulting to shooting a lot which, while not bad in itself, was a bail out position for him as point guard. (Just like it's been for Bassy in previous years.) Much of our comeback was made with him on the bench. The upside is that when he decided to score he was usually successful, so much so that when they put him back it was at the 2-spot. Even more of an upside is that he'll be a 2-guard in the league and scoring will be his full-time job. He is getting better and better at scoring off the break too. This kid is tricky.

--Freeland got the start this game and showed more good effort on both sides of the floor, including a pop and stop shot and a couple of nice turn-around shots from 12 feet. He seemed to get frustrated, either with himself or the coaches, midway through the first half and never saw the floor again, however.

--Sinanovic finally got on the court. Meh. Defends worse than Ha.

--Fred House saw a lot of time and helped us come back in a spark plug type role.

--Martell kind of disappeared a little when he wasn't directly involved in the offense. He's still learning how to play and where to go. This was a very good summer league for him overall and he really showed his drive, but we need to be patient with him also.

--As far as the overall game, it wasn't their best effort even with the comeback at the end. We had our hands down on defense, left perimeter players open, and didn't hustle in transition defense. The skeleton of the help defense was there but it wasn't fleshed out by people making quick and correct rotations. There was a lot of reaching for the ball and not much foot movement. We also committed a fair number of turnovers. We fixed most of these problems in the comeback but it wasn't enough. We're still learning how to turn it around and how to win.

--Z-Bo showed up for the last game. Jarrett Jack has been there all along as was warming up by shooting before the game. His shot looked good.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Not Quite Getting It

2006-07-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

I had the rare (for me) opportunity to hear Courtside Monday Night last night. The lineup of guests was impressive and it was a really good show. You could feel the energy in the room among the broadcasters. The organization seems genuinely excited about the future, which is good to see.

Kevin Pritchard hit the phrase "changing the culture" hard a couple of times during the evening. Obviously this is a point of emphasis and it's one that will find a sympathetic ear among the fan base. He also used the metaphor of family to describe the organizational outlook...a phrase which is also being repeated by the players from what I've heard.

Despite this promising talk, there were also a couple moments that made me think that for all their effort and apparent good intentions, the Blazers are holding on to some counterproductive assumptions which, if not examined and modified, will leave them short of their goal of reconnecting with the community.

The first moment came when Mike Barrett, himself now a blogger, described blogs as a 300-pound gorilla in need of taming. At the very least there's a sensitivity, and probably more of an antipathy, towards public comment (and criticism) of the team among its organizational representatives, including the representatives whose express job it is to facilitate communication with the public. That's counterproductive.

Blogs are plentiful and varied but they all have one thing in common: they are written by fans, people who are passionate about the team. The more blogs, the more words, the more readers, the more passion...it's as simple as that. Sometimes those words will be positive, sometimes critical. That's the nature of fandom. I guarantee you that in Pittsburgh right now some fans are criticizing the latest Steeler moves, and I'd be hard pressed to think of a fan base more dedicated or a team more successful at this moment in time.

The most famous post of this blog was undoubtedly the second draft-night post about the process of trading draft picks. And yes, it was critical of the way the Blazers operated (but not of the overall results). That post got 40 comments. I got another 18 e-mails besides. That's 58 people who took the time to pour their hearts and opinions onto virtual paper and express them to me and the world. How exactly is that bad for the Blazers? Many of those posts were critical of my take, but that didn't hurt overall blog readership one bit. It's tripled since then. That's not bad at all. Let's say the situation were reversed, and the Blazers posted a carefully-thought out critique that said while they were fans of my writing in general and followed it closely, they thought I was in error on this one point and wanted to make that known. Do you think that would hurt this blog? I'd get six million hits after that!

The Blazers shouldn't be suspicious of blogs, nor should they be looking to tame, moderate, or in any way fight them. They should be praying that a hundred more sprout up overnight. I know it's difficult for people in the organization to get a good feel for the grass roots fan base, but they've got to realize how unique and exciting it is that this conversation is happening, even if it's occasionally critical. If you had said out loud in 2003 that you didn't agree with something the Blazers did in their draft, the response wouldn't have been 58 e-mails and comments, it would have been a collective "Who cares?" That apathy is what the team should truly fear. Blogs help pull people out of it and back into contact with the team and the game. I hope the sentiment expressed by Barrett is not widespread or typical, not just because I am blogging, but because I really think in pursuing that line the organization will shoot itself in the foot in an area that would otherwise be to its advantage.

The second moment came not from a specific comment, but from a strong overall impression that the Blazers still see themselves in an adversarial postition with the media and public as a whole. Their response to the AM 1080 rumor was indicative, as were a couple other things they said regarding their publicity. In case you haven't noticed, part of their coping strategy is to supplant media outlets with their own broadcast sources, third-party websites with their own websites, blogs with their own blogs, and so on. They will use information control as the lever to cement this change. We've already seen part of the strategy in the famous "recording every word" policy and the draft workout shenanigans. It's hard to overstate what a mistake this is.

As far as blogs and websites, as we just said, the Blazers should want more, not less of them. Online venues work on the movie principle of marketing. Going to one movie doesn't prevent you from going to others. In fact it actually encourages you to go to more. The Blazers should indeed be adding their official voice to the online conversation, but it should be to spur this activity, not to limit it.

As far as the official media, you WANT these guys to have access to your stuff and to report on it. Taking the news in-house is always a mistake. You never get the result you want. If you report good news people always take it with a grain of salt because, well, it's coming from you! (If I go out and say this blog is great, for instance, it has little standing because what else am I supposed to say? If someone else says it the credibility factor goes way up.) And the first time you have bad news to report and try to spin it with the official line, people smell the difference and then your credibility is shot altogether. So whether the news is good or bad you never get the result you want. You cannot win.

Furthermore, trying to supplant the media gives them more credibility, not less. It makes them seem like truth-tellers with the guts to say what you will not. Throughout modern history every country and organization that has tried to do an end run around the media by taking reporting in-house has only served to make them more important. As with the online component, the Blazers should certainly be giving themselves press, but they should be doing it in such a way as to involve the local media, not to fight it or attempt to shut it out.

Maybe some people don't worry about these things. I do. I always worry when I hear someone state a goal and then do things which, intentionally or not, are going to subvert that goal. I like the direction the Blazers appear to be headed, on and off the court, but there's going to have to be a little bit of intentional forgetting and a lot of peacemaking forthcoming to sustain it. You cannot have a family when half of the participants are harboring resentment towards the other half, let alone actually fighting them. I pray the Blazers are wise enough to realize this, otherwise this experiment will die on the vine. And that would be sad.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Reminder

2006-07-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

I will be at tomorrow's game but I am leaving right after to travel back home. Watch for a full report of the game and a wrap-up of summer league in general Thursday night.

--Dave

Questions and Comments

2006-07-11T16:54:00.000-07:00

Folks have e-mailed a few questions and observations, so on this off-day we’ll cover them.

>>I perused the stats this morning and noticed that none of our guys are very high up in anything, even though we have a winning record. (And I am aware that some of the leaders played in fewer games and may slide rapidly.) I'd like to think that it's because we actually have a more balanced team and so all the numbers are spread among a larger number of guys while the other teams have fewer who are producing. What is your take on this?<<

You have it exactly right. While other teams are featuring single players like Ager, Foye, and Lucas, we have Webster, Outlaw, Roy, and to a lesser extent Aldridge. Also part of what we want to see from Roy (and even Webster) as guards is the ability to see the floor and make a play, so other people scoring figures in there too. We don’t necessarily want any of these guys to rule the stat sheet…in fact in a way it’s good that they’re not.

In addition, our summer league team is pretty unselfish. Part of that comes from centering around two players with experience I think. If Romero or Pinkney are open and in good position, they take the shot even when more “talented” players are on the floor. No complaints, just high fives…end of story. This also is a good thing and something that should happen more on the main team.

>>How many of these non-signed players are going to be invited to camp? Players like Pinkney and Romero and others who are getting minutes and numbers. And what are the odds of their being on the roster?<<

It’s hard to say exactly. To make it to camp a player has to be good enough to get the invite but not so good that another team with more potential to play them lures them away. This includes European teams. If I had to guess I’d say Romero gets an invitation to camp and accepts it. Pinkney might get an invitation but might not because we’re already carrying four power forwards. If he receives an invite from another NBA team with fewer forwards with guaranteed contracts he’ll probably go there. I’d say the odds were pretty long against Romero making the regular season roster because even though he has decent talent he’s 6’8” and looks to play more of a power position, which makes him a little short. Also he’s hit a number of shots, but they haven’t been self-created or under pressure. With the exception of a dunk, he hasn’t really done anything to make you notice him. (Read below for a different view from Ned, however.) If we had fewer forwards I’d say Pinkney would be a possibility for a deep bench player on the regular squad but he’s caught in that numbers game so I’d say the odds were pretty long there too. I’d like it if he made it, but I’d be surprised. I’d also be surprised if some other team didn’t give him a look though.

>>Why are they using Roy at the point? Are we still looking for a point guard? Or is that the best place for him in Summer League?<<

He has some point guard skills, though he’s going to have some adjustment to make at the NBA level. Basically they want to see if and how well he can play the position, because not only would this give us a 6’6” point guard possibility, it would open up more minutes for him and possibly allow us to consider trading Blake (if they thought he could be serviceable this year) or Jack eventually (if they thought he was going to be really good for a long time). The latter point is also valid with Martell starting at the 2-spot. Roy wouldn’t be getting nearly the minutes at shooting guard that he is at point.

Notice, though, that they’re not starting Roy, even in summer league. That job belongs to Marque Perry. I think part of what they’re doing is sending a message to Brandon about what will be expected no matter which position he plays: see the court, distribute, make your teammates better, and earn your minutes with your play. In my mind this is a lot better than taking the “here’s the ball, go score 20 kid” approach. The kid ain’t gonna score 20 or get that many shots once the ball goes up for real. In fact he may not get 20 minutes, let alone points. But in those minutes he can still do the things that are making him great here,

>>My heart sank when I read your comment "...the movement stopped and the team just died." Isn't that what we saw all last season? Why does that happen? How can an entire team stop working just like that? Is it lack of floor leadership? Something lacking in the coaching?<<

Don’t let your heart sink too much. It happens. I attended the “Perfect First Quarter” game against San Antonio in 1991. Many folks remember that when the twelve minute buzzer sounded we were up 48-19. Most have forgotten that the next three quarters were utterly non-descript. It’s human nature to let down after building a lead. When everything is going in you forget that the reason shots are falling is that you’re running the plays well. You start thinking just anything is going to fall. And when it doesn’t you start pressing more to make something fall. Pretty soon there goes your lead. More veteran leadership probably prevents such slips and the fact that we had a new head coach may have added a little, but in the end the important thing was that we ran good plays in the final minute and pulled out the win through smarts and effort.

>>I like what I've heard and read about Joel Freeland. With his athleticism and instincts, he seems farther along than Ha is, even at this point. Would you agree?<<

I guess it depends on what you mean by “farther along”. I’ve consulted with a couple internet experts on this question and they’re waffling similarly. If you mean it looks like he might grow into a regular player someday, then yes, Freeland is farther along than Ha. He also shows a greater grasp of the game (which is sad since he famously was a bag boy a few years ago). He applies defensive principles better. He’s aware of the court and his place on it better. He’s also a ton quicker, which helps. Ken pointed out that he’s often the first guy up and back on offense and defense. But as far as stepping into a game next season and providing something meaningful, I think maybe you’d still have to go with Ha just because of the impact of his body and the fact that he’s been there before. If Freeland and Ha’s growth continues at their current paces, Joel will have easily passed him up by next year though.

>>Speaking of Ha, what do you think his prospects are? I am starting to be a bit pessimistic about his future. It doesn't seem like he is successfully developing the mindset of an NBA center.<<

Ha is one of the disappointments of my summer league experience. But then that’s been said in years past too. He’s not worse than he was last year, but he’s not better either. He seems congenitally incapable of using his body to get position and grab a rebound and he might as well not exist on any kind of help defense. At a minimum, a big guy like that is supposed to eat space and in that respect he’s on the Atkins diet. That, coupled with him being a Nash project, makes me guess he’s not long for the Blazers. If we’re just talking a 15th man though, I’d probably still hold onto him and work him hard. He’s still very, very young. But as I said last night, if you look at his progress compared to Dallas’ Pavel Podkolzin, Ha isn’t in a favorable light.

>>I am starting to have similar feelings about Mr Outlaw. He is gifted athletically, no doubt about that..but after 3 years now with the Blazers, I would've hoped that he would be a more consistent, more well-rounded player. Not to be mean, but I wouldn't be sad now if we were able to unload him in a trade.<<

What we’ll do at small forward will become one of the intriguing story lines of the next season. If this is an audition for Outlaw, I’d say he’s passing but not by much. I would suspect the Blazers are feelingly similarly to you. We’re going to make use of him and will certainly not dump him for nothing, but his stock isn’t rising anymore and if he’s an attractive throw-in in a trade we’ll have no problem making that move.

>>How much will Aldridge contribute this year?<<

Some, but not a ton, at least not at first. He will be a good player within a few years. He has skills, he can jump, and he may even turn out to be a force on defense. But he’s getting pushed around a bit by summer league guys, which doesn’t bode well for the regular season. Be prepared to be pleased by what you do see of him, but also be prepared to see him in small doses. Next summer league will be his jump-off point.

Finally Ned writes:

>>One of the benefits of being an Oregonian living in Las Vegas is the chance to attend some awesome events like summer league hoops. I'm also really impressed with the play of Romero. He has a strong body and can not be kept off the boards with his tenacity, but more importantly, the guy simply works harder than anybody else. In the game against Minnesota, he took a pass on the three point line, looked hesitant at first because nobody was guarding him and then he decided to attack the defense and thunderdunked over the Minn defense. Just as impressive as that play was, I noticed that he was the first guy back on defense after the dunk. As a fan, you have to love that and as a player, you have to be inspired by that type of effort. That type of play seems to be indicative of what I've seen out of him in the past few days and will land him on somebody's bench around the league.

>>Even after Foye's impressive offensive display over the past few days, I'm glad we have Roy because his skills, size, and feel of the game allows him to play several different positions well, plus the guy is looking to distribute often and will eventually develop into one of several leaders for the Blazers. Foye's game seems similar to somebody like Iverson, in the sense that as he continues to develop his offensive game, there may not be anybody that will be able to stop this guy one on one.

>>It would be great to retain Pinkney and Romero to see how they develop their game. T-Outlaw's development seems to have plateaued a bit after several seasons with the Blazers and I wonder if he would even make the roster if the 'Zers had any depth at the 3 position this year. I'm still rooting for him to contribute as a Blazer, but at this stage he still doesn't appreciate the intricacies of the game on both ends of the floor that might have been there if he had several seasons to grow at the college level.<<

Thanks for the eye-witness view, Ned!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Should You Do It?

2006-07-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

Today was an off day for the Blazers so I didn't go to the gym. Tomorrow is their last game and I am leaving town soon after and will not get the chance to post about it until I get home on Thursday. This seems like the perfect opportunity to answer the question that a couple of you have asked outright and many more have implied in e-mails and comments: Is it worth it?

I would say that if you like Las Vegas at all, it's definitely worth making the trip. After all, you can spend as little as two hours in the gym and enjoy the city for all the rest of the time you're here. That seems like a no-brainer. Personally (and this is just my opinion...not to offend anyone) I think Las Vegas is a lot like an aging French prostitute employing too much makeup to cover the wrinkles. It's OK as long as you hold onto your wallet and don't look too close. (It's also probably more palatable in the dimness of night.) Besides that, I also drove down here in the sweltering heat, sleeping in my car on the way. And even with all that, I still enjoyed the experience and would do it again in a heartbeat. You could hardly do worse as far as the periphery, so you'll probably enjoy it too.

There are a lot of plusses to summer league. Most times you can basically choose your own seat. Always wanted to sit in the front row? Do it. Like to sit behind the Blazer bench or the opponent's? It's yours. Also you are very, VERY close to not only the players but a lot of league officials. If you've ever wanted to rub elbows with George Karl, see how tall Jeff Van Gundy really is, or find out how much cheese Mike D'Antoni likes on his nachos, this is your place. You'll see a fair number of former and current players too. And you can approach most anyone you want as they walk by. Most will take a moment to shake your hand and smile. Even if you don't feel like disturbing them, you are literally six inches from them as they pass. Yes...they're real people. You can also talk to almost any of the summer league players you want before and after the game. If you have kids who want a few autographs, this is the place.

There are a couple drawbacks. You pay for a whole day's session whether you watch one game or five. But compared to most expenses in Vegas the price is modest. Also in this day and age even a full-blown NBA game can look ragged and disjointed, and this is hardly a full-blown NBA game. There just isn't the talent base in summer league to cover all the plays that break down. However this can also be an asset. What happens (buckets and wins) isn't as crucial as how it happens and who does it. Summer league is the perfect place to practice one of my favorite pastimes--isolating on a player. This means you watch that player exclusively regardless of where the ball is or what's happening elsewhere. It'll show you exactly how that player is contributing to the whole (or not, as the case may be). In summer league you don't miss that much by focusing so narrowly. It's a great way to brush up your basketball IQ, understand how plays work, and find out about the young players all at the same time.

So yes, I'd heartily recommend visiting summer league at least once in your lifetime if you like basketball, the Blazers, and/or Las Vegas. It's a long trip, but it's worth it.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Summer League Monday

2006-07-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

Day two for me at the summer league. Today I decided to sit right behind the Blazers' bench, the better to hear what's going on. The trade-off sacrifice is that I wasn't able to see as well, because even though I was in the front row (yes, you can just do that at summer league) people kept walking in the aisle in front of me so I missed several moments. Also the coaches sometimes get in the way. Also you can only hear one word in ten anyway, so all in all it wasn't a good tradeoff. But it was a good experiment.

Game/Player Notes:

--The first quarter of the game was fantastic, as everything was clicking. Guys were moving, guys were screening, and we just went OFF on the Wizards. It could not have been better. The last three quarters the movement stopped and the team just died. We pulled out the win, but it was ugly. The game was futher marred by the summer league officials blowing whistles every ten seconds. Oy. Nevertheless we won again, which was nice.

