More news on Greg in Jerryd in Ohio

Bobby Medina is being interviewed by "Wheels at Work" right now.

bullet points:
-Greg sounds motivated
-Jerryd caught wind that Bobby was going to Ohio and wanted to surprise the big fella
-Jerryd, Greg, and Mike Conley scrimmaged and worked out with the Ohio State guys
-Greg is flying out to Phoenix next week to work out with Jerryd again -- both feel like they have some good momentum.
-Tentative plans for Greg to fly out to UCLA to work out with all of the pros later in the Summer
-Medina is trying to get Travis to maybe fly into Columbus (no hard plans)
-Jerryd is eager to play in summer league and try to run the team as a distributor and team leader
-Medina describes both players as "being on a mission" in terms of their attitude.

 

Thanks man! Sounds like the youngsters are putting in the work everybody wants them to do. I can't ask for much more.

 

Bayless is the man. I have said this before, but he is the type of guy that people will follow because of his work ethic and utmost desire to kill his opponent.

Outlaw, Fernandez, Sergio, Webster and #24 for Conley and Gay.

I would still do that deal yesterday. Conley, Roy and Bayless is a nice attacking back court, and Gay and Batum is a rock solid 3 rotation

 

It's incredibly encouraging that Oden and Bayless have the drive. They clearly have tremendous talent but, at this level of competition, that talent needs to be honed by huge motivation and work ethic to achieve excellence. To me, that's always the concern with a young talent...will he have the drive to maximize his talent? I'm excited that Oden and Bayless, two very important parts of the future, seem to have it.

 

I would buy that for a dollar!

 

I have it on good authority by the way that Bayless and Greg are becoming fast friends. Also that Bayless is wowing Conley with his desire to be the best.

 

Good points, maybe they learned a little from LA and Brandon?
LA is known as a weight room gym rat and wasn't it Roy who called in everyone to meet way early before training camp started? It all starts from the top and seems to be trickling its way down.

But seriously, how can you not love the kid? He hears Medina say he's working out with Oden and goes along to surprise the big fellah. Loving the fact that Oden sounds driven as well.

 

I know it was mentioned in another topic here about Bayless, but shows how smart he is. He knows the surest and quickest way to get some playing time. Working super hard by himself would be good, and would arguably win him more time. Working out real hard with the franchise C? Much better idea. Build up chemistry on the court with Oden, and make Oden better, and you win yourself a lot mroe time. roy and LMA have gems that will easily fit around those two, if they develop good chemistry with eachother.

 

Color me cautiously optimistic.

Too many memories of "Shawn Kemp has lost weight and is highly motivated" and other such summertime tidbits have left me with a larger-than-I'd-like degree of "I'll believe it when I see it".

I have been a Bayless detractor and I hope he proves me wrong. I've been a Greg hopeful and I hope he proves me too cautious.

For now though, I'll read the glowing reports with a chunk of rock salt and hope they are true.

Gramps...

 

Too bad we couldn't have got Shawn Kemp and Zbo to have a belly busting contest.

 

Unless we are talking about cocaine or the desire to reproduce, Jerry Bayless has more desire in the pinky of his left hand than Shawn Kemp has in his entire rapidly approaching 400 lb. body.

Kemp's career fizzled because he prefered to spend his offseasons procreating and doing drugs rather than staying in shape and working on his game. Imagine how good he would have been if he'd have been as motivated as Bayless.

BNM

 

You are giving up waaaaaay to much to obtain those two players and Gay would never be the third option on any team. He is a volume scorer on a poor team and and considered by memphis fans to be inconsistant which suprised me considering he averaged a little over 18 points a game. He is currently trying to get an extension similar to Chris Paul's and would mean he would be making over $15m per year. Also we would have three PG's actively vying for the starting job, one that steve blake will have probably through at least half of this upcoming season.

 

So someone posts a message about Greg in Jerryd and you had to turn this into Gay?

It's a typo man, a typo!

 

robocop

 

Considering all of Gay's numbers went down this year, his asking for 15m a season is nuts.

I would imagine the real target of this trade would Conely, with Gay as a throw in.

Memphis wouldn't do it though, because the best Portland player in the trade (Rudy) plays the same position as their best player (Mayo).

 

I was a huge fan of Rudy Gay, but last year was not a good season for the guy. I don't desire him to be a Blazer.

 

Holy crap, I'd do that in an instant and not think twice about it. We'd instantly get better at our two weakest positions. Conