State of the Blazers

Although the Blazers are overacheiving this season, and the table seems to be set for at least a return to competitiveness, the future isn't as clear as it's made out to be. The Blazers are a trendy pick to make a deep playoff run as early as next year, but some issues need to be addressed.

I got together with my long-time friends/long-suffering Trail Blazers supporters Ken Poirier and Mark La Croix over All-Star Weekend to have a little discussion about the future of our hometown team. Yes, I purposely hang around people with foreign-sounding last names. And yes, there was beer...


Ty: OK, first of all, guys, there's no room for any more players! OK, we have three second round draft picks. We have Fernandez coming over. Freeland. The Koponen guy. How are these players gonna fit on the team?

Ken: Trades, man! It's all gonna be packaged in trades. Look, we'll end up getting a low lottery pick. Around tenth. And we're not gonna need that tenth pick. There's no way we'll need it. It won't help our team, but it will help somebody else's team, obviously. That, coupled with the other draft picks and the Europeans... I don't know. I don't know much about the Europeans anyway. Fernandez, the Finnish guy...

Ty: Fernandez? He's like the European player of the year! He averages like twenty a game, seven assists -

Mark and Ken at same time: In Europe!

Ty: Yeah, still, in Europe though!

Ken: OK, Ty, how bout this, we package the draft picks with Jarrett Jack.

Ty: OK, fine.

Mark: Ty's fine with that. So am I.

Ken: I know I can get anybody to agree to a trade if I put Jarrett Jack in there.

Ty: Well, you're gonna have to come up with some pretty creative trade scenarios, because again, four draft picks and three Europeans. That's seven players! In addition to the full roster we already have. Plus, I think everybody is under contract for next year.

Mark: First of all, get rid of Darius Miles.

Ty: How? How do we do that?

Ken: You just kick him off the team!

Ty: So you just pay him off?

Ken: No. We take some cocaine and hide it in his locker...

Mark: I can't believe people actually think he'll be good. Not even good, but just decent. The idea that he's gonna come back, play good so his stock will rise and other teams will want him, that's just stupid. It's not gonna happen. He'll be a terrible player if he comes back. He won't fit in. I agree with Canzano, he just wants the lifestyle. He doesn't care about the game. He can't even physically run up and down the court anymore.

Ty: So, OK, they don't want to pay him off - way too much money. Plus they just did that with Francis. They don't want to give him playing time because it would take away time from the younger players.

Mark: Allen's an idiot though, he's the one that gave him the money in the first place, he should pay him off.

Ty: You know, I feel bad though, knowing that I support a team whose owner can just pay people off. To be able to say, OK, here's twenty some million dollars, just take it and get the hell out of here... I don't know if I like that luxury very much.

Mark: Yeah, and Francis was more than that. Like thirty. Just like that.

Ty: Yeah, I feel that's like cheating. I would have liked to seen them just keep him "on the team", but not allow him anywhere near the team, and make him so miserable and embarrassed that he settle for less money.

Mark: We're not gonna be able to get rid of Miles without paying him off. Or, if he retires, which he says he's not gonna do...

Ken: We could put together an attractive package with the picks, Jack, even Webster maybe, I don't know...

Ty: But what are you looking to get back? Where are you gonna go? Alot of people are saying another point guard, but I don't know, I'm fine with somebody like Blake, unselfish, pretty cheap...

Mark: He doesn't need to get his numbers. He doesn't care. That's what's great about him.

Ty: If you make a play for Chris Paul, you've got an even bigger target on your back, and he'll be used to getting a certain number of shots in a game, and he won't be able to score much with Roy, Aldridge, Fernandez, Oden... I mean, even this year we've caught alot of people off-guard this year, especially earlier on. Now, you know, people know us better, they know our team better, so we're not gonna have an easy way of anybody from here on out. I'm not too optimistic about the rest of the season, to be honest.

Ken: Well, you were complaining when Greg Oden went down earlier this year -

Ty: I was??

Ken: Well, most everybody. I didn't care, I thought it was a good thing.

Ty: What??

Mark: Yeah, it was really great. He misses the whole season and it's a great thing for the team!

Ken: No, it was a great thing for the rest of the team, not Greg Oden. Look, there was so much hype, so much of this "what are we gonna do?" thing going around, when we already had LaMarcus Aldridge, and Brandon Roy, coming into their own, forcing the trade to get rid of Randolph. It gave them time to take the team over, to build success, without Oden! And now, we're adding Oden a year after this year!

Ty: OK, if it works out like that, great. But first of all, I wasn't complaining. Well, maybe I was. Of course I was. But my thing was that he was unproven, and the injury just proved that he was injury prone. I didn't think we should've taken him at number one, and I felt more vindicated than anything else. I wasn't shocked, really, I wasn't heartbroken either because I didn't think he'd be all that effective this season.

Ken: Greg Oden should have been number one. No question.

Mark: Common sense, Ty, common sense.

(long silence)

Mark: And speaking of common sense, whose idea was it to rebuild a city that's already below sea level?