--Martell was one of the stars of the show. When he was coming off screens (first quarter) he was deadly. I mean he hardly missed a shot. This is absolutely one of the ways he should be used...no ifs, ands, or buts. Just think Reggie Miller in the Indiana offense. He had good defensive moments, but this wasn't the same strong defensive effort we saw yesterday. It was still better than last year though, or even the end of last season. Also he is still just as intense. Martell is working hard for something. I'm interested to see what that something will be.

--Roy was also a bright spot again. Yesterday he showed off his lateral left-right moves, today he showed off his vertical hesistation stop and go stuff. And it was awesome (for summer league). If you have not seen him (and if this is any indication) you are going to love him. He also drove well again. He has a presence about him on the court...it reminds me a lot of Jarrett Jack last year. Maybe there is something to those four-year rookies.

Funny story about Roy. He was slated to sign autographs in the lobby after the game. I went out to take a break and to watch. His line went around half the building. Walt "Clyde" Frazier, a hall-of-famer, was also out there (albeit unannounced). He had maybe a half dozen people waiting. I guess the new is more interesting than the old... To Roy's credit, he stayed and signed every last autograph and beyond. He seems like a really nice kid.

--Travis had a better game today. He was more into it from the beginning. He hit more shots and played better defense. He still was a ways from adequate though. He keeps getting blown by on defense because he hesitates when someone makes a move. He did alright helping out today though. He had to be told what to do by coaches and teammates an awful lot again (for a third-year summer league player anyway).

--Lamarcus Aldridge had a little more chance to shine, especially in the post. He's having trouble sealing out bigger men in the offensive post and he's getting pushed under the bucket on low-post defense. He also needed a lot of coaching help this game, which should not be entirely unexpected. His best moment came in the second quarter when guards Marque Perry and Webster got switched up and little Perry was getting backed up in the post by a much bigger opponent. The guy got the ball and spun around Perry like he wasn't there. He skied for the jam when all of a sudden...WHOOOOOM! Aldridge came to help and jumped out of the gym to stuff it back in his face. Amazing.

--Pinkney got matched up with Wizards forward Oleksiy Pecherov, a seven-foot perimeter-shooting European. He showed that he can defend a little on the perimeter. He also made his usual couple of great help plays and tough rebounds. His head wasn't in this game as much either though (an affliction which seemed to take the whole team after they built that large 1st-quarter lead). He messed up the exact same play twice in a row. He also had seven fouls by midway through the 3rd quarter.

--Ha Seung-Jin had a poor game, which was sad to see. He still cannot seem to set a good pick. (He sets Zach-like picks, moving out of it way too early.) He can't rebound well. He is so far beyond other big guys at summer league, even the less famous ones. I was discouraged. He is still young though.

--We had serious trouble rebounding for most of the game. Opposing big guys are trouble for us.

--We also had difficulty when Washington threw on a backcourt press. We definitely need some of those veteran point guards who are waiting on the main team.

--For the critical last couple possessions our lineup was Webster, Roy, Outlaw, Pinkney, and Aldridge. They did a good job closing out the game. The clinching play came when Roy broke down the defense with a drive but missed the layup, which Pinkney promptly stuck back home. Nice. (And, by the by, exactly what opposing teams have done to us with regularity the last couple of years.)

--All the youngsters will need to work on strength. There's not a true big body among them and all of their biceps look about the same size whether they're point guards or power players.

Other Notes:

--It looks like we definitely made the right decision banking on Aldridge over Patrick O'Bryant. The kid is fast enough and has the height, but his game is really raw, especially on defense. He was no threat to stop anyone during the Golden State game. The Warrior coaches were explaining everything to him multiple times.

--Huge Dallas center Pavel Podkolin (7'5" and a ton of weight) got a fair amount of playing time. He's much more into the game and is playing much better than he used to. If today was any indication he may figure into Dallas' plans for next season.

--The key battle in the Dallas-Houston game was between late-first-rounder Maurice Ager and John Lucas, son of the famous coach. Ager was a scoring machine...an undersized guard with hops, quickness, and great shooting much like Randy Foye yesterday. He couldn't guard a mailbox with a bazooka though. Lucas torched him and also had a great overall game. He displayed a great handle, quicks, a nice shot, and beautiful court vision. You could tell he's a coach's son. Both teams have nice young guards there.

--Buck Williams is an assistant for Golden State during summer league and it was nice to see him doing well. It brought back a lot of memories. Also seen up close (six inches) in the last couple of days: Terry Porter, Mario Elie, Maurice Lucas, and the world-famous Byron Irvin, who was actually nice enough to extend his hand and introduce himself to me first. That was cool.

More tomorrow.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Summer League Sunday

2006-07-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

I'm overlooking the balcony of one of the fine hotels in Vegas having just witnessed three of the four Summer League games of the day including, of course, the Portland-Minnesota contest. Time is limited so I haven't read the Oregonian or O-Live game summaries. I'll try not to duplicate any things I know for sure will be listed there (stats and the like). From this fan's perspective in the stands, here's what things looked like...

The Veterans

Most of the pre-trip interest was in the two main vets, so we'll start there.

Good news first: Despite a poor shooting game, Martell really stood out today. The first thing you noticed was his intensity, which started during warm-ups. For a long time now warm-ups have elicited either bored indifference or joking horseplay from our players...so much so that I was surprised to see Martell going at it with concentration and vigor. At first I wondered if something was wrong. Then as I saw him march through the drills and the team following suit, I remembered what warm-ups were supposed to look like. It was refreshing.

If you only saw the stats, you might think that Martell laid an egg out there. Not so. I was really, really encouraged by his defense, which by any measure was light years ahead of where it was this time last year. His positioning was better, his hand and foot movement was better, his effort was better, the results were better. On one play in the first quarter Martell was helping on a double team at the right side of the key. The Minnesota player passed the ball past Martell, across the key to a teammate at the top. But instead of following the ball, Martell noticed a cutter down the baseline on the left side of the key and moved to pick him up. He got to the guy before the pass did and stopped the play cold. When another Blazer came to help the result was a turnover for Portland. The fact that he saw the play before it developed and then moved to stop it (and was successful) tells us something about the work he's put in and the way his game is growing.

Whatever leadership role is being put upon him, Martell appears to be taking it seriously and living up to it. That's good news. We've always known the shot would come, this was far less sure.

The only criticism I have is that he seems to be relying on the quick outside jumper too much. He did that early last year to his detriment. After he found his game again in the D-League his offense was more varied and it blossomed. He needs to get back in the groove.

Now for the bad news...

It's hard to tell anything from just one game and I don't want to make snap judgments, but if what we saw from Travis tonight is any indication, he's in for another long year. It's typical for a rookie to get "stuck in the middle" a lot, meaning that faced with a choice between Option A and Option B, he is indecisive and does neither, taking himself out of the play. Travis did that a bit tonight. The problem is, he's not a rookie anymore. Blog Reader Ken, who was also at the game, put it succinctly by saying when Travis thinks too much he's not as good. I would shade that a little. I don't have a problem with him still needing to think things through. This has been a recurring difficulty and is part of the package with him. My problem is that when he's thinking, he defaults to hesitation instead of action. Ken suggested that maybe having a new coach was part of the problem, and that's probably true, but I wouldn't have a problem if, when uncertain, he defaulted to doing what Cheeks told him to do. That's correctable. Unfortunately a lot of the time he defaults to "Uhhhh..." and ends up stuck in the middle of a play, out of position for both options. That's frustrating. And the result was him getting burned one-on-one defense, team defense, and picks. Again, you can't tell much from one game, but there was little progress shown tonight.

Travis did have a couple of classic Outlaw moments, including a huge dunk at the buzzer. They were exciting, but at this point it's kind of like seeing a one-hit-wonder band in concert. Yeah, that's a great song, but do you play anything else good? To his credit he also played steadily and didn't appear to get down on himself or quit even when things weren't going well.

The High Draft Picks

Again caution: one game, but...this was Brandon Roy's night. Nay...a night and a half. He was everywhere doing everything. He handled the ball, he played great defense, he scored when called upon. It was a great first impression. I noticed he has a great defensive stance. He has a good handle and court vision, especially for a guy who will probably end up as a shooting guard. He is willing to take it to the hoop. His body and style remind me a little bit of Rip Hamilton when he first came out, just with less of a shot and more drives, defense, and dribbling. One thing that's clear is that he can change directions on the dribble almost effortlessly. Also every dribble and step have a purpose. He doesn't waste them. That's something we haven't seen for a while around here. Roy looks pretty skinny out there though, and will really have to add some weight if he wants to be a 2.

Lamarcus Aldridge has a less obvious night, but still showed reasons for enthusiasm. He is really fluid on the court. He also has good fundamentals from what I can tell. He keeps the ball high, he shows good footwork, he stays down on the floor when guarding in the post until his opponent jumps. His shots didn't fall, but he had consistent form so there's reason to hope they will in the future. I want to see more but I walked away impressed.

The Sleepers

I know you've probably heard his name already, but 6'10" Kevin Pinkney looked really good out there. He didn't have the monster stat night like last week, but at first blush I really liked him. The thing I noticed most is he moved the entire time he was on the court. He was always doing something and most times it translated into something good. He seemed strong and well-conditioned. He made smart plays with the ball and away from it. One time Martell was dribbling down the court and Pinkney saw him coming and sealed off his man by the bucket, in essence giving Martell permission to shoot because he had the offensive rebound covered. That's perceptive teamwork, also a rare commodity around here lately. He showed glimpses of being able to shoot from range in addition to a deep post game. I saw a shades of a Kersey or Ruben Patterson in him and we need that kind of guy right now. I don't know if he can make it with the Blazers on a team already stacked with power forwards, but I'd even consider him as a tall, bruising 3 for limited minutes. If he doesn't make it here, I think he should get a look somewhere.

Joel Freeland also looked farther along than I expected. The thing you notice immediately is that he's fast. Ken pointed out he's often the first guy down the court at both ends. He had a nice poke-away steal and his shot looked decent. I like the pickup at first glance.

The Others

Hector Romero had a nice game. Marque Perry did well at the point.

The Enemies

Randy Foye drove by people left and right and scored a bundle, but I'd still rather have Roy's all-around game. Foye also seems a tad short, but it was hard to tell.

Sebastian Telfair was handily outplayed by teammate Rondo and opponent Ewing, at least for the portion of the Boston game I saw.

For those wondering Bargnani is everything advertised on offense and more. He not only hit his shots, he did it in traffic. And from range. And he has good lateral quickness and apparently a great first step (at least for Summer League). Defensively he was even more stuck in the middle than Outlaw. And it looked like he had a two foot bubble around him warding off all rebounds. He will have to do a ton of work on those parts of his game.

General Impressions

I'm going to save a post about Vegas and the experience in general for the end of the week, but a couple of thoughts:

--I hope these guys get some training about how to deal with (ahem) groupies, because you couldn't take two steps today without bumping into a hopeful lass, anywhere from apparently 13 to 50 and older. I'd think this would be the single hardest experience for a young guy to cope with skillfully and they're likely to need some good advice.

--If the public address announcers were any indication, you should view the stats coming out of Summer League as being about as accurate as a televangelist's tax return.

--There are a LOT of basketball luminaries here. And you're VERY close to them.

More later as warranted.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Getting Ahead of the Curve

2006-07-08T02:00:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read it yet, the Oregonian's feature article today is about the development of Travis Outlaw and the responsibility resting on his shoulders. Several of you have been commenting and e-mailing about him the last couple days. It appears that management agrees that this is more or less a make-or-break season for him as far as determining his role (and maybe even his future) as a Blazer. Interesting read.

It also points out one of the nice things about frequenting a blog/discussion community like this. I've chatted with a few friends by e-mail in similar fashion for years and we find that when we're really rolling, we're often a few weeks to a few months ahead of the curve as far as developing issues and stories. Of course all of our hard information comes from the media and we're greatly indebted to them, but it's also not unusual to see them break stories that we've discussed some time before. (To be fair, the reporters probably have seen them coming too, it's just that their bar for mentioning something in public is considerably higher than ours.) I'm not making any personal claim to prescience or brillance by saying that either. Something just happens with the synergy of questions, comments, and speculation when people get together and talk.

Anyway, good job blog-folks. After summer league we'll have to get into the relative merits of Jack, Blake, Dickau, and Rodriguez, as that's likely the next big (non-trade) issue on the plate. Talk to you from Vegas!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Blazer vs. Blazer II

2006-07-08T01:43:00.000-07:00

Time again for our weekend feature comparing two Blazers to each other and asking which you'd rather have. The idea is simple: leave a comment or e-mail which one of these two guys you'd most like on your team and why. You may use any criteria you wish when making your decision, but even though you probably like both, try to make a decision for one or the other. (Having to choose creates a tension that is half the fun!)

I really shouldn't bring out the ultimate matchup only the second week into the process, but the truth is everybody knows it's coming and if I don't bring it up people are going to start asking for it. Besides, it's likely to be a long weekend and this will definitely occupy the time. So here it goes. It gets no better than this...

Who do you want at power forward, Maurice Lucas or Buck Williams?

Be sure to explain your rationale. And if there's debate, try to keep it friendly!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Viva...well, you know

2006-07-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

The first reports from summer league seem semi-encouraging. Roy and Aldridge had decent games, Webster lit up the gym, no word on sleepers yet but you wouldn't expect that from Game 1. It's sad we won't get any Spanish Chocolate action because he's the guy (besides Freeland) that we haven't seen and it seems the loose level of Summer League defense would cater to showing his strengths. I don't know how much we'll see him play in the next season or two but just once I'd like to see the guy work it and show why he was so intriguing in the first place.

When all's said and done, however, summer league is the online dating forum of the basketball world. No matter how good things go in that venue, you're going to start at square one again when you take the next step. Just as your Prince Charming of the Keyboard often turns out to be Squire Fugly in real life, the flaws of Summer League Superstars are usually illuminated by the regular season's rosy dawn. In short, you can sure kill your chances in summer league, but you can't raise them that much.

Nevertheless, it's a good opportunity to see what the rookies look and move like, for returning vets to show off new biceps and improved jumpers, and for fans to get some much needed grist for the debate mill. Plus, in addition to being a sop for our curiosity and a chance to rubberneck all the NBA glitterati, I imagine it's a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I have decided to make the 1000+ mile drive myself to go down and see those guys. Obviously I am missing the first two games (darn responsibilities, you know) but I will be at the games from Sunday on. Since I have to pay for my tickets I probably won't have the same kind of inside info as Jason Quick, Eric Marentette, or the gushingly optimistic Mike Barrett, but I figure I can give a little bit of fan perspective not only on the game but on the experience as a whole. Who knows, maybe folks would consider making the trip part of their vacation next year? (After all, Vegas should be full of things for non-Blazer-fan family members to do while you watch the young guys.) We'll see if it's worth it. And besides, having complete editorial freedom and (as you well know) unlimited space, maybe I can find a nuance or two to bring out that the others might miss.

Long story short, there will be a post tomorrow morning and then between the travel, the game, and needing to eat and get situated, I'll probably be out of touch until late Sunday night. Look for reflections (hopefully) Monday morning!

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Hassell Redux?

2006-07-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

Marc Stein's report on the first day of the Vegas Summer League contained an interesting little tidbit about the efforts of Houston, Dallas, and Minnesota to sign Toronto point guard Mike James, in whom the Raptors are no longer interested. While the former two teams are offering mid-level exceptions, Minnesota is said to be pursuing a sign-and-trade. But apparently Toronto isn't interested in taking Trenton Hassell in return. Question: do we still like him? What if it also meant getting rid of one of our alleged (qualification added in deference to The Prophet) headaches? Toronto GM Bryan Coangelo, fresh out of Phoenix, is trying to build a running team in the Suns' model. Darius would fit like a glove on that kind of team, perhaps even playing some power forward. Would the Raptors be interested? Miles' salary is tradeable for Hassell and Mark Madsen (small extra loss for the 'Wolves there). If James could be signed to a salary to fit--which is quite possible with the Raptors under the cap--everybody would get their man. We'd likely cut Madsen and he could return to Minnesota or wherever. I know we already have Roy, Webster, and Dixon at the shooting guard, but Juan doesn't seem to figure into the team's long-range plans and it might be nice to have a veteran in that slot who is also a lock-down defender. Hassell could also probably defend some small forwards, especially coming off the bench.

Perhaps he was a Nash guy and thus persona non grata around the Blazers' office now, but if we still like him it might be worth looking into.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Nate Guys

2006-07-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Largely unspoken in this whole Joel-resigning deal is the vote of confidence he showed not just in his teammates or his organization, but his coach. Again, not to use Joel as the pinnacle of everything NBA, but it shows that some players do like to play for a guy who demands they be accountable and play better than they otherwise would.

You can't have a discussion about the current roster, which free agents we should acquire, or what trades we should make nowadays without the phrase "Nate guys" coming up somewhere in the process. Some people revere the phrase, others seem wary of it. The way I understand it, I don't think there's a choice. If "Nate guy" means someone who plays defense, rebounds, and gives energy on the court in addition to whatever scoring they provide, then "Nate guy" is pretty much synonymous with "winner", anything else the reverse.

Run down the list of NBA champions in the last three decades and you'll see what I mean:

Miami: Shaq and Wade
San Antonio: Tim Duncan and friends
Detroit: Ben and Rasheed Wallace (and Tayshaun Prince and so on)
Los Angeles: Shaq and Kobe
Chicago: Jordan and Pippen
Houston: Hakeem
Detroit: Isiah, Dumars, Rodman, et al.
Los Angeles: Kareem, Worthy (maybe Magic is your best argument against but even he played strong in many areas and he was unique anyway)
Boston: Bird, McHale, Johnson, Ainge, Parish, Walton
Philadelphia: Moses Malone, Cheeks (Dr. J might have been slipping a little on defense by then)
Seattle: Dennis Johnson, Jack Sikma
Washington: Wes Unseld, Elvin Hayes, Mith Kupchak
Portland: Walton, Lucas, etc.

All of these guys were well-rounded and gave effort and led their teammates to do the same. None of these teams got by on "talent". The closest bet would be the overwhelming natural ability of the Showtime Lakers, but Pat Riley used to work them two hours a day in practice and they never complained. Some of the best defensive guys and rebounders of all time are either on that list or were the teammates of people who are. That often gets overlooked in the admiration of stats and rings.

Are there non-Nate-guys in the league? Sure. Can you get them? Sure. Does the move look good on paper? Sure. Will you win? Nope. Because somebody else has just as much talent and just as much scoring but works harder and plays better than you do.

I suspect part of what influenced Joel to re-sign was that he knew Nate was going to stick to his guns and demand high-level play from the team. He wanted to be a part of that, and other good players will too. Some won't, but then I'm not sure we'd want them anyway.

I can't remember if I've said it before here (and I'm too lazy to pore through 200-odd pages of archives to check) but I've said it in private a few times. If I were the owner one of the first things I'd do is sit down with Nate and offer to play Rooney Family to his Bill Cowher. Everybody makes mistakes and everybody learns over time, but when you know you have a solid guy you need to keep him. The public was calling for Cowher's head a few times over the years, but the Steelers defied convention by sticking with him for the long haul. The results were players who knew what was expected when they came to Pittsburgh, a team synonymous with that hard-nosed style of play, and an eventual Superbowl Championship. Joel re-signing heralds that the first part may be coming true (in a small way so far, sure, but we'll take what we can get). Hopefully the second and third will someday follow.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Rooks

2006-07-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

Tom, a long-time (and hard to please when it comes to Blazer matters) friend, writes:

>>As a total Duck fanatic and life long follower of Pac 10 basketball I'm very glad to see us get Brandon Roy even if he is a Husky. He probably is the best all around player in the draft. While averaging 20pg he also contributed 4.1pg in assists and 5.6pg in rebounds. Throw in a guy who shoots over 50% from the field and 80% from the line and I'm still surprised he went at number six.

Beyond the stats I like his maturity. He played all four years at UW and is an articulate and intelligent young man who wanted the ball in the crunch and usually made it. I also see him as a potential team leader as he was in college where his team had some nice runs in March Madness and played some tough non-conference foes as well. And did I mention he can defend too?<<

I am enthused about Roy too. In fact I find myself more excited to see him play than Aldridge even, perhaps because his label of "most ready for the NBA" allows me to have a little higher expectations of him. But that brings up an interesting question to weigh in on (or as School Marm would put it, "upon which to weigh in"...oh wait, it ends with a preposition either way, doesn't it...can't win):

Based on what you've read, heard, seen, or know, who are you more excited about acquiring, Lamarcus Aldridge or Brandon Roy? Why?

I confess that I know fairly little more than the basics about either, so you'll have to help me out. Fire away in the comment section or by e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Man of Our Dreams

2006-07-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

No doubt you've read the news by now. Joel Przybilla turned down the Spurs (and maybe Detroit and Cleveland) to re-sign with us. This comes as quite a relief because otherwise I would have spent all that time learning how to correctly spell his name for nothing.

Seriously, though, what a boost for the franchise. We have a serviceable center, starting or backing up, for the next 4-5 years at a very reasonable price. But not only that, we just got the message that at least one of the players really believes in the franchise, which is a message that's been largely absent for more than a decade. Now I'm not naive enough to think that if Chicago had offered Wallace-type money Joel would have turned them down. He probably couldn't have, and thank goodness for us he wasn't tested like that. But let's get serious...the guy had a chance to go to teams that certainly had one or two legitimate championship runs left in them. He could have spent half his contract playing for a spot in the NBA finals. He also probably turned down the team with the brightest star in the league...an organization that needed his skills and would have adored him. He did that to stay here. He chose to stay here. Say that again...he chose...to stay...here.

There was no reason to do that. Nobody would have blamed him if he left, not even Portland fans. And despite what some are likely to claim, I don't think the two million bucks more that we could offer him over five years was enough to tip the scales. This wasn't a money decision. This wasn't a "lets all get on the winning side and have fun" decision. This was a Portland Trailblazers decision...a decision that means somebody cared enough and had enough pride and passion to wear our uniform.

Believe me, I am not overvaluing Joel's skills or impact. I do like his game, but he's also been foul prone, injured, even sometimes ineffective. I think this signing helps us for sure, but I do not think it makes us good. My feeling that we'll have another very hard season next year already took Joel coming back into account. (I shudder to think what it would be like without him.) When we're 8-22 next season there will be no need to write "What do you think of Joel now?" I will think of him then the same things I think of him now: he was a player in demand who could have gone elsewhere but stayed in order to do his best to give a boost to this franchise. How much of a boost and how soon it comes are less important right now than the fact that he did it.

And Lord, I hope it's contagious. However it plays out, Joel just showed a huge vote of confidence in his teammates and this organization. Let's hope this causes some of the other young guys to pick up that confidence, that loyalty, and that passion too. I know it seems sentimental, but there's also some truth to it: this is the kind of thing that can begin to turn a group of talented hired hands into a team. And one way or another, you need to be a team before you can win.

It isn't a ton of money, it isn't much of a team at this point, but I hope the move will pay off for Joel and the Blazers big time in the years to come. It seems appropriate to say thanks, Joel. A lot of us believe very deeply in the team and the possibility of its resurgence. It's good to feel like somebody wearing the scarlet and black does too.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

By the way, not that anybody's counting, but this is officially the 100th post of this blog. We couldn't have asked for a nicer subject. Happy first century everyone, and hopefully many more for us all.

Go (Mid)West, Young Man

2006-07-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

The most popular Blazer pasttime for the rest of the off-season will certainly be playing "Backseat GM" on the trade front. I normally don't do much of that stuff because my fingers get tired clicking back and forth on the trade checkers, and frankly if we come up with it chances are actually GMs thought of it and discarded it months ago. Either that or it's too complicated to ever work in reality. I love reading about those potential six-team, twenty-two player deals that have to be consummated on a Tuesday before a full moon provided the sixteenth player signs a contract at roughly half his market value and then agrees to be traded to Guam.

However, as the off-season action heats up I can't help but consider a couple of "what ifs", both involving midwestern teams.

The first is wholly speculative and probably wouldn't work, but for several reasons I would love to see Chicago sign Ben Wallace and then find a way to fit Zach under the cap too. First of all I love it from their perspective. Wallace is the one guy in the league who could erase nearly all of Zach's shortcomings. Zach, in turn, would find ample opportunity to employ his inside-outside scoring prowess alongside Big Ben. It would be a match made in heaven, and it just seems like the basketball gods should make that happen. With all of their talent at the small positions, I think the Bulls could reasonably expect to be a playoff team for a long time. Our piece of candy in this, besides clearing cap space so we could be the next Chicago, would be that pick they're fixing to swap with the Knicks next year. It would also eliminate one of the major salary teams from the Przybilla sweepstakes. The problem is we wouldn't want to take any long-term salaries in return. Taking Tyson Chandler back wouldn't solve our problem. And the only way I could get it to work with the trade checker was for them to give us Chandler and Nocioni, which I don't think they'd do. (But they should. If we thought Chandler were an answer at center this would be a good deal for us.) If anyone could figure out a way this would work without having Chicago give up half its team and without us going back into cap hell for players worse than Zach, let me know.

Check out Chicago's potential lineup:

Kirk Hinrich
Ben Gordon
Tyrus Thomas
Zach Randolph
Ben Wallace

With Deng, Nocioni, Chandler, and Duhon coming off the bench (unless one of them were traded to us).

On a more realistic front it didn't escape notice that Milwaukee traded away its main point guard in T.J. Ford for Charlie Villaneuva this week and also that the Bucks and Blazers were rumored to be hot and heavy in trade talks just before the draft. This might be a possible destination for Blake as a throw-in to a deal. There are several Milwaukee players of interest, including Dan Gadzuric, Jamaal Magloire and Joe Smith (both for salary cap purposes if nothing else), and maybe even Villanueva himself. All of those players would be back-ups to a frontcourt tandem of Bogut and Randolph. If we're just going for cap relief and a little size, Randolph, Miles, and Blake for Magloire, Smith, and Gadzuric does work under cap rules. You can throw in Villanueva for Gadzuric if you want more talent, though you'd have to do it after August 30th because Villanueva was recently traded. There are also combos that work with just Zach and a couple of those players. This might be a hot place to keep your attention.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Mystery Men

2006-07-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

TP43 (he helpfully explained the moniker stands for "Terry Porter for Three" which I love not only for the classic reference but because it calmed my initial fears of a strange toilet paper obsession) writes:

>>What gives with Blake? I hope I'm reading too much into it but the only mention I've heard the brass give him was Nate pointing out his contract is up after next season. Beyond that, none of the amigos mentions him when talking about their core group moving forward and seemed to imply Sergio is his replacement in a year. I totally get that he's elevated his value league wide and will be more expensive to retain but don't you see him as a long term fit? He's young, he's got decent size at the 1, he D's up (can you see Bassy giving Kobe fits like Steve did late last year?), he can shoot it, and he's got a great assist to turnover ratio. These are all critical things the brass identifies as need areas and clearly these are quintessential "Nate guy" characteristics. Frankly, much as I love JJack I would say it's 50/50 that Steve continues to surprise and earns the starting job.

>>I haven't heard anybody talk about Travis since the draft. I wonder what his role is moving forward? Does management believe he can finally step into that scrappy Reuben - Viktor role with the added benefit of a quickly developing perimeter shooter's game? I'm hoping this is why they were willing to move Viktor but it seems as though he's not been mentioned as part of the core either. If they're serious about moving Darius, you would think his role will have to expand - even if they don't move Darius. <<

Both excellent points/questions, and as the ramifications of the draft shook out I too found myself wondering about the implications for these two guys. As far as I can tell the possibilities for each player run the gamut from starting to being traded, which makes for very interesting speculation.

I like your analysis of Blake, although I would de-emphasize the defensive prowess just slightly. Yes, he had a decent game against Kobe and yes he works hard on defense, but I'd still shade his overall "D" more into the category of really good (for a Blazer) than really good (period). I say this only because I've read reviews some places that sound like they're placing him at Gary Payton level, and that's just not accurate. He's not a true stopper, but he does do a good job of staying in front of his man, which is more point guard defense than we've had around here since Terry Porter (Strickland, Stoudamire, and Bassy not being known for their "D").

The acquisition of Dickau puts Blake's status in question. I know John Nash said repeatedly that a team really needs three point guards to ward against injuries, and with the new 15-man roster there's plenty of room. But that doesn't change the fact that one of those three is going to be a practice player and never see the light of day, especially since Brandon Roy takes away the possibility of one of them being a combo guard. Jack obviously won't be guy sitting. Dickau is signed for two more seasons and there's less point to putting him there...it's not like his game is going to develop more in practice as Sebastian's or Blake's might have. That could leave Blake the odd man out, at least in theory. At the very least it leaves his role confused.

Whatever position Blake ends up in, you have the same problem. Steve's deal expires after this season. If he's our third-string point guard he'll not re-sign with the club. As TP and Nate pointed out his value has already gone up, so it's questionable whether he'll make a financially practical signing for the long-term primary back-up or whether he'd see himself in that role. We'd probably have to think he was a starter to keep him--clearly a problem with the team so high on Jack.

Put another way: If he's that good we won't want to pay him because he'd either be taking time from Jack or wasting his talent on the bench. If he's not that good why bother re-signing him at all?

Blake's value to us, then, seems primarily confined to this season. And even with the new optimism this season isn't going to be a serious run at anything. It's likely management will decide that Dickau will make an acceptable backup for what we need right now, with maybe Spanish Chocolate or another alternative on the Horizon.

Brian Meehan speculated today that the door was open to trade our big-asset players, but that because of their questionable history we'd have to package other guys along with them to make moves. He said that part of the draft agenda was to open up those possibilities. The more I think about it, the more Blake seems like one of management's possible trading chips. He might be young enough, good enough, and cheap enough to be the last feather that tips the scales for somebody looking to take on Zach and/or Darius. Certainly few others on this team fit that description. At least not players with whom we'd be willing to part.

Outlaw has a lot of the same trade-attraction as Blake (young, cheap, potential) with the potential shading more towards athleticism than skill. Travis' situation isn't quite as wide-open as Blake's though because (assuming Miles is part of a deal) you have no ready-made replacement if you trade him. Any trade would have to bring back a small forward in return. I know some think that Martell may be a 3 but my feeling on that is he's a young guy just finding his way in the league and one of your best shots at being a really good player down the road. You put him in the position where he's most likely to succeed and you keep him there. Presuming you think his best position is the 2, you don't mess with his confidence and growth by switching him up at this point.

Travis showing flashes of scoring talent would be an argument that he could maybe be our starting small forward someday. Travis being a Bob Whitsitt acquisition in this new era of purging the past could point to him being moved. He will also have contract issues next season, as it's time for his qualifying offer and/or extension. If management doesn't believe in him he'll surely be moved before then. But if they do like him he can't go anywhere, which makes him a safer prospect to like at this point than Blake.

I'm more up in the air about this one, but if I had to guess I'd say that if the right deal came along the Blazers would be fine with moving Travis as part of a larger package, but unless they've already given up on him they won't feel a particular need to dump him. If he does stay this will be an audition year for him as a decent-minutes guy, much the same way last year was for Zach as team leader.

When it comes down to it I actually like Blake a little more than Outlaw but the team situation seems to indicate that Travis is the more likely of the two to stay. Obviously none of this is definitive though. Only the Blazers know what they're planning next. (Assuming, of course, that even they do.)

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

First Weekend Poll

2006-07-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

TP43 wrote in with some good questions/comments about Blake and Outlaw, but they're going to have to wait until Monday, because a little back and forth between Ignacio and Lance Uppercut in the comments section spawned what I hope is a neat idea for weekends around here. Every weekend (until further notice) you can weigh in on a Blazer vs. Blazer poll. The idea is simple: which guy do you like better? You can interpret that any way you wish...it's intentionally open. For the current team, their own team, stats, gut feelings, on court, off court...whatever you feel like using to make the decision is ok. Leave your vote and a little bit of an explanation why in the comments section or by e-mail.

The first poll is an extenstion of the original Lance/Iggy tete-a-tete:

Joel Przybilla or Chris Dudley?

Knock yourselves out.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Picture

2006-06-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

O-Live's Eric Marentette has a picture of three of the newest Blazers (Aldridge, Roy, and Freeland) standing together at their introduction at Peninsula Middle School today. You know what I like about that picture? Roy is in the middle of the other two and he doesn't look that much shorter. (Some, but not a ton.) My heart sank a little bit when Minnesota took Roy and sank even further when we took Foye, whether the latter was hyped as a possible rookie of the year or not. The guy wasn't much taller than David Stern and that's usually trouble for a guy who will end up playing a lot of shooting guard. No such difficulties with B-Roy.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Joel

2006-06-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

With tomorrow marking the beginning of the free-agent negotiation season, I'd like to pick up a little bit on what both the O-Live Blog and the Behind the Blazer Beat Blog are saying about Joel Przybilla. At this point we need him. We need him badly.

It's not only a matter of big bodies, though Quick and Tokito made that point quite well concerning next year's roster and its lack of true centers. It's also what Joel brings to the table.

--He's a decent defensive rebounder, and we don't have a single other proven one on the team. Hopefully Aldridge will pick up on this and Skinner can certainly fill in, but neither are guaranteed minutes, especially if Zach remains. And I don't have confidence in Aldridge tearing up the league on the boards with that body if you play him primarily at center this first year. (He might make strides and maybe he'll surprise me, but I doubt it'll be enough to carry the team.) The thing is, Joel amassed his rebounding numbers only playing 24 minutes a game and being put out of rebounding position half the time by having to cover for the leaky defense of the guards. I'm hoping that at some point during this season Jack, Webster, and Roy will start to pick up a little more defensively. I'd like to see what Joel could do with more minutes and without having to play goalie.

--Joel is also the most unselfish of our current frontcourt players on both ends of the court. He plays help defense consistently, which Miles does sometimes but Zach almost never does. He doesn't need to touch the ball to be effective on the offensive end either. He seldom gets a shot but he makes 54% of the ones he takes. Those qualities are in short supply among our frontline starters and quite necessary given the makeup of the team.

--Joel is the best, and maybe the only, pick-setter on the team. In fact he's one of the better pick-setters in the league. He stands in there, he takes the hit, he rolls efficiently...he's near textbook. As I've said before, Martell really needs a pick or two to get good looks. Getting them adds 4-6 points to his average easy. If Joel himself doesn't give them, he can set the example for others who will. Again I hope Aldridge will develop into this kind of player, but it's too early yet to depend on him.

--Joel brings a little bit of toughness to a team that almost completely lacks it. We have skill guys, leapers, and streaky shooters to spare, but we don't have a single really hard-nosed player outside of Joel and maybe Skinner. It's hard to win in this league without a little tough in you. And it's hard to be tough if you don't feel your teammates are beside you and have a little tough in them too. Joel doesn't back down. He's feisty. We need that.

--On a more general note, while the league may be shifting towards the guards again, big men are still at a premium. We saw how coveted they were in the draft. The ones that come available on the open market cost a lot of money...maybe more than they're worth. If Joel were to re-sign at the mid-level exception, it would be a complete no-brainer for us. We couldn't even begin to replace him at that level even if we could find a decent center to come in.

The beat writers thought that the chances that he'd stay were slim, and I can see why. If we were able to offer even three million more a year I think we'd have a shot, but even with steady raises, 5.5 million to start isn't much compared to what a center gets nowadays. Doubly so when your agent is in your ear talking about rare opportunities and possible disasters. But I'm still hoping that somehow there's an 11th hour conversion. It might not be the best thing for Joel, but it'd be the best thing for us.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

More Reaction

2006-06-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

As I read through the morning's reaction from fans and columnists alike I couldn't help but be struck by what a big and weird day yesterday was in terms of people's perception of the team. I know I've used this analogy before, but it's appropriate: The WWE couldn't have scripted something this radical. Steve Patterson turns from heel to babyface. John Canzano turns from heel to face also. (How did they both manage that at the same time?) Paul Allen makes a similar turn. Kevin Pritchard goes from questionable guy to the consensus next GM. Adam Morrison goes from the #1 headline to a footnote in history. Around here I reverse the trend by turning from babyface into (I hope temporary) heel. And Fatty, the new rising star around here, writes in the comment section that this is the "renaissance" of the Blazers, which is both uncharacteristically positive and shockingly multisyllabic for him.

I feel like the legendary Joe Schmoe when I say, "What is going ON here???" Isn't it amazing how quickly things can change?

Jorga offers her usual sensible and important thoughts by e-mail:

>>I just hope that the fans will be patient. It's pretty exciting getting two lottery picks - we have to remember this is just a so-so draft. I am just afraid that if we don't start off playing .500 ball that the fans are going to start griping again.<<

I agree that we're going to have trouble winning in the short term and I also agree about the caution about the draft. It'll take a while for the youngsters to develop and when they do I'd be more than happy if they turned out to be solid starters. I'm not expecting miracles. I do hope that this good feeling lasts longer than just the draft buzz and I hope the fans give the team an honest chance over the next couple of years. What we saw yesterday was the light at the end of the tunnel...or maybe the first faint possibility of light...but we're hardly out of the tunnel yet. There's a lot to be excited about but a lot of work to be done also.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

P.S. I was just messing with you, Fatty. You are one of the best characters in this motley group and a budding superstar. I bet you dollars to doughnuts one day we're going to see a Fatty Blog. It'll be super long with very narrow margins. I look forward to it...

Brilliance?

2006-06-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, Chad Ford (via Eric Marentette, link at right) offers this explanation for the Roy deal:

"Of the four, Roy is my favorite pick, and I like the way they maneuvered to get him. The Blazers caught wind of the Wolves' plan to take Roy and trade him to the Rockets. So Portland drafted the guy the Wolves wanted, Randy Foye, forcing the Wolves to send Roy to Portland for Foye."

Now...far be it from me to give attribute a ton of credibility to Chad Ford, but if this is the way it went down that was pretty brilliant. That's hardball. (And good bluff calling.) Maybe Minnesota thought we'd pick Rudy Gay at #7? In any case, if true, they were going to get their money from either Houston or us, so it didn't cost them anything to try it.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Reading

2006-06-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read it already, Behind the Blazers Beat provides a great rundown of the draft day action.

--Dave

Owned?

2006-06-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

Lauryn brings up a question that I'm sure is on a lot of our minds:

>>WHY was PA paying out and buying up draft picks if he doesn't have a vested interest in this team much longer? That is the story behind the story in my opinion. Does that seem logical to you?<<

I batted this one around in my head for a while too. I came up with two possibilities:

1. He's still going to own the team.

2. He decided if he's going to go out, he's going out his way. Last night was certainly more old-school Paul Allen than the recent vintage. Wheeling...dealing...free (some might say frivolous) spending...it almost felt like 1999.

Unhelpful, isn't it? The truth is nobody has ever known what's going on in PA's mind except for PA. I will say one thing however...if the response to the draft is any indication, he's done a good job of reinvigorating the fans and giving them optimism for a while. Six trades and two lottery picks certainly got everybody excited. I think for many it felt like somebody opened the door and let the stale air out and we got some circulation again. So maybe it's a combination of 1 and 2.

Guesses?

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

The Day After

2006-06-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh...welcome to the post-draft hangover. As we rub the sleep from our eyes and wonder exactly what happened in our wild night of binging, let's roll over and look at our roster as it now stands.

Point Guard:
Steve Blake
Jarrett Jack
Dan Dickau
(Sergio Rodriguez)

Shooting Guard:
Martell Webster
Juan Dixon
Brandon Roy

Small Forward:
Darius Miles
Travis Outlaw

Power Forward:
Zach Randolph
Brian Skinner
Raef LaFrentz
Lamarcus Aldridge

Center:
Ha Seung-Jin
(Joel Przybilla)
(Joel Freeland)

(The guys in parentheses either aren't signed or will probably spend the year in Europe. I also assumed that Voshon Lenard is gone.)

Things to ponder:

--Obviously these moves show confidence in Jarrett Jack, which is not surprising, but do they also show confidence in Travis Outlaw? Assuming Miles gets moved, he's no worse than the primary backup at small forward this year. He could be the starter if we don't get a small forward in return. (There will be sentiment to start Roy at the 2 and Webster at the 3 but I imagine it'll take a while for Roy to gain that confidence.) Who knows, maybe he'll still get moved, but if the roster stays similar we'll be relying on him.

--Sticking with the guards, very soon we're going to have the option to run a three guard lineup from time to time. We haven't had that in a while.

--The obvious question for the big men is who plays center. Does this mean they think we can re-sign Joel? Otherwise we're going to have a power-forward-by-committee post presence and that ain't good. Raef used to be a center but is more of a perimeter power forward now. Skinner can play some center but isn't really a first option there. Aldridge is too slight yet and Zach won't like being a 5. I'm hoping that Joel comes back...

--If we get the center position filled, that still leaves us with a glut of power forwards. As I said last night, it doesn't feel like we're done here. Assuming we also want to move Miles, we seemed primed for a forwards-for-forwards trade. The question is, with whom?

--Does anyone have any insight as to why we traded Alexander Johnson? Reports said the Blazers were high on him because of his athleticism. We traded for him in the second round and then traded him away for future second round picks. Was it just a pick-grabbing ploy?

All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic. The backcourt certainly looks a lot further along than last year's roster. You could live with those guys for quite a while. Aldridge will have to hold down at least one of those frontcourt positions long-term to make it work though. I don't expect to be great, or even good, in the immediate future, but I do want to feel like we're one step closer. At first blush it feels that way now.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Draft Recap Part II: The Periphery

2006-06-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

Besides talent there were several peripheral issues to this draft. Obviously it was the most active draft in terms of trades in Trailblazer history, and likely among the most active for any single team ever. Frankly, though, I was disappointed with much of what happened. That we got the guys we want was fine, but how we did it was questionable.

Greg Anthony was perfectly correct in pointing out that we did not have to make the trade for Aldridge. Granted Chicago probably bluffed at him in order to draw us into that scenario, but we fell for it and it cost us a player unnecessarily.

My belief is that the consequences of our actions caught up with us in the Foye/Roy deal. Of course I have no inside information of any kind, so who really knows what went down there, but trading players selected with consecutive picks is unusual to say the least and worthy of further examination and explanation.

The trade was announced about five to ten minutes after the picks were made. Ask yourself, if Foye wasn’t part of the Timberwolves’ plans all along, how in the world did we, in that short time, convince them to take him in exchange for a player they supposedly selected after months of preparation? Obviously this couldn’t happen. What Minnesota did is select the player they knew we wanted, knowing that they could get something extra from us just like Chicago did. Again, there’s no proof, but isn’t it a little convenient that Danny Ainge, the GM doing the selecting for us in the seven slot, just happens to be a long-time teammate and friend of Kevin McHale, the V.P. of Basketball Operations for the sixth-picking Timberwolves? If either Foye or Roy were acceptable to the Wolves one phone call from Ainge saying, “Portland really wants Roy…” would be enough to enable the leverage play by McHale. And don’t think that wouldn’t have happened. It’s a cutthroat business, and if you show weakness you deserve whatever you get. Even if there was no information passed, just tipping our hand early would have netted the same result.

Anyway, how it happened is not the point. The point is that it did happen. Bottom line: Chicago got exactly the player they wanted plus Viktor Khryapa for free and Minnesota got exactly the player they wanted plus cash for free...gifts courtesy of your Portland Trailblazers. We got worked twice in front of the whole NBA, the second time in a manner so obvious as to be unmistakable.

There’s nothing more enticing at the poker table than a fish (new person/sucker) with a large bankroll. The good players will bluff him and bluff him all night long until he calls the bluff or surrenders all his chips, whichever comes first. We were the fish tonight, and we showed both our bankroll and our gullibility to be substantial. You can bet everybody else was taking notes. If the current management team stays in place, you can almost guarantee that in every draft from now on one or two teams are going to threaten to take whatever guy they think we want in hopes of getting something extra out of us until we call that bluff and refuse to pay out.

Rumor has it that a common phrase around Blazer headquarters a few years ago was “SPAM”, or “Spending Paul Allen’s Money”. That’s why Vulcan was brought in to run a tight ship and half the staff got the axe. Well, having the Blazer front office spending Paul Allen’s money unnecessarily is one thing, but you’re in real trouble when guys in Minnesota and Chicago start adopting SPAM as their catchphrase too.

As harsh as the commentary was sometimes, they had a point. What transpired tonight made us look foolish, confused, and worst of all weak. We were amateurs out there. Isiah Thomas has a league-wide reputation for being a certain kind of patsy. We now have a rep for being another. It was sloppy execution and needs to be looked at and corrected.

(Update: Lauryn writes that they announced at the draft party that it was indeed Steve Patterson who called McHale and brokered the deal. So we ended up paying the difference between a #6 and #7 rookie salary slot plus cash to take Roy. While "insurance" deals like this are sometimes done, this doesn't change the fact that we paid out to both teams when we didn't need to.)

Speaking of harsh commentary…the second issue of the night is undoubtedly going to be Steven A. Smith’s vitriolic diatribes, many of which were reserved for the Blazers. I know it’ll get a reaction, but remember he’s paid to do exactly that. He wouldn’t be the first sports reporter to become a total “faux-controversial” ass because somebody flashed a T.V. show and money in front of his face. Actually Rush Limbaugh perfected the art form. Unfortunately few of his millions of media imitators have his talent, and Smith obviously doesn’t. In my mind if you object to him the best tack is just to ignore him and recognize what he says for the ridiculous tripe it is. He gets rewarded if you like him. He gets rewarded if you hate him. He gets nothing if you don’t give a crap because he’s just silly.

I must admit, though, it was pretty funny to hear him say he had no time for things like analyzing Portland's foolishness when ESPN was paying him to spend his time doing exactly that. What...did you have a golf game you had to get to? Grilled cheese sandwich burning on the stove? Meds ran out and the pharmacy was closing? Whatever it was, it's a shame when guys get too important to bother covering the sport that makes them important in the first place.

Unfortunately this is what sports reporting has become nowadays. If you haven’t done so already, read back in the April archives for a post on sports commentators. If you’re wondering why it’s so hard nowadays to have a decent conversation with someone, online or off, about sports or anything else controversial, you’ve just seen part of the problem. Personally it would bother me to have my whole career stand for a kind of discourse that makes the world worse instead of better and teaches people to be less civil and thoughtful instead of more, but apparently most folks don’t have those qualms, especially when a nice, fat paycheck is in the offing.

Hey...if you get sick of it you're always welcome here. We may be right sometimes, we may be wrong sometimes, but we try really hard not to be total dipwads.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Draft Recap Part I: The Players

2006-06-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

The most important part of this day is the plus/minus on the players, so we'll recap that first. A couple of peripheral issues will be addressed in the next post.

The most solid thing you can say about the draft is that the Blazers got exactly the players they targeted and more of them than originally hoped for. For that reason, whatever else you say, you have to say this was a good night. Here's the long and short of what we got and gave up:

ACQUIRED
Lamarcus Aldridge--Young, talented, tall power forward who might be able to play center someday. Probably a good defender someday.
Brandon Roy--Most all-around solid player in the draft, 6'6" guard who could eventually see time at both backcourt spots. Decent shooter and defender.
Sergio Rodriguez--A popular, talented point guard with potential star quality who is good on offense but has serious defensive questions.
Joel Freeland--A tall, skinny British kid who is a project at best for the next two years.
Raef LaFrentz--Another PF/C with a large, three year contract, a decent perimeter game, but health and talent concerns.
Dan Dickau--A backup combo guard with a nice shooting touch and some smarts but not much else.
Three future second round picks

Gave Up (Note this will not include players we drafted just to trade, as we never had them.)
Sebastian Telfair--A popular, talented point guard with potential star quality who is good on offense but has serious defensive questions who also has two years of experience in the league.
Theo Ratliff--A center with a large, two year contract and great shot-blocking ability but health and talent concerns.
Viktor Khryapa--A backup small forward who did a hundred little things right and was popular with the fans.
A 2008 second round pick
A whole wad of cash

A few things stand out:

1. We acquired a whole lot more players than we lost. Unless some of these guys get cut or shuffled to Europe, we're going to have to make more trades to cut the roster down, especially if we think we need more veterans.

2. We now have a TON of power fowards. Is a major trade in the offing? You would think that since he's in the owner's doghouse Isiah would be kept on a short leash. But if he has one year to prove himself with unfettered GM and coach power winning now would become very important to him. And he needs better forwards to win. And he didn't draft any. And Zach and Darius would probably help him win more next season than Channing Frye and Jalen Rose, at least on paper. Just sayin'...

3. We also, by the way, have too many guards still. Best bet is that Dixon is going.

4. It's no wonder people were confused when we traded Telfair and Ratliff but picked up Rodriguez and LaFrentz. Both of the acquisitions have all the problems of the old players plus some more besides. The single worst pick up of the day was LaFrentz's contract. In fact had we been able to keep Theo and not take Raef I would have been a lot happier.

5. We did not pick up much toughness or interior power, two things sorely lacking from this team. But I guess you can't fix everything at once.

6. Apparently Paul Allen's purse strings are starting to loosen again.

7. Overall as a fan I am pleased by the players we got. HOW we got them is another matter, but that will be covered in the next post.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

What the...????

2006-06-28T17:35:00.000-07:00

Well, we've gotten through the high picks. Of course nobody will know for a long time how we did, but there certainly seemed to be things that didn't go right there. The Wolves taking Brandon Roy had to be somewhat of a shock. This isn't the first time Kevin McHale has taken the wind out of our sails either. (Kevin Garnett) It's almost like he delights in it.

OK...now wait. Excuse me, but what the freakin' heck??? Just as I was typing that ESPN announces that Portland and Minnesota are swapping Brandon Roy (picked 6th) and Randy Foye (picked 7th)! And there were no other considerations listed. Now I am just totally confused. Why would they pick those guys and then swap them? Was Kevin McHale screaming into the phone, "No...FOYE! I said FOYE, not Roy!"???

For those keeping score at home, the trade chart now looks like this:

Portland trades Telfair and Ratliff to Boston for Lafrentz, Dickau, and the #7 pick.

Portland trades Tyrus Thomas (#4 pick), Viktor Khryapa, and a 2008 second rounder to Chicago for Lamarcus Aldridge (#2 pick)

Portland trades Randy Foye (#7 pick) to Minnesota for Brandon Roy (#6 pick)

Look folks...this draft has passed well beyond interesting into the realm of the truly bizarre.

--Dave

Another Trade

2006-06-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

As you know, ESPN is reporting that we're swapping Thomas for Aldridge and throwing in Khryapa and a second rounder next year to sweeten the pot. Greg Anthony asked my question: WHY? Neither Chicago nor Charlotte would have taken Aldridge. So we gave away Khryapa and a pick for free. Are we just dumping his contract to clear roster room? And why pay a guy second pick money when we could have paid him fourth pick money? There BETTER be a clever master plan at work here, that's all I gotta say...

--Dave

Update

2006-06-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

Tokito and Quick are reporting that the trade is actually multi-player, with Ratliff and Telfair going to Boston for Dickau and Raef LaFrentz. All I can say to that is: NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why LaFrentz? His contract is a year longer than Theo's at the same money. He's also become less and less effective over the years, turning into an exclusively perimeter player on offense and a non-factor at defense and rebounding. The only thing he does well anymore is block shots. (If true I guess this means the Blazers aren't confident that Joel will return.) Unless there are more moves coming, I would pan his acquisition even for the pick.

Since it's only coming from one source (albeit our own) and that source is saying they've "received word" without naming sources, I can still hope this is just a rumor, right?

UPDATE:

ESPN has just confirmed the deal including LaFrentz. (sigh) It's not just the extra cap burden into LaFrentz's third year...as I've said a couple times before, what people missed about Theo was that his contract would be a very valuable bargaining chip next season. $11 million in expiring contract will get you a lot in the NBA. That's gone now though. And for what? Whoever we get or whatever we do better really pan out or Prichard has a black mark on his record from Day 1.

--Dave

Draft Day Part I

2006-06-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

Well, the first salvo has been fired, as apparently we've traded Sebastian Telfair to the Celtics for the #7 pick in the draft. Possible inclusions are Dan Dickau from their side and Theo Ratliff from ours, but those are speculative at this point.

Thoughts:

In a way I will be sad to see Telfair go. He probably had the most potential of the three point guards to become a true star. His speed is irreplaceable. He also had that certain je ne sais quoi that made him feel special no matter how he played. On the other hand he also had the most potential to be a bust. He has yet to find his shooting ability and may never do so, which will severely limit his potential. Even if he does make it big it will undoubtedly be as a scoring point guard and those have met with limited success in the NBA. Plus you have to think after seven years of Damon the Portland brass just got sick of watching small guards get barbequed on defense no matter how good they were otherwise. If we get Brandon Roy in return our backcourt will actually be pretty big at 6'3", 6'4", 6'6", and 6'8". If Roy can swing between the two guard spots we become enormous.

As far as the pick goes it will all depend on who we get. As I said a few days ago, this almost certainly means the Blazers have a good idea who is going where. (Unless Pritchard is a loose cannon or an idiot, neither of which seem to be true.) It could also mean that pick will be packaged somehow, either to move up or to move some of our existing players. #7 seems pretty low compared to some of the picks we've been discussing, but keep in mind that's only from recent perspective. A few years ago the seven spot would have seemed really high.

In short I'm not against the trade but I won't know how I feel until I see what we do with that pick.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

National Pundits

2006-06-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

I know I said I wasn't going to post until tomorrow, but I just can't help indulging in a (hopefully brief and justified) rant about national media types. While I have relatively little problem with our local crew compared to many, I find myself getting annoyed frequently with national guys who opine on the Blazers situation when they obviously know nothing about it beyond third-hand rumor. Examples from this week include Chad Ford saying that Portland should draft Morrison because he's local and all the fans want him and Andy Katz saying that Telfair is buried in Portland's rotation when he actually started for much of the season. Think they'd say either of those things about the Knicks in similar circumstances? Of course they wouldn't.

Reality check: unless it's a deep playoff or glitzy market team most of these guys don't even watch the games. They read the same stuff all of us do and then act on it as if it were truth. In fact most of you if you are well-read and actually bothered to watch a game or two this year have more experience with the Blazers than many of these experts. No doubt they know more about the league as a whole and are far better connected, but what they know about your favorite team couldn't fill a thimble.

It's common knowledge that when an opposing team comes to town their broadcasters will ask ours, "What should we know about your squad?" and that's what they go on. It's the same with the national experts...except leave out the "asking" part. That's why most of them quote platitudes, deal in the most obtuse of sweeping generalities, or even say things that are just plain wrong when talking about the Blazers.

I'm not saying everybody works this way. I've always thought Steve Kerr seemed on top of things, for instance. But with most of them, honestly, they don't really care about your team unless it's going to give them a story and readers, which Portland isn't at this point. And that's fine, but then I ask in return why we should pay any attention at all to what they say.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Feeling a Draft

2006-06-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've always said that one of the sure signs your team is bad is that you get all excited about the draft. But, well...we are who we are. I'm getting excited for tomorrow and I'm not ashamed to admit it! I'm not thinking we'll get the next franchise player out of this draft but I'm hoping for a solid piece and an indication of the direction we're going. Besides our part, there are several things I'm curious about:

--Who's #1? At this point I'm thinking it'll be either Morrison or Bargnani, but who really knows? Those also seem the most likely two that someone would trade for, so Toronto may pick them to move them.

--Where does Rudy Gay go? He's the most enigmatic of the big stars. It seems he could go as high as 3 or slip down in Paul Pierce fashion into the late single digits or even early doubles.

--Does anyone move up? I have been speculating so far that you might see a lot of movement because the talent pool is relatively balanced, but another way of looking at it is that nobody is really good enough to move up for. Will we see a ton of jockeying or none at all?

--How much of a premium is there on centers? This may play out in the highest picks with Aldridge, but he's more of a PF/C than a true middle man. I'm curious about Patrick O'Bryant and Saer Sene, both of whom are project types. Is the middle still important to GMs or will these two speculative picks fall to the late first round? If so, would the Blazers move up to get one of them?

--How many seniors will be selected in the first round?

--Where do the Dukies end up? Shelden Williams is a good player who's flying beneath the radar right now. He might rise higher than expected. JJ Redick submarined himself with the DUI charge. How low will he fall?

--Who does Chicago take? If it's not a power forward, could there be a trade in the works (since they really need one)?

As far as Portland goes, I think their selection could betray a little bit about their future plans, if not by intention at least by necessity. I could see Rudy Gay or Tyrus Thomas in the small forward slot alongside Zach long term. I don't see Morrison and Zach fitting together well in the long run (both need the ball, both have defensive questions) and I think Aldridge or Bargnani would eventually replace Zach if they panned out.

In any case, it should remain an interesting day. For those who note the regular posts here, unless something radical comes up I will hold off posting tomorrow until after the draft when we will finally have something substantial to talk about.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

More Mychal

2006-06-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

If you have not heard it, you really should listen to the Mychal Thompson podcast from Eric Marentette's O-Live blog today. The link takes you to the download page. Click on Mychal's name to download it. It's an amazing, AMAZING interview and, as Eric himself said, quite passionate. (And I'm not just saying that because this blog got referenced.) The basketball talk was great and Mychal's Blazer spirit and love for Portland really showed through. Trust me...just listen, then write me and tell me again why this guy isn't already part of the organization, especially part of the broadcast team. Also see if you don't get a little bit of that "old school" Blazer feeling again.

Oh, and if you appreciate the work, don't forget to shoot Mr. Marentette a note of thanks.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Flash and Sizzle

2006-06-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dr. Dave wrote over the weekend:

>>I'm probably slow but an interesting thought occurred to me: something that should and probably does influence a GM's decision on draft day is a player's potential marketability (endorsements, publicity, image, etc.) This could have an enormous residual effect on the drafting franchise, could it not? Without a clearcut "STAR" this year, who would you say could bring the most pizzazz to the table?<<

Not slow at all, my friend. In fact you're very timely. You just reminded me of a couple of reasons not to draft someone...reasons appropriate to this draft in particular precisely because of the characteristics you mentioned.

If there were a Lebron or Shaq in this draft the star power pick would be a no-brainer. (Assuming we had the #1.) But notice that the fame follows the talent in those cases, not the other way around. I mention this because almost every year there's a popular guy out there who seems like a potential star, either because of personality or occasional brilliance on the court. We fans salivate at the idea of grabbing him with a low to mid-round pick. But those guys almost never pan out. My theory is that if the media can make a star out of you, they will, because that's what they look for...marketable players. I'm comfortable with bona fide superstars. I'm comfortable with guys who are unknown either because the media hasn't found them yet or because their game is just solid and you know what you're going to get out of them (but it's not superstardom). I'm uncomfortable with guys the media has tried to hype but for whatever reason didn't turn out to be anything more than tantalizing. Usually something is wrong there.

Long-time Blazer fans might remember Florida center Dwayne Schintzius. He came out of college in 1990 and was originally expected to be a high selection. Because he left his college team mid-season after a battle with the coach his stock dropped in NBA circles, but the media was still all over the guy. In fact the attention was intensified because people knew that this high-profile player wouldn't go early and was going to be a lottery-like steal for somebody later. Though they talked about him from Pick #1 and our fans were getting progressively more excited as he slipped pick after pick towards our 25th spot. He ended up going to the Spurs at #24 amidst a host of Portland groans. All the hype led to a 2.7 career scoring average.

Some people argue that Sebastian Telfair was more of a popularity/hype pick than an honest assessment of talent. The jury's still out on that one.

A rough analogy from football is the Heisman trophy winner each year. Sometimes there's an obvious Reggie Bush (assuming he pans out). But often times the Heisman winner, while arguably the highest profile player, is far from the best for the NFL game.

In short, considering popularity is fine if the talent is there, but that usually means you're picking 1 or 2. Otherwise you're safer ignoring popular sentiment and going with the guy you think will help most even if nobody has heard of him. Indeed, a lot of really good players drafted after the top three were completely unknown coming out of college. Scottie Pippen is one of the most famous examples, but Porter and Kersey are examples from our own history. Even Clyde Drexler was largely under the radar when he was drafted. And last year you could hear the hoots and catcalls resounding from the rafters when the Raptors selected Charlie Villanueva. Most of the media "experts" panned them for the unsexy pick. He actually turned out to be one of the better rookies, producing far more than Martell did, for instance.

I don't think good GMs draft for popularity, and bad GMs don't keep their jobs long. I think this is appropriate, as I'd be really upset if I thought my team was drafting players to get me to buy a ticket (or worse, to help somebody else sell me a shoe) without also being sure that those players were actually the best available.

To answer your original question, The Stache is obviously generating the most national buzz at this point. He's far and away the biggest media figure of all the draftees and would get the most interview/endorsement attention initially and keep the Blazers in the public eye. But over the long haul the player who will sell the most tickets and generate the most attention locally is the player who turns out to be the best on the court and helps produce wins. That's the spark that will keep people coming. If I'm a Morrison fan I might buy a ticket to see him on opening night and maybe go to another game or two later in the season to check up on him, but unless he produces numbers and/or the team wins, that's it. I'm certainly not going to buy season tickets unless one of those two things happens, no matter how great his personality or facile his conversation.

Unless a GM is relatively sure Morrison is the best prospect to generate numbers and/or wins, it would be a huge mistake to draft him. (And hold off Stache fans...he may very well be just that. I'm not making a judgment one way or another. I don't know. I'm just praying Pritchard and Patterson do.) Without those things every player on the team will fall flat in the public eye, making the residual benefit of drafting him almost nil.

Personally I've already decided in my own mind that I'm going to love whoever we draft until he proves me wrong, even if I've never heard of him before. I hope most Blazer fans will do the same even if we don't end up riding their favorite, or the most well-known, horse.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Draft Day Trades

2006-06-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

With rumors flying fast and thick a few different people have e-mailed with some version of the question, "Do you think we'll make a trade to move in the draft?" I'll tell you the truth, I am wondering too. Your guess is as good as mine. I'm not sure many of the GMs even know at this point.

You almost never see draft deals consummated before the day of the draft. Most often they're during the draft itself. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Teams with attractive picks want to maximize their trade value, so they wait to hear all offers. Unlike regular trades, there's little pressure to execute a draft pick deal. Lots of teams might have tantalizing power forwards and back up point guards, but where else is your trade partner going to go to get your spot in the draft order? You're the only one who has it, which generally means a seller's market, which generally means late execution of trades.

2. Having or getting a high pick means a lot of excitement for fans and media types, but picks in the abstract mean nothing to GM's no matter what the number. Only PLAYERS matter. And unless you're talking the #1 pick, you don't know what player will be available with a pick until the selections are actually made. No GM in the world will trade to get a pick without knowing what player he can get with it. This is especially true of high picks which cost a lot to trade for. You don't want to empty your wallet thinking "Lebron" and end up with Darko, Kwame, or Joe Smith instead. That's a fireable offense. The only scenario in which I can see a pre-draft-day trade happening is if a team likes two great prospects equally and moves to get the second pick, knowing one of them will be there. Utah did this last year with Portland right before the draft. They knew Bogut was going to one of the first two teams and I assume that they would have been happy with either Deron Williams or Chris Paul, so they traded for #3. Obviously Portland felt the same about pick #6. Even that was more rare than seeing both teams make selections in their respective slots and then swapping the players, leaving no room for uncertainty.

Of course this early-trade scenario gets progressively more unlikely the farther down the pick order you go. Especially in this year's draft where talent is mixed and nobody knows who will pick who, the number of people who would like four of the top players equally and would be willing to place a trade value on any or all of them well before the fact is miniscule...probably none. For this reason I expect we will not see our fourth pick traded early.

This also means this draft will be the most exciting one to watch in recent memory despite (and because of) the lack of proven talent. I know I will be glued to my seat Wednesday afternoon. If you've never watched on I suggest you do the same. (You have to watch the whole first round to see if there are any moves!) If nothing else, it will be interesting.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Worst, Worster...Worstest???

2006-06-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

One of the phrases that's become commonplace this offseason is, "We can't do that because we'd be the worst team in history!" This brings up memories of the '72-'73 Philadelphia 76'ers, who went an amazing 9-73. Every year or two some media person will predict that a team will approach or break that record. Usually it's a small-town team with players he hasn't bothered to watch. It never happens though. You'd have to lose eight games for every one you win, which is hard to do even for underachievers. At the very least you have to figure that ten teams will take you for granted over the course of a season...a sure recipe for losing in the NBA.

Nevertheless there seems to be this idea floating in the air that "worst in history" is much poorer than "worst team in the league right now". As usual, I did some research to try and verify or disprove. The method was this:

I looked at seven of the eight worst teams in modern NBA history. I asked how many seasons it took them after their horrific performance to return to 30 wins and how many it took them to return to the playoffs. (This is what happened to the 8th team. We couldn't use the '04-'05 Atlanta Hawks because it's too recent and they haven't done either yet.)

Then I looked at league-wide records from 1970-2001, excluding the lockout-shortened '99 campaign. In each year I asked the same two questions of the three worst teams: How long did it take them to win 30 and how long to get back to the playoffs? I wanted legitimately bad teams other than the worst seven, so order to qualify a team had to win fewer than 30 games in a full season in addition to being one of the three worst.

Results:

81 teams qualified for the latter category over that 30-year span. The average time it took those "horrible but not worst ever" teams to win 30 games again was 2.2 years. It took them an average of 3.7 years to make the playoffs.

Here is the list of the seven worst teams in modern history with the same two stats:

'73 Sixers (9-73) 2 years to win 30, 3 years to playoffs
'99 Nuggets (11-71) 2 years, 6 years
'93 Mavericks (11-71) 2 years, 8 years
'87 Clippers (12-70) 3 years, 5 years
'94 Mavericks (13-69) 1 year, 7 years
'96 Grizzlies* (14-68) 7 years, 7 years
'83 Rockets (14-68) 2 years, 2 years

*expansion franchise

Indeed, it seems that the people who fear being one of the worst teams in history have a point. While the average return to 30 wins in this group is only half a season higher than the other (2.7 years), the average time it took them to return to the playoffs is significantly higher at 5.4 years. Almost two whole seasons may not seem like much, but four years in the NBA is an eternity in terms of player continuity, coaches, and injuries, and this is half that.

Perhaps a more faithful way to look at the stats is median...the exact halfway point in the study group which 50% of the teams are above and 50% below. In the group of 81 the median number of years to 30 was 3 and the median years to the playoffs was 4. Here our "worst ever" group fares better. Six of the seven fall below the median for time to 30 wins and two of them fall below for return to playoffs with another close. If you discount the Grizzlies expansion franchise years the numbers get better, with all the teams below the median winning 30 and half of them within one year for returning to the playoffs.

Conclusions:

It's not good to become one of the worst teams in history, but it's not necessarily an inescapable disaster either, or at least not much more inescapable than being among the worst in any given season. None of the seven worst teams in the modern era came close to holding the record for longest playoff drought. The worst team of all time was also among the quickest to recover (and indeed as we know played for the NBA Championship four years later). You wouldn't want to intentionally maneuver to be bad, but it's not something to mortgage your franchise to avoid. It's probably a blow to fans' pride as much as anything.

It's also clear, however, that returning to the playoffs is a much more difficult task than merely being mediocre, taking nearly double the time in both groups. Almost everyone who's bad sees a small recovery...it takes time and hard work to see a full one.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda...

2006-06-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

With the draft less than a week away and controversy already thick in the air, I figure everybody could use a little certainty about now. So here are my lock-solid draft guarantees:

1. No matter who we pick half the people will excitedly hype the guy as the next coming of Jesus (Shuttleworth).

2. The other half will claim that we bombed.

3. Unless the guy turns out to be LeBron Jordan (or Shaq Chamberlain if he's big), one year from this date somebody will look back and say, "We could have picked ________. What a stupid GM we have."

I'd like to address the latter point today. Despite the illusion of surety and predictability created by hordes of prognosticators and their busy typing fingers, I'm firmly convinced that drafting is a near-total crap shoot. College, high school, or European excellence sometimes translates into NBA ability, but not always. You try to refine that body of work through combines, camps, and individual workouts. You measure these kids backwards, forwards, and upside down. You issue a battery of psychological tests and interview everyone they've ever known, worked for, or glanced sideways at. Even with all this, you're basically engaging in the NBA version of speed dating. Except instead of trying to determine who you'd like to meet for coffee next Tuesday, you're trying to find the best guy to give millions of dollars and the keys to your franchise to. And unless you pick the one candidate out of sixty who will have the best rookie year, some guy who's never met any of the players, hasn't seen them work out, and switched his own pick thirty-two times in the week leading up to the draft will tell you that you did it wrong and he knew it all along. Welcome to the real, live version of "You Be the GM".

So in celebration of our boundless wisdom as fans, earned through long years of honing our hindsight to 20/20 precision, I present the Best Draft Board Ever for the Portland Trailblazers. These would have been our selections if our dumb ol' GM's would have been as smart on draft day as all of us fans are years after the fact. Every one of these guys could have been ours with the actual first round picks we had. (I only reference possible uses for our second or later round picks if the potential players were remarkable. These are listed in parentheses.) Links lead to career stats, but will take you off this page. Peruse at your leisure and enjoy what could have been...

1970 Nate "Tiny" Archibald
1971 "Downtown" Fred Brown (and Spencer Haywood)
1972 Bob McAdoo
1973 George McGinnis
1974 Bill Walton (and George Gervin)
1975 Lloyd "World B." Free
1976 Adrian Dantley (and Alex English and Dennis Johnson)
1977 "Fast" Eddie Johnson (not the one you're thinking of unless you're a real hoops junkie)
1978 Larry Bird and Reggie Theus (and Mo Cheeks and Michael Cooper)
1979 Jim Paxson (and Bill Laimbeer)
1980 Kiki Vandeweghe
1981 Larry Nance and Eddie Johnson (the one you're thinking about) (and Danny Ainge)
1982 Fat Lever
1983 Clyde Drexler
1984 You Know Who (and Jerome Kersey )
1985 Terry Porter
1986 Nate McMillan and Arvydas Sabonis (and Jeff Hornacek and Drazen Petrovic)
1987 Reggie Lewis
1988 Anthony Mason
1989 Vlade Divac (and Cliff Robinson)
1990 Toni Kukoc
1991 No Pick
1992 PJ Brown
1993 Sam Cassell
1994 Voshon Lenard
1995 Theo Ratliff
1996 Jermaine O'Neal
1997 Bobby Jackson
1998 No Pick
1999 (2nd round Manu Ginobili)
2000 Michael Redd
2001 Zach Randolph
2002 Carlos Boozer OR Tayshaun Prince (I wimped out. Take your pick.)
2003 Josh Howard
2004 Sebastian Telfair
2005 Chris Paul

Egad! Think of the opportunities missed! Imagine the records broken by this juggernaut franchise! Why, they'd have to invent new numbers just so they could retire them! Consider for a moment the enormous trade value of just our leftovers. And the championships...ohhhhh, the championships!

So what conclusions are we to draw from this? That every GM we've ever had is a complete idiot, of course. (I mean, only hitting on 12 out of 50? Fire them all! Blindfolded monkeys could do better!) Either that, or maybe this isn't quite so easy as it seems and we should give these guys a break. I'm not going to spend all week proving it, but I bet if you looked through the draft history of every team you'd see the exact same thing. Want to wager?

I hope we hit it big on draft day, but I don't know if we're going to, you don't know if we're going to, even the GM's don't know if we're going to, especially this year. Often you can't really tell until years later. In the meantime what say we sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride?

