It wasn’t but a month ago that the Portland Trailblazers were the talk of the NBA because of ominous pretexts. Less than 10 months after hiring a replacement for Kevin Pritchard in Oklahoma City’s Richard Cho, Allen and the crew at Vulcan axed the rookie GM. Blazers President Larry Miller announced that Cho and Allen hadn’t meshed well together and that the decision was made remove Cho “sooner rather than later”.
Fast forward to the 2011 NBA draft and the Trailblazers have quietly made themselves out to be the draft night blockbuster-trade winner (although Milwaukee killed Sacramento and Charlotte earlier in the day). Portland’s lottery craftiness comes as no surprise. Historically, they’ve been one of the top teams taking action come draft-time and are usually spot-on. Unfortunately, Allen’s squad rarely gets the credit they deserve. On draft night 2006, Portland traded up into the draft to lock in LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy. At the time, Stephen A. Smith ranted and raved at Dan Patrick, “The Trailblazers are not even worth my time right now. I cannot waste another minute talking about the Trailblazers. Absolutely stupid.” Er, right.
Despite a tongue-lashing from an over-zealous talking head, the Blazers have deserved the most criticism for their lack of inspiration at the trade deadline. Except for the spring of 2011 when Cho turned Joel Pryzbilla and some change into Gerald Wallace, Portland hasn’t done much to improve their often-good-but-never-great teams. However, the most perplexing thing about the Trailblazers organization in the last four years is their inability to make decisions, whether at the trade deadline or in the backcourt. In recent memory, the Blazers have fielded these players at PG, SG and SF:
Steve Blake, Armon Johnson, Sergio Rodriguez, Jarrett Jack, Travis Diener, Patty Mills, Jerryd Bayless, Andre Miller, Rudy Fernandez, Wesley Matthews, Brandon Roy, Travis Outlaw, James Jones, Von Wafer, Martel Webster, Nic Batum and Gerald Wallace.
Astonishingly, none of these players were guaranteed to start at any given time during their tenure with the Blazers save for Roy, Blake and Miller. For years, Allen had been stockpiling young talent like Travis Outlaw and Channing Frye while waiting for them to develop. Unfortunately for the Microsoft billionaire, he was waiting for those eggs to hatch for so long he didn’t recognize that some of them were, in fact, Eggos.
Perhaps of equal importance is that Allen was willing to send Rudy Fernandez off to Dallas to get the deal done. In years past, Allen would have kept the fan favorite in Fernandez even though he wasn’t good enough to start and was unhappy about his spot on the depth chart (much like Outlaw and Frye).
With the trade for Felton, Allen has signaled a change for how the Trailblazers will do business moving forward. The Blazers have been looking for the “point guard of the future” since Damon Stoudamire was carrying his marijuana around in tinfoil. I’ve been extremely high on Felton, suggesting the Felton-for-Miller trade since April and even going so far as to call him ‘the most important player of this offseason.’
Felton is a 26-year-old floor general with great character and career averages in points, assists and rebounds equal to that of Tony Parker. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you look that up. And while stats never tell the whole tale, the sticker shock of that statement remains a valid point. Quizzing the general NBA public, you would never guess that those two players were even close to statistically equal.
Detractors of the trade (read: Blazer nation) have pointed out similarities in production from Andre Miller and Raymond Felton. Blazersedge.com said of Felton:
“This was the Blazers’ home run swing and they came up with a guy who looks mostly like the guy they just sent out, just a little younger… Statistically there’s very little to distinguish one of these players from the other.”
Unfortunately they seem to gloss over the worst part of Miller’s game, as well as the best reason for a Felton trade:
“Off-record whispers had [Miller] too complacent in the face of losing. His lack of an outside shot was also evident.”
Not caring about winning is despicable and universally ill-received. But it’s sad that a website dedicated to the Trailblazers failed to mention a single word about Miller’s style of play when compared to Felton. Where Felton is a passer who shoots the 3, Miller is a scoring, dribbling point guard who can post-up smaller players. Getting him in a rhythm completely throws off Brandon Roy’s game and since you can’t throw alley-oops on every possession, that of LaMarcus Aldridge as well.
The Blazers aren’t close to winning a championship and unfortunately for Allen, there’s still a lot more work to be done. LaMarcus Aldridge and Marcus Camby need someone else on the block to help them bang on defense and grab offensive rebounds while Chris Johnson matures. The pick of Nolan Smith at No. 21 confuses me to this end, especially considering Kenneth Faried was still on the board and could have a Ben Wallace/Udonis Haslem-like career. My guess is that another move is forthcoming to beef up the frontcourt.
Either Wesley Matthews or Nic Batum is going to have to become a primary scorer in the 2012 season, lest one (or both) of them gets shopped for someone who can. The thunder cloud hanging over the Blazers is still Brandon Roy — or rather, his now-hideous $82M contract — and how to work around the salary cap with such a solid lump in the middle of the roster. However, getting Felton for a reasonable contract of $7.5M a year is a great step in the right direction.
When Rich Cho was fired I have to admit that I fell in-line with the detractors of the Portland Trailblazers and indeed Paul Allen. As a fan of the team, I’ve been with the black-and-red through all their ups and downs. I just couldn’t take things getting any worse. When Allen announced that he was going to take a more vocal role in deciding team strategy and personnel, the collective mind of the sports world flashed alight with the bedazzling gold sparkle of Al Davis’ eyeglass chains. After yesterday’s draft, I’ve had a change of heart.
Instead of acting as Davis or as Jerry Jones, Allen wants to mimic Mark Cuban. Allen is courtside at all of his team’s games, and he is a true fan and student of basketball. He’s not qualified to run the team on a managerial level, but his input can be valuable. In the case of Ray Felton, Allen has finally addressed what his team needed the most and returned with the most prized possession available.
The newest edition to The Hoop Doctors writing staff, Dane Carbaugh is the editor and lead writer of the popular new basketball blog Hardcourt Hoops. Dane is an accomplished author and blogger of both American politics and NBA basketball.