A pre-emptive toast to whomever we pick. May he give us all reason to cheer and look forward rather than back.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

The Other Guys

2006-06-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Eric Marentette's "Where's Duckworth?" post yesterday got me thinking about the other players on those early 90's teams. We've already sung the praises of the chronically underrated Buck Williams and everybody knows about Clyde, but we probably don't think about Terry, Jerome, and Duck as much as we should, nor give them enough credit when we do think of them. I don't think I need to go into detail about who they were or how they played. An entire generation of Blazer fans came in to the fold through their efforts and knows them by heart. Instead some memorable moments surrounding that trio:

Mike Schuler was still relatively new on the Portland bench in 1987-88. During that 53-win campaign he gave his players a motto: win everything at home and give yourself a chance to win in the 4th on the road. He must have been pleased on January 16th, 1988 when the Blazers found themselves down by a bucket with possession of the ball in the closing seconds of a road game against San Antonio. He was not pleased, however, when after the timeout the Blazers inbounded the ball to a young point guard named Terry Porter and he proceeded to break the designed play by taking the ball to the coffin corner, left side by himself. As the last seconds slid off the clock, Porter raised up and released...swish. Blazers win 121-120. Afterwards Clyde, interviewed by the TV crew, said something to the effect of, "It's a good thing he made that shot because coach would have killed him otherwise." I remember that moment because it was the first time you really suspected Terry might be a clutch player with ice in his veins...a truth that he proved over and over again during his tenure here.

My Jerome memory is more fuzzy as far as time. I can't find any reference to it explicitly on the web to help with details. I want to say 1991 but it could have been '90. But if you were watching the moment, you remember it. We were playing the Clippers on the road and Kersey and 6'8" young tough Ken Norman had been going at it for most of the game. Finally things boiled over as the two faced off. Norman threw the first punch, a wild, looping haymaker typical of guys on the playground going at it. Kersey dodged and before you could blink threw a straight jab, flush to Norman's jaw. BAM! Kenny was flat on his back. The whole thing took about two seconds, but the authority behind that punch and the "Don't mess with us" attitude it symbolized really represented what those early '90's teams were about and what Jerome brought to the table. (A quality almost completely absent from our current squad, by the way, which is part of the problem.) Far be it from me to glorify such violence, but...well...Kersey and the team served notice that night.

I really liked Duckworth's game. He had obvious limitations, but he maximized his strengths to such a degree that you hardly noticed. He learned the now-lost art of taking up space with his big body. How many huge guys nowadays disappear in the lane on both ends of the court? You always knew where Duck was. He didn't grab rebounds as much as prevent the other team from grabbing rebounds, letting Buck and Kersey do their thing. Sure he scored, but as yesterday's article pointed out, a large part of his value was in clearing space for others to score. If Ha had half of Duck's presence and skill, he'd be a guaranteed future starter. My favorite Duck moment is also of indeterminate origin. I don't remember the game well because I was there and thus couldn't replay it off tape. I don't remember the opponent. I do remember it was 1991. As I recall, one of the guards poked away the ball and it came to Duckworth at halfcourt. He turned and started dribbling down the right sideline towards the basket, completely unopposed. His only company was a streaking Clyde coming down the left side of the court. Duck, still dribbling the ball and moving at a less that rapid rate, turned and looked at Clyde. He knew the play was to get Clyde the ball and watch him throw down a crowd-pleasing super jam. But how often does a 7-foot, 300 pound guy get a break-away chance? So he looks at Clyde and Clyde just kind of shrugs his shoulders and motions towards the hoop. You could almost see Duck perk up as he rumbled the rest of the way to the basket and threw down a dunk that was completely nondescript--causing maybe one in ten people to rise from their seats--but was all his baby. He pointed at Clyde on the way back down the court. Clyde just chuckled. The big guy got his moment in the sun.

Also, who can forget Big Duck doing his best Willis Reed impression, coming back from injury in Game 7 of the 1990 Western Conference Semifinals to help us beat the Spurs and advance? David Robinson had killed us the game before, and Duck put enough of a hurt down on him to let us squeak by...our first time going that deep since the championship.

Buck and Clyde were the Cadillacs of those contending teams, but they were also made up of a bunch of guys nobody had heard of who worked hard, played together, and made good. I hope someday we see something like it again in P-town.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

No Guarantees?

2006-06-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

In a comment to yesterday's post on intangibles, Knuckleheads (nice name!) brought up the subject of guaranteed contracts in the NBA. I've thought a lot about this issue. In my post on whether character matters (April Archives) I brought up guaranteed contracts as a major reason why it does...because if a guy plays only for himself and not his team, the game, or something bigger, giving him eighty million over seven years takes away all his incentive. The whole "contract year" phenomenon has become sadly commonplace in the NBA, so much so that I'm starting to take it into account when looking at trades. I don't know if real GM's do also, but the fact that it has to be mentioned shows you that things are not ideal.

There's no way guaranteed contracts will ever disappear from the league. The players union would strike a million years or just form their own league before they'd let that happen. Nor, in fairness, do I think they should be eliminated. Injuries are the biggest reason why. Players need some guarantee of return on their investment of putting their bodies on the line like they do. Plus a player is more likely to be worn down by injury in his later years, which is also his prime earning time. Non-guaranteed contracts would work over league veterans, which is something I don't want to see. I know the NFL has essentially done away with guarantees, but with all due respect to the violence and brutality of that sport (much greater than in the NBA), we're talking sixteen game seasons and players that only play half of those games anyway. You see more immediate injuries in football but fewer of the chronic, nagging, career-altering-or-ending variety that come with an 82+ game basketball schedule. I suspect eliminating guaranteed contracts would cause players to be more tentative, less likely to go all-out, and would punish those who do give it all, to the detriment of the game.

I would like to see a middle ground. I'm no contract lawyer, so there will probably be holes, but I'd propose something like this:

--The salary schedules/maximums remain the same, perhaps with a small bump upwards. Salary cap rules remain the same also.

--Teams could offer guaranteed contracts a maximum of four years in length.

--At the beginning of the next-to-the-last season of a three or four year contract (after the second or third year, in other words) the team would have three options:

1. Let the contract play out as written.

2. Offer the player a three-year extension with appropriate raises, to take effect when the contract expires. The player then has the choice to accept the extension or become a free agent after the next season. Extensions may be further extended every three years in the same manner.

3. Waive the player completely. In this case the team is still responsible for the player's salary in the coming season. However a team with enough room under the salary cap to absorb the contract can pick up that player. Though the player's salary is paid by the waiving team, the contract goes off their cap and is transferred to the cap of the team that picked him up. Thus the waiving team pays extra for cap space and ridding itself of an unwanted player and the adopting team gets a player to try for free for a year. If the player is not picked up on waivers his salary remains on the cap of the original team whether they welcome him back or not.

--Players and the league would contribute a small percentage of revenue to an injury fund. If a player under 33 years of age has a career-ending injury in the final year of his contract (rendering him unable to sign a new contract he would have otherwise gotten) he receives one more year of salary at a rate based on his previous earnings. If the player chooses to accept this payment his career in the league is over...he can never return.

--The players' share of league revenue (in other words, the salary cap) gets bumped up by a couple percentage points to compensate for player losses under this system compared to the old way. Thus the players get more money overall but the owners, while paying out more, get better assurance that their money is being well-spent.

This system would offer reasonable certainty of players making money without binding teams to poor prospects in perpetuity. In essence the player has a "contract year" every third season, which should help encourage performance. The waiver option allows teams to make occasional mistakes but pay for them in cash rather than cap space, and consequences for the waiving and receiving team don't last beyond a year in any case. It would probably be used rarely anyway, not just because of the payroll cost but because expiring contracts would still be valuable to teams over the cap.

As I said, it's probably full of holes, but that's my best initial shot.

From time to time someone will ask why contracts aren't simply based on merit and performance. It's a nice ideal, but unworkable because of the nature of the game. As we've said numerous times, basketball is unique among the major sports in that all five players can fulfill any responsibility at any given time. In football responsibilities are divided by rule and position (linemen can't receive passes, quarterbacks don't defend). In baseball they're divided by batting order on offense and physical location on defense. (Barry Bonds may be a great hitter, but he can't shove the 8th guy in the order from the plate and say, "Let me take this one!" Nor will a shortstop usually field the right fielder's fly ball.) In other words, there's relatively little chance of a player at one position competing or interfering with the duties of a player at another position. Not so in basketball. Who shoots on any given trip down the court? Could be Zach, could be Martell, could be Theo. Ideally it'll be the player with the best chance of getting an easy look at the basket that possession. But if you start paying these guys based on how many points they score that's not going to happen. Also imagine the chemistry problems if, say, Lamar Odom and Luke Walton perceived Kobe was taking food out of their families' mouths every time he put up a shot. Same with rebounding or any other stat you can name. You'd totally break down any incentive to play like a team. Also there are many aspects of good basketball that don't show up in the stats, so quantifying "good play" for the purposes of salary correlation becomes near impossible.

Nor would it work to base salary on wins and losses. You'd have the exact same finger pointing and chemistry problems and players would gravitate to the best teams in the league faster than you could say, "Baby needs a new Bentley!"

Guaranteed contracts are not ideal, but they're going to be around in one form or another, like it or not. I think it's possible to mitigate their detrimental effects while still maintaining the integrity of the game. I'd like to see something like this looked at in the future.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Intangibles

2006-06-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

Dash writes:
>>Just wondering if you've ever done a piece on the "intangibles" of sport such as: home court (field) advantage, chemistry, curses, momentum, legacy and such. So hard to measure or even define yet they are so much a part of the game. Would be interesting reading.<<

I haven't, but great suggestion! Let's take them one by one.

Home Court Advantage:

This has long been an issue with the NBA, but conventional wisdom says it's becoming less of a factor as time goes by. I searched for recent statistical studies on the phenomena but came up empty. The closest I came were stats for the 80's and 90's and some modern bookie papers that said NBA home court wasn't worth as much as it used to be. Nevertheless, home teams still win around 60% of the games on a consistent basis.

Any number of factors could account for this: the emotion of the fans, a good night's rest, familiar shooting backgrounds, and more lenient refs, to name a few. I tend to credit the first and the last the most. Basketball is a consistent-high-energy sport and also one that depends on constant, immediate feedback. (You get feedback on every shot, for instance, by seeing whether it went in. That's how we all learned to shoot.) A good home crowd can provide a boost in both areas. And although it's impossible to correlate home court with an increase in sheer number of whistles--the refs wouldn't be doing a very good job if you could--the sport leaves enough wiggle room in judgment that you've got to believe refs are subtly influenced by the venue too. I think, however, that as the league moves away from the superstar model back into team play you'll see this aspect decline. It will be interesting to see if home court goes along with it.

Whatever you believe or don't believe about home court advantage, I think everyone except the 2003 version of Bonzi Wells would agree that given the choice it's nicer to play at home.

Chemistry:

We talked about this one early in the blog. You can read more about it in the April archives. To me, chemistry is like pornography: hard to define exactly but you know it when you see it (or don't). As recent vintage world (international) championships have proven, building a successful team is not just a matter of taking ten hugely talented players and throwing them together. You need a balance of stars and role players, tough guys and reasonable thinkers, tacticians and raw athletes. More than that, each player has to know and accept their role. Clyde Drexler's highest scoring season was 1988-89 when he tallied 27.2 points per game. We won 39 games that year. He took almost 400 fewer shots the following season and scored four points less per game, yet we went to the NBA finals. Why? He made more of an effort to get Kersey, Porter, Duckworth, and the newly-arrived Buck Williams into the game. That's chemistry. It's not getting along. It's not even being necessarily being nice people. It's being able to function together like a well-oiled, consistent machine despite whatever differences you might have. Some teams have it, some don't. Sometimes teams have it for one part of the season but then lose it. (This year's Pistons are an example.) One thing's sure...if you don't have it, you don't win big.

Chemistry is the hardest thing for a GM to get right because you never know how a group is going to interact until you get them together. Sometimes a good team can absorb and even reform a bad-chemistry player. (Some would argue Dallas has done that with Jason Terry and Keith Van Horn.) Sometimes a bad-chemistry player can rip apart an otherwise good team. (Every head in the room just swiveled towards Ron Artest.)

In general, though, you will find the best and brightest stars--Bird, Magic, Duncan, to name a few--are also great chemistry people. Jordan, though called selfish by some, was also more than willing to give himself up on the defensive end, spend countless hours in the gym practicing his shot, and give up game-winning opportunities in the last game of the Finals to guys like John Paxson and Steve Kerr. Shaq and Kobe are about the only modern examples of guys winning it without chemistry. I would argue that they are both freaks of nature and that they had (*cough*) "help" with at least one of their three championships (WCF vs. Sacramento) and maybe two (vs. Portland). Certainly had Shaq been reffed back then like he is in the current series the Lakers would not have dominated to the extent that they did. In any case, chemistry has to include you main players, and probably spring from them, or else it's no good.

Curses:

While tempting, I don't believe in them. The Red Sox had the most famous long-standing curse in history. Coincidentally it carried through all those years of sub-par talent, beer-league recruiting, and the occasional natural bad break. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that as soon as they got sterling pitching backed by good defense and a decent offense, the curse disappeared. In the absence of further evidence, I'll continue to believe that any woes Portland has are products of bad management choices or poor play. I'm just not ready for the "Curse of the Waltino".

Momentum:

I do believe in this, however. We've all seen it too many times. Most modern teams run variations of five or six plays all night. Sometimes they don't work for two-and-a-half quarters, then mysteriously everything clicks and those same plays net bucket after bucket. I think it goes back to what we said above about basketball being a game in which emotion and immediate feedback play significant roles. It's human nature to think the world is against you when you're rolling snake eyes at the craps table and that you can do no wrong after hitting three sevens in a row. The same is true in basketball, but unlike independent, inanimate dice, how you think on the court actually affects your play. The relationship between the brain and athletic performance is complex. At what level does the perceived become real? And how much feedback (usually in the form of opponents dunking on you) do you need before it becomes reality for you?

This is why great coaches train their teams in practice not to feel, not to think, just to do. Repetition to the point that action becomes instinctive and nearly emotionless (until it's done, anyway) is the key to overcoming the vagaries of momentum. This also means that mental strength and maturity is an underrated attribute in basketball.

Legacy:

There's no doubt that legacy plays some role in NBA success. A gross as it sounds, most kids grow up dreaming of starting for the Lakers, not the Clippers. There's a tangible difference when you put on the purple and gold, or a Bulls uniform, or Yankee pinstripes, or pick your marquee franchise. It doesn't mean you'll win if you're bad, but it does make it easier to recruit the talent and follow the leadership necessary to get you back on the winning track if you've lost it.

One of the greatest casualties of the recent Portland decline may be the loss of a winning legacy. It can't be measured by record alone, rather that a team stands for something in the league and in the community. There's a difference between a losing season or two and a losing franchise and I'm not sure which side of the line we're on. We used to have the best broadcasting corps in the league. Other teams would come to observe how we did things. Gone. We used to have the strongest fan identification in the league, among the best in any league even. Gone. What else have we lost over the past decade? It's not so much that these things are causing on-court losses as they are possible reflections of the same malaise that shows itself between the lines. It has an effect to the extent that any message of incompetence, sloppiness, confusion, or that excellence just doesn't matter filters down to all employees, including the players. And once that happens you lose the unifying, overarching goal that makes the great teams great. Regaining a winning record may be simple compared to rebuilding a tarnished legacy.

On the one hand I want to say memories are short, because they are. People would much rather sign with the Clippers right now than the Blazers, history be damned. On the other hand, when Sam Cassell has his biennial, ship-sinking implosion and the Clips slip again, they'll have a much harder time reversing the slide and regaining excellence than a team like the Lakers would have. Or now us.

None of these intangibles can replace talent and hard work. Those are still the two overriding determining factors in NBA success, accounting for probably 98% of your wins. But in a league where five or six other teams are also going to have that talent and drive, who's to say that the other 2% might not make the difference? More than one game (including last night's) has been decided by a favorable call or a cold-blooded play in the face of long odds. And a lot of those plays come to storied franchises. I wouldn't stay up nights worrying about any of these things, but to the extent they're controllable, I wouldn't ignore them either.

Have your own examples of any of these things? You're more than welcome to comment or e-mail.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Last Media Word (for now)

2006-06-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

Ahhh...the media topic continues to bubble both above and beneath the surface, and a lot of folks are commenting/writing on it. Unless there are further developments, I'll wrap up the "official" conversation with this:

I think the analogy I made almost flippantly below about the Blazers and the Oregonian sounding like a married couple in trouble is proving apt. The more I think about it, the more it fits. Since, barring a Blazer move or a meteor hitting the "O", they are stuck with each other, a couple pieces of unsolicited advice...

One of the keys to staying married in times of strife is realizing that you are going to be married and planning accordingly. While you may daydream of an idealistic life apart, in truth you need each other, and realizing that helps you avoid the temptation to grasp short-term pleasure (like blasting each other in public) instead of long-term gain. And you two DO need each other. The Blazers cannot become a niche product and still survive. The market is just too small. We've seen that play out in the last three years. The team needs mainstream fans and the only way to reach those fans in this town is the Oregonian. If you can't manage to be media-savvy, at least avoid being media stupid. On the Oregonian side (or at least the sports side of the Oregonian) you are sportswriters in a one sport town. Your national and local attention both come largely from your coverage of that one sport and its local representative. Try giving folks a steady diet of Beavers, Timbers, and Winterhawks columns and watch what happens to your renown and that of your sports section. I am not suggesting in any way that you should refrain from honest reporting as you cover the team, even to preserve your own position. It's not your job to be a team booster. However, when you are tempted to use your press position as a bully pulpit, whether it's in reaction to an indignity the team has visited upon you or an honest attempt to bring about change, remember that you can only go so far. Not everything thought or learned in private should be made public, and sometimes why you say something is as ethically important as what you say or how you say it. Stepping over that line is not only unhelpful, but destructive to both institutions. There should be no doubt about you erring on the side of caution here.

A tidbit of wisdom that most long-married couples come to accept: Being right does no good if it leads to you sleeping on the couch.

This is true not only of your relationship with each other, but with your fans and readership. Your overt purposes may be good basketball and good media coverage, but you are both essentially in the sales business, or at least in the relationship business (if "sales" is too crude of a term). That means you're dealing with other people. And truth is never absolute when other people are involved. Sometimes what's right for the health of the relationship is more important than what you think is right personally...not always, but maybe more than you're giving credit for. Take away those other people and both bouncing balls and printing presses sound pretty hollow. No doubt all parties in this situation are dealing with "truth" of sorts, but how your truth is received and used--what effect it has on this community and its relationships--will be as important in the long run as how right it is at this moment.

That, folks, is my best shot. Unfortunately I fear this "story about the story" is far from over. It's really funny...you can talk philosophy, ethics, and institutional/organizational responsibility all you want, but when egos get bruised it all goes out the window, reduced to something basically and utterly human. And egos have been bruised here on both sides. Stay tuned.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Pleasant Problems

2006-06-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

As we begin our third month together, a couple of philosophical blog matters:

It has always been my plan not only to read, but to respond to every piece of e-mail that I get and most comments (even if it's just with a "Thank you" and "I agree") because I really appreciate all you guys who take the trouble to read this, let alone write in response. I find myself in the unexpected position of reporting that the volume of e-mail we're getting is making that resolution more difficult to keep. I intend to keep it anyway, I'm just letting you know that if I'm a little slow some weeks, it's not because I'm ignoring you, don't care, or haven't read your submission. It's probably because I'm pursuing (sigh) real world responsibilities. (Who'da thunk it?) I will get back to you, I promise. And please don't stop writing. Absolutely no revenue and only a modest amount of world-wide fame (*cough*) come from doing this, so getting to talk Blazers with you is my only tangible reward. And it's one I treasure. Just be a little patient with me if it takes me a while to return the favor from time to time.

This is also true of suggestions for posts. Some things I feel comfortable talking about off the top of my head, but others I have to think about or research for a while first, and we're getting a backlog of those. I'll work on clearing that up, and thank you for the great ideas!

Lastly, one can't help but notice that the comment section is seeing more frequent use, and that is great. Some of you who have been in contact since the very beginning already know something I think it's time to make more explicit now. I know this site will never be the most popular, the most authoritative, or the most "inside" on the web. I never envisioned it would be such. But I did have a vision when I started this site beyond a narcissistic compulsion to see my own words in print. Maybe it's impossible and maybe it's just dumb, but I thought the web could use a place where people could just come and talk without all the egos, spitting contests, and rancor that typify most discussion sites. In a way I wanted a coffee shop atmosphere, where a bunch of folks just dropped in, read a little, and talked Blazers and it didn't matter if they were long-time regulars or just stopping by. I don't think the world needs another biggest, most authoritative, or most "inside" site, but I do think it could use a friendliest, most welcoming, most "honest-but-fairly-relaxed" one...the "Cheers" of websites, if you will. And given the acrimony flying around Blazerland lately--not just between differing fans but between the team and fans, the team and media, the fans and media--I think such a site could help people feel connected in a time it's all too easy to just slip away.

The thing is, I can't do this alone. How you respond to this site and each other makes a difference in what this little place becomes. Two things are necessary:

1. I need to be willing to keep my hands off the comments section and let you have basically whatever conversation you want, agree or disagree, even if you say things differently than I would. If I can't manage this it's neither honest nor friendly. And I am committed to doing so. To this point I have not required registration for comments and I have not deleted anyone's comment save one. It is not my intention to do either in the future.

2. You have to use that freedom wisely, in a way that not only gets your point across, but also takes care of the people you're making it to. There are a hundred other sites where people do that "anonymous internet who-cares" style of conversation. Why try to duplicate that here? I would very much appreciate it, to keep the site alive and to its purpose, if you would just pretend you're sitting in that coffee shop among friends and strangers and try to discuss accordingly. Make your point and be honest, but try to put things in such a way that if your grandma were listening (or someone else's) you wouldn't be totally ashamed. One of the strong, strong things that's come through in the e-mails and comments is that we don't have a homogenous community here. Nor do we have the stereotypical group of sports fans. There are old people, young people, women, men, and people of all professional backgrounds and histories here. Given what's going on with Portland and the Blazers, I hope that excites you. Just make sure you plan accordingly when you speak, even if someone disagrees with you.

I have no doubt that if the site keeps growing "trolls" will creep in from time to time. It always happens and the anonymous comment feature will probably allow it. But I'd rather take that risk in the name of allowing someone who (understandably) wants to remain anonymous at first to join in the conversation. I intend to have a thick skin about trolling and I hope you do too. If you don't like a comment, just skip over it and keep reading. Eventually with a lack of attention it will pass. If a comment is blatantly offensive be assured that I will delete it as soon as I check the site. Otherwise I'll grin and bear it as I hope you do. No need to let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, so to speak. If there are occasional bumps and bruises along the way, just consider them growing pains.

Thank you all for the continuing to read. Even with the grinding off-season, I hope the next couple months are as vibrant as the first two.

--Dave

Media Part Deux

2006-06-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

I wasn't planning to post on this today, but a couple people wrote as the evening developed asking for thoughts/reflections on the latest version of "Quickgate". For those who might not have heard, Jason Quick was at the practice facility for the Big Workout of multiple draft picks yesterday (along with other media members). Officially the workout was closed to media until the last few minutes, but Quick, peering through what the Blazers describe as "closed blinds" watched much of the duel between Adam Morrison and Rudy Gay and posted a report in the Behind the Blazers Beat blog. The Blazers responded by issuing a press release saying that because a reporter had "breached professional trust" by releasing sensitive information on a blog, they would have to "close workouts indefinitely".

Thoughts:

1. This is exactly what we were talking about the other day in terms of the ambiguous role of reporters. Are they fact gatherers, official mouthpieces, or are they called upon to offer opinions and analysis as well? The basic thrust of the piece was Quick's opinion that Gay outplayed Morrison. The author himself admits he's not a talent evaluator, but in order to give the report the weight and meaning that was intended, you'd have to assume he was. Reporters routinely assume the role of analyst, scout, or in this case GM. Is this what we want our reporters doing? Are they qualified to do such? The fact that this appeared in a blog also underlines some of the things we were talking about below.

2. That said, how can you blame Quick for doing what he did? The access was there. And this is what we look for in reporters and news nowadays: access and somebody to blab about it. I would be shocked if he or any other reporter would turn away from that opportunity. You can't reasonably expect them to. And before you start pointing fingers, remember they do it because this is what we buy. Any number of people were salivating all over themselves waiting for news, rumors, or anything out of that building no matter what the source. And if the Blazers' statement about the report being nationally disseminated is true, not just locally either. If the crack was there and the opportunity was available, I do not fault Quick for peering through. He was just giving us what we want.

3. Speaking of the Blazers response, this also proves the point of the childishness on both sides of this equation. Granted the Blazers have a right to control their own information, at least as far as keeping workouts private. But kicking out all media is an overreaction bordering on tantrum. First of all, the crack shouldn't have been there. And nobody looked or passed in and out during the whole workout to notice this? But even if you buy into that idea, a six dollar an hour security guard (or heck, even team picture sub Tyler Assmus in an official shirt) standing outside the door during the restricted part of the workout would solve the problem entirely. The reason the Blazers are taking their ball and going home is because they want to publicly prosecute their ongoing war with the Oregonian. They took that action and released that statement in the hopes that you and I (and maybe his media peers) would say, "Well look what Quick has done now! He's gone and spoiled it for everyone!" He hasn't. The Blazers have. Or at least the Blazers are contributing equally by taking this stance. They may be turning the screws by denying the media access, but the move is horribly short-sighted. The people they're really denying access to are their own fans.

(I know...the overall strategy at HQ is to try and supplant local media outlets with their own website and the way they're spinning this plays right into that, but that's a story for another time...)

4. Speaking of fans...I'll admit a love/hate relationship with the O-Live Blazer forum and the posters there. I do not choose to join in that conversation, but I do read through from time to time because the forum represents a segment of the population which, if not as all-pervasive at it thinks it is, is at least worth hearing from time to time. Mostly I read to see which way the wind blows there, sometimes for a good laugh, and every once in a while because something meaningful is said.

I assume that likewise a few readers from that venue also come here and I have no wish to impugn them or get in a fracas with anyone else there. But I must admit laughing, no...guffawing, as I read through some of the righteous indignation directed at Quick and the rest of the media last night. Even a casual read through forum history will show you dozens of examples of people releasing supposedly sensitive or exclusive information gathered through private conversations with Kevin Pritchard, Steve Patterson, John Nash, ball boys, Blazer dancers, team janitors, or Zach's cousin's boyfriend. And we're not talking just the usual crackpots making these claims either, but respected forum regulars. It seems to me one of two things is true. Maybe these claims have legitimacy, in which case the Blazers obviously have security issues that go far beyond a gap in the blinds. Apparently high-placed Blazer officials are letting things slip on a weekly basis to people who immediately and repeatedly re-post this information online for all to see. (How could that former-FBI-agent investigation last year have found nothing? It's so obvious.) If this is true, team officials really need to check themselves and nobody has any ground to get mad at Quick or anybody in the media for doing what the rest of us could be doing if we were rightly placed. However, if these claims are not true then the credibility of the medium as a whole, including its criticisms, comes into question.

Also, as I recall, this is not the first time folks have been privy to knowledge gained by peeking through cracks. I don't remember whether it was a reporter or just a regular Joe with internet posting capability, but didn't the same thing happen at pre-season practices a year or two ago? And wasn't black paper put up in response? I don't recall cries of outrage at the reporters, or whoever else was involved, then.

So what have we learned? Jason Quick did what reporters are expected to do nowadays. I don't like it, but that doesn't make it wrong. In fact we're all probably hypocritical to point fingers when we've either done, or at least been fed by, the same thing for years. The Blazers, as is typical of them lately, are only making things worse, which does not give me hope that they're actually learning anything from any of these experiences. That is probably the saddest part of all to me. I can take or leave the Oregonian most days, but I really care about the team and look forward to a day when we don't have to talk about this kind of stuff anymore.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Magic Number?

2006-06-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom says we need another volume scorer on the floor to help Zach's game. This will ease the defensive pressure on him, allow him to score easier, and give him another outlet to make passes. While this makes intuitive sense (and I would not disagree that it would help) it's been repeated to the point that people accept it as gospel truth...almost as if it would be a miracle cure to resurrect the team. I decided to take a look at team history to see if this claim bears up.

I looked for seasons wherein at least two players scored 18 points per game or more. I chose 18 because that's the level Zach's at now. Since he's our "best player" we couldn't very well cut him out or the experiment would be invalid. I assumed adding another one at least as good (offensively) would qualify as "getting help for him". Here are the complete results. The list reads: year, players and points, wins, and final outcome. "DNQ" means the season did not qualify because two or more players didn't score above 18 ppg.

1970-71 Petrie 24.8 Barnett 18.5 29 wins
1971-72 Wicks 24.5 Petrie 18.9 18 wins
1972-73 Petrie 24.9 Wicks 23.8 21 wins
1973-74 Petrie 24.3 Wicks 22.5 27 wins
1974-75 Wicks 21.7 Petrie 18.3 38 wins
1975-76 Wicks 19.1 Petrie 18.9 37 wins
1976-77 Lucas 20.2 Walton 18.6 49 wins World Champions
1977-78 DNQ
1978-79 Lucas 20.4 Owens 18.5 45 wins 1st round loss
1979-80 DNQ
1980-81 DNQ
1981-82 Thompson 20.8 Paxson 18.9 42 wins
1982-83 Paxson 21.7 Natt 20.4 46 wins 2nd round loss
1983-84 DNQ
1984-85 Vandeweghe 22.4 Thompson 18.4 50 wins 2nd round loss
1985-86 Vandeweghe 24.8 Drexler 18.5 40 wins 1st round loss
1986-87 Vandeweghe 26.9 Drexler 21.7 49 wins 1st round loss
1987-88 Drexler 27.0 Vandeweghe 20.2 Kersey 19.2 53 wins 1st round loss
1988-89 Drexler 27.2 Duckworth 18.1 39 wins 1st round loss
1989-90 DNQ
1990-91 DNQ
1991-92 Drexler 25.0 Porter 18.1 57 wins NBA Finals
1992-93 Drexler 19.9 Robinson 19.1 Porter 18.2 51 wins 1st round loss
1993-94 Robinson 20.1 Drexler 19.2 47 wins 1st round loss
1994-95 Drexler 22.0 Robinson 21.3 Strickland 18.9 44 wins 1st round loss
1995-96 Robinson 21.1 Strickland 18.7 44 wins 1st round loss
1996-97 DNQ
1997-98 DNQ
1998-99 DNQ
1999-00 DNQ
2000-01 DNQ
2001-02 DNQ
2002-03 DNQ
2003-04 DNQ
2004-05 DNQ
2005-06 DNQ

At a minimum the stats show that there's no solid correlation between having two 18+ point guys and deep playoff runs. Walton and Lucas did it in 1977. Drexler and Porter barely squeaked by in the Finals season of '92 (Porter scored 18.1). But the '90 Finals year and the '99 and '00 Western Conference Finals years did not qualify.

Furthermore, having two high scorers does not necessarily lead to regular season success. Wicks and Petrie averaged barely over 28 wins for six seasons. Factoring those out, the results range from a high of 57 in '91-'92 down to 39 in '88-'89. Of the 14 non-Petrie/Wicks seasons that qualified, only 4 times did we top 50 games with two volume scorers. We did it six times without. In the 20 total seasons that qualified, we either missed or got eliminated in the first round of the playoffs 16 times (which is 80% of the time for the math-obsessed).

Clearly adding another scorer, while possibly helpful, is no magic cure. Our most successful seasons didn't depend on multiple scorers as much as multi-faceted superstar-level players.

--Dave

Community

2006-06-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned a couple of times that I long for the days when the Blazers were a uniting force in the community. If you'll forgive me a few personal memories, I want to share what that looked like in my experience. If this is too "fluffy" for some there's always another post tomorrow.

I remember when I was a kid, just out of high school. (I graduated early, so I was a little younger than normal.) I got a couple of odd jobs and most days I would pass a sporting goods store downtown. I forget the name right now but I remember the clerk working there at the time was really cute. One day I finally got the courage to walk into the store and, you know, talk to the clerk. I never made any headway with her (older woman as it turns out) but I did see something else that caught my eye. Right there in the center of the store they had a rack of Blazer starter jackets. They were the shiny, black nylon ones with red and white trim at the cuffs and collar. They had old school, lower case letters (this was before the caps and the slant) spelling out "blazers". Sewn by the right front pocket was an official NBA logo. And that's it...simple and oh so cool. They were $45 each. I saved up money for a few weeks and then bought two, one for me and one for my younger sister. You've never seen a prouder strut than mine walking out of that store.

Needless to say, I wore that thing everywhere. It literally had to top 90 before I'd take it off. And you know what? It was a conversation starter. I didn't have a car so I rode everywhere on Tri-Met. People would get on the bus, sit down, and just start talking. Old people, young people, guys, girls (I liked that part)...just anyone. You never knew when it was going to start. Wasn't it great how the team was doing? Who do you think is the biggest challenge in the West? Do we really have a chance to win it all? And, of course, what the heck is wrong with Jake O'Donnell? I remember being downtown at a bus stop in the winter. Huddled inside were an old man with a cane, a middle-aged businessman with wrinkles (smoking to stave off the cold), an African-American woman, a college guy, and me. The old man saw my coat and asked if I was part of the team. (Oh, what joy that would be!) I said no, but I liked them a lot. He said they would always turn them on at the place he stayed (some kind of nursing home from what I could gather). Then the businessman started talking about the game in Utah that night. And the college kid joined in, and the woman too. It didn't matter who we were. It didn't matter where we were going. We were just Portlanders talking about the Blazers. What else did you need to know?

Another incident that sticks out in my mind happened when I was riding the 72 down 82nd street, where I used to live. I got on the bus, sat about six rows from the back, and started reading my book, which was the usual way I passed the time. I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings but I did hear a conversation coming from the very back seat. Two guys were sitting there, both probably in their early 20's, and they looked pretty tough. This was during the height of the whole Crips/Bloods thing in Portland. I heard one of them say, "We need to teach him a lesson what it means to wear colors on the bus." That caught my attention, so I looked around the bus to see if I could see a headband or anything like that to indicate who they were talking about. There were only about seven people on the bus besides me and them and none of them looked even remotely gang-attired. That's when I realized that my jacket was red and black. And that's when I started listening to that conversation very intently. I couldn't hear the first guy, the one making threats, very well. But I could hear his friend. His friend said, "Come on, man! It's just a kid supporting his team. Everybody around here loves them. Your little brother loves them. That could be your little brother, man. You can't take a guy down for wearing that around here." The conversation continued for a while, but I guess the friend won out because eventually the two got off before I did. On the way out the door the friend caught my eye and nodded. I nodded back (somewhat timidly). I've often thought of that guy. I don't know whether he saved me from something simple like getting my jacket stolen and getting a beating or something far worse. But when I've thought of him I've hoped that his life turned out OK.

Anyway, the point is, had my red and black jacket said anything but "blazers" on the front, I'm not sure I would have made it three steps past the door of the bus in one piece. But once upon a time, in some weird way, that word meant something to people that was bigger than any of us.

I still have that jacket. In fact I'm looking at it right now. (It even fits! My daily workout must be paying off...) I don't wear it anymore, but I have another one to replace it. (Suede, Blazer logo on the back. Also very cool.) Most days I wear Blazer t-shirts too. Sometimes caps. I don't get much conversation anymore, but a lot of that is because I've lived outside of Oregon for the past decade. I have, however, made enough converts that if the Blazers ever do win the championship, there will probably be people jumping up and down in happiness for me in the places I've worked and lived over those years.

Still, even when I visit Portland the conversation is not the same. The world just isn't the same anymore. Cell phones and e-mail and other forms of instantaneous communication have ensured that we never have to speak to anyone we don't already know. The only strangers we hear nowadays are trying to sell us aluminum siding or satellite dishes, and half of them are pre-recorded. It would be nice to have something to help us bridge that communication gap again...to provide some common ground between us...something we were interested enough in and excited enough about to cause us to reach out on a bus or in the street.

The Blazer logo didn't always evoke apathy and eye-rolling. I don't know that things will ever return to the way they were, but I'm hopeful we'll get beyond where we are right now. That's part of what sport is supposed to do for a community. That ideal shouldn't be lost.

I could share more stories, but I'd rather hear yours. Do you have any favorite Blazer memories/memorabilia or stories about what the team meant to you, your family, friends, or even strangers? Comment below or e-mail blazersub@yahoo.com

--Dave

Short Takes

2006-06-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of diverse, shorter topics today.

First, John Canzano wrote a nice article about Morrison and Roy today. This whole draft thing is so slippery. This is the first draft in years where I truly believe nobody will be certain of any pick come draft day. A couple of thoughts:

--If Roy is 6'6", can defend, and really does have the potential to play point guard (and this is the first I've heard of that, so I don't know) don't you really have to consider him? Tall point guards have a huge advantage both seeing the court and scoring. They're rare, but when they come along they tend to dominate. It almost never works to shift a shooting guard to the point position if he's not a natural at it though, so you have to be careful.

--I am warming to Morrison the more I hear about him. But then that's to be expected, as all prospects get hyped in the weeks leading up to the draft. That's what makes it exciting! I saw a quote from Caproom07 on the O-Live main site which said he had made up his mind not to be disappointed no matter who we get. That's the boat I'm in right now.

--No matter what happens, watch the entire first round on the 28th. Deals are seldom consummated until after players are picked, and it's almost certain we'll hear Commissioner Stern say, "We have a deal to announce" at least a couple times. (If he can spare the time away from being condescending to reporters he doesn't recognize, that is.)

--One area I'd disagree with in the Canzano article (at least as I read it) is that he seems to be talking about drafting for need. A 21-win team cannot draft for need because by definition its greatest need is a serious infusion of talent. With a pick this high the Blazers HAVE to take the best superstar-potential player on the board when they draft, no matter what position he plays. Only if they think there's no player like that left (or the players left are relatively equal) should they discriminate. And then I'd recommend taking the big talented player over a smaller one. As we've discussed before, the basic rule is draft your core superstars then fill your other needs through trades or free agency. (See also: Dallas, Miami, San Antonio) It's completely possible to add that last swingman piece through the latter means. (Stackhouse, Antoine Walker) It's nearly impossible to get a superstar leader that way. (Nowitzki, Duncan, Wade...and I know Shaq was traded but how often does that happen?) If you do happen to duplicate a position at which you're already strong then one of those very good players eventually becomes a valuable trading piece. That's how you fill in those final holes.

Second, Scott writes:

>>One more thing for your explanation of things that most casual fans don’t understand. How about the Assist statistic. i.e. what exactly is it? How long after the a pass is made does the scorer have to make a field goal in order for the passer to tally an assist? Also, could you explain “points in the paint”? is it only post points? Is it ANY Lay-up/dunk? Is it anything inside the lane, no matter if it is a set play/fastbreak/broken play/rebound&put back?<<

We'll tackle the second one first because it's easiest. As I understand it, any field goal scored when the feet of the shooter were inside the key counts towards points in the paint. This includes all the examples you mentioned. I assume a dunk from the side would also count even if the leaper technically started from a position outside the paint. A dunk started from above the free throw line would also count, but the statistician would be too busy picking his jaw up off the floor to make the tally mark. A lot of points in the paint means the opponent isn't playing tough defense, either straight up, in transition, or by rebounding.

An assist is harder to pin down. It is a statistical category rather than a hard and fast rule, and thus open to interpretation. (In other words you can't look in the NBA rulebook and see what an assist is because it's not a legal or illegal issue, just a way of categorizing an otherwise normal pass.) I'm sure it's defined precisely in the NBA statistical manual, but I can't find one of those anywhere online or off.

The basic definition is "a pass which directly leads to a made field goal". In other words, it's the pass that immediately precedes a teammate putting the ball in the bucket. Passes before that one don't count as assists, even if they did more to set up the play than the final pass. But not every final pass before a shot counts as an assist. All of the following have to be true in order for an assist to be registered:

1. A shot has to go in.
2. A pass must have been made prior to that shot.
3. That pass must have significantly contributed to the shooter being open or at least in position to make the shot.

The last part causes the hangups. The statistician has to determine whether the pass significantly contributed to the shot or not. A clear example of an assist is the alley-oop, when one player lofts the ball up near the basket and another player grabs it in midair and dunks. Obviously the pass led directly to the shot. A pass where the shooter gets past his man and the passer hits him en route to the bucket also counts. But the shot doesn't have to be a layup. If Zach is double-teamed down low and sees Martell out on the side wide open and Zach gets him the ball for a made shot, that's an assist. If Zach seals his man down low and Martell gets him the ball and Zach immediately turns and fires a short jumper, that also probably counts. This is where the gray area starts however. If Zach posts up and Martell gets him the ball and Zach dribbles three times and jukes twice before making the shot, then Zach alone is responsible for the shot and Martell would get no credit. I suppose the amount of time between the pass and the shot would be one indicator of whether an assist was counted, but another would be how many athletic moves (and of what type) the shooter had to make to get the ball off. One dribble and then an easy drive is probably an assist. Two spins and a pump fake is not. In fact any change in direction after receiving the ball other than a quick turn-around and release will probably negate the assist, as will most hesitations and fakes.

Different statisticians make different judgments. The guy in Utah during the Stockton/Malone era was pretty lenient for obvious reasons. (Not that Stockton wasn't great...he definitely was.) Other guys might be tighter. And this is true not only of assists but other statistical categories. Mike Barrett has complained on many occasions that the official statistician in Portland doesn't credit Joel with enough blocks. (You'll see announcers come up with different totals than the official count in most categories.) There's no way to make it an exact science. You just assume that any inconsistencies will be smoothed out over time.

Thanks for the questions Scott! If I missed or mis-defined anything somebody be sure and let me know.

P.S. Noah writes to add:

>>I believe that with an assist, the assisted has one active dribble before scoring. Once you get into anything more than that, it is considered a solo mission.<<

Can anybody confirm?

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Media Killed the Basketball Star

2006-06-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

Props to anyone who gets the thinly-veiled Buggles reference there.

The relationship between the Portland media (especially the Oregonian) and the Blazers has been deteriorating for the better part of the last decade. At times the acrimony resembles that of a married couple who should get divorced but for whatever reason can't or won't. They've now reached the ridiculous level that many churlish couples have dreamt of in their worst moments...recording and printing every single word they say to each other so they can quote verbatim what's been said and demonstrate how the other party is misunderstanding or twisting it. Blazer fans have become the children in this little drama, drawn into the middle and encouraged to choose sides. A reasonable person would probably expect more professionalism from both institutions. Since that's not likely anytime soon, how are we to parse this out?

I must admit that I don't like the Portland media very much. But this ill-will isn't directed particularly towards the city or its media representatives. They seem about as good as anywhere else. I dislike Portland media coverage for the same reasons I dislike almost all media coverage: I've observed a general trend of objectivity giving way to opinion, information taking a back seat to sensationalism, and the reporters themselves becoming a big part of the story. I am not naive enough to think these issues are new, but they've gotten worse in the last twenty years. Beat writers fill space with predictions, projections, speculation, and interpretation. Columnists become personalities in their own rights. And we all eagerly anticipate Canzano vs. Patterson IV as if we were children who heard there was going to be a fight by the candy machine after school today. (Whether this has anything to do with the team is beside the point.) Nobody's lying or making things up, but truth is always complex and multi-faceted. Where is the line between what's most faithful to the situation and what sells? When there's a difference between the two, which one will the reporter or columnist choose to convey, especially if notoriety and perceived personality are the keys to success?

This is not confined to sports media, Portland media, or print media--it's across the board. You cannot turn on the news or pick up a magazine nowadays without superimposing the voice of that gossipy Mrs. Kravitz from "Bewitched" over the words. If every story began with the phone ringing followed by "Did you hear???" we'd hardly blink.

This trend has been made worse by the proliferation of blogs in the media. Some may cry, "Hypocrisy!", but obviously there's a big difference between what I do and what a professional reporter or columnist is supposed to do. I hope I have something interesting and meaningful to say here, but there are no implied claims to expertise or even factuality. I may be misinformed about plenty of things, and everyone who reads this knows that. Expectations for a bona fide journalist are much more stringent. A certain level of authority, accountability, and yes, even detachment comes with the territory. And this is true even of those things said in a more casual, but still public, forum such as a blog. My best words carry far less weight than what John Canzano or Jason Quick might put in their blogs as an afterthought even though the medium is superficially common to all three of us. They should bear a far greater weight of responsibility than I carry.

I must confess that I had great trepidation when Jason Quick started his blog at O-Live. I felt that speculation or stories that (for whatever reason) weren't fit to print in the paper shouldn't see the light of day elsewhere either. Having seen the Blazer Beat blog for a while now, I will admit that I am impressed with how the authors have handled it. For the most part they don't print gossip or "inside" material that isn't also available through normal channels. To me, that's Quick respecting his position and I appreciate it. To say I am offended by Canzano's blog would go too far, but it does provide more material to illustrate my point. In the last few days he's mentioned names and threats he got from Bonzi and Sheed when he covered them. I have no doubt that these claims are true. But I also know that I'm only reading one side of the story...a story which started out as an argument between two people. The fact that I would probably side with Canzano if I heard both sides is immaterial. I can't hear both sides. Rasheed and Bonzi don't have that kind of access. It's inherently one-sided and unfair, and not the kind of thing a news outlet should be about. And again, I say this fully agreeing with Canzano's overarching point that Bonzi and Sheed are jerks.

You may argue, "Well, isn't it true?" But truth isn't the only criterion to be considered when divulging information in public. I, myself, have a career where I address groups of people, albeit a much more modest audience than the journalists in question. In some instances I might reference the fact that I'm married. Once in a while that might even be intrinsic to the topic. However, if I got up in front of a group of people and said, "My wife passes gas in bed a lot"...well, that might be absolutely true, but is that fair to her, to me, or to the people listening? (By the way, I should tell you before I get killed that I made that up. She is both lovely and genteel in all ways.) A line exists not just between truth and untruth, but between relevance and irrelevance and between things said for the purposes of edification and things said for personal reasons. As media members merge further with the stories, as personalities become more prominent, and as the mode of discourse drifts away from the detached article towards the personal blog, the lines get blurred. I'm not sure many journalists know where those lines are anymore. And if they don't, how am I supposed to as a reader?

Obviously I have some empathy with the Blazers in their confusion in dealing with the media. I don't quite know how to take them and I'm just a consumer, neither intimately involved nor being reported on. That empathy is finite, however, and probably a lot less than many fans seem to possess. The media spins things, sure, but they don't fabricate. And if you claim they're not supposed to spin towards the negative you must also admit they're not supposed to spin positive either.

I try to be pretty particular about the words I use. To say the media caused the downfall of the Blazers is beyond ridiculous. Even saying they contributed is pushing it. Blazer players and management alike have made horrific decisions over the past decade...decisions which far exceeded the criteria for being reportable. Journalists may have pursued their jobs with vigor and may have tended towards the salacious at times, but they were still just doing their jobs. They neither misled nor entrapped the Blazers into their long list of public gaffes. The Blazers did that all on their own. I, for one, would not expect local reporters to cover up these stories, nor would I be happier as a fan if they had done so. In fact I would feel betrayed.

At best you can say that the Blazers knew there was a dog in the yard yet they insisted on repeatedly rolling in meatloaf anyway. And when the most charitable construct of the situation is that kind of rampant stupidity, you know things have really gone wrong. Given that, it's safe to say they would not have found a different reception from the media in any other town. Only the names on the bylines would have been different.

I have little faith that media trends will reverse anytime soon. You need only glance at a newsstand to see that we're buying what they're selling. The Blazers, however, are not being similarly rewarded for their foolishness. That's why it's incumbent upon them to change. Each side is wasting a lot of energy and emotion on the other, but if it's going to stop, the Blazers need to blink first. Stop blaming, stop fighting, stop stressing, stop taping...just concentrate on rebuilding a winning team which for the most part just doesn't give the media anything bad to report. At that point any journalistic reprobates who loft shots through the blogosphere will either be ignored or find themselves the subject of ridicule. If you cannot manage to do that, then your problems go far deeper than reporters and microphones.

I would say that we fans could help by holding both sides more accountable, but that will never happen and they both know it. Perhaps we could at least refuse to perpetuate the ridiculousness. Canzano and Quick's opinions certainly color their views of some players and events. But to say they're responsible for the team's slide is just inane. On the other hand to concentrate on a couple of bad apples--exaggerating their misdeeds because of what's gone on here in the past when most of the team is both respectable and hard-working--is equally stupid. Even if you take the dimmest, most cynical view of both institutions, when faced with a blindly childish media and a blindly childish team having a blindly childish fan base only makes matters worse.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Chasing Rumors

2006-06-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

You may notice that we don't do a ton of rumor speculation here. It's not that I don't hear or heed them, more that I don't find it productive to add to the general din which arises every time a new rumor hits. There's an episode of The Simpsons where the teachers go on strike, leading to the principal and one of the teachers engaging in public debate before the town. They start out using relatively complete arguments, but the topics get so worn and familiar that they find they don't have to use sentences any more, just a word or two. The principal gets up and says, "Taxes" and the whole crowd goes, "Taxes are bad! No more taxes!" And the teacher gets up and says, "But the children..." and the crowd responds with, "She's right! Think of the children's future." Then the principal gets up and just raises an eyebrow. "Oh! The eyebrow thing means the taxes! We don't want taxes!" And so on. That's where I think we are with these off-season rumors. There are no arguments to be had that weren't already worn to death two months ago. At this point we're like amoebae getting poked with the ownership stick or the trade stick or whatever and reacting accordingly...basic stimulus-response.

While I enjoy watching this swarming petrie dish as much as the next bloke, in reality 95% of these rumors will never come true. I don't see the point in getting our collective undies in a bunch every time a columnist drops a not-so-subtle hint about a possible outcome to a hot-button issue.

Of course having read this disclaimer, you may be sure that I am now about to break my own rule. What can I say...it's a slow Saturday.

Eric Marentette at O-Live (link to your right) posted two juicy rumors pertaining to yesterday's ownership discussion.

The first is from Rob Parker of the Detroit news. He reports that Terry Porter is about to become the newest assistant coach of the Pistons. If true, we can assume this is the final nail in the coffin of the consortium's bid, at least with Porter as the public face. Assistant coach is not a job you take for the joy of it, nor to pleasantly bide your time. It's a stepping stone...to head coaching, to broadcasting, at the outside maybe even to a front office job. (Perhaps Terry sees Flip being replaced after next season. Who knows?) It is not, however, on the path to ownership. The gulf between the mailroom work of an assistant coach and the penthouse office of ownership is so great that one cannot imagine it being bridged.

The fate of the consortium became clear when it was revealed that Jeld-Wen's potential contribution amounted to $25 million or so...major money for us mortals but a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to buy and run the team and certainly not sufficient for the company to play the cavalry riding over the hill. In hindsight this probably could have been anticipated by the fact that the company, not its owner, was listed as the contributor. From Jeld-Wen's perspective it was a no-lose deal. If the offer went through, they would have made a modest investment, gotten the attendant publicity, and still owned less than 10% of the Blazers, a share which could easily be bought out at any time. If the deal didn't go through, just their offer of participation got them that same publicity absolutely free--an even better outcome. (Quick "Family Feud" question: Name a window company. Number one answer in our neck of the woods right now? Guess who. Did anyone even know how to spell their name a month ago?) I don't think they would have been dissatisfied with either outcome. This was brilliant, but not exactly the boost that Porter's group needed.

So may Porter's bid rest in peace. Amen.

This is disappointing because I think that group was the most clearly committed to keeping the Blazers local. Which brings up rumor number two...a story out of Milwaukee that puts Michael Jordan's hat back in the ownership ring again. This is even more speculative than the first, but there it is.

Far be it from me to feed the fires, but I have a really, really bad feeling about Jordan and his all-star friends owning this team. They have zero commitment to Portland. The Chicago Tribune has already quoted their expressed desire to own a team in player/high-roller-friendly mecca Las Vegas. Can't be done, you say? Virtually unbreakable lease, you say? Maybe. It hasn't been tested yet. And since we're dealing in speculation today, let me paint a scenario for you:

Jordan buys the team (and maybe Magic and Barkley along with him), professing the desire to return it to greatness. The team plays through the upcoming season, which is all but guaranteed to be lousy. The Blazers receive a high draft pick, maybe even the highest and Greg Oden along with it. The team probably plays through one more season, again playing poor to mediocre ball because of its youth. At that point--just as Oden (or whoever) and the rest of our youngsters are ready to make an upswing--the owners, with heavy hearts, state that they tried to make a run of it but can't continue to absorb the financial losses. They open the books and show the courts the $40 million plus deficit that we all know is coming in the next couple of years no matter what happens. They use this as justification to declare bankruptcy. Meanwhile the city of Las Vegas, sitting on top of what is virtually a money printing machine, offers substantial subsidies for the construction of a brand new arena. David Stern (whose professed desire is to keep the team in Portland) is not thrilled about the bankruptcy but also sees the potential--for publicity alone, if nothing else--in the move to Vegas. And after all, the new owners did try for two solid years. The NBA board of governors acquiesces. The league welcomes the Las Vegas Trailblazers before the decade turns. Jordan's promise of a return to respectability comes true the very next season, it just isn't in Portland.

Why would the owners buy an arena and then move from it in 2-3 years? I don't know...but it's been done before in other sports and it just happened in Charlotte in this one. If Vegas offers enough incentives, it would approach a wash. (And don't think the casinos wouldn't chip in. They build billion-dollar structures at the drop of a hat. A share in an arena would be peanuts compared to that. They could probably make it up in comped luxury boxes alone.)

And here's the final irony as it will appear in someone's blog or column:

In 1984 the Portland Trailblazers selected Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan in what is widely regarded as the biggest draft bungle of all time. The bungle just got bigger. Had the Blazers selected Jordan, not only would they likely have won another championship or two, but his loyalty would have been bound to the city and its fans. Instead, 25 years after that fateful draft, the Chicago Bulls legend who once extinguished the flame of a Blazers title run presided over the move that turned out the lights of the Rose Garden for good. As the team heads for its new Vegas home, we reflect on possibilities gone by. Who could have known back in 1984 that the draft that changed an era for Portland basketball would also become the draft that ended it altogether?

It's speculation. It's just my gut-reaction. I know all that. But I'm still saying it. This possibility is about on a par with the Anaheim guy who wants a third team down there. Stay way, way away from it. Please.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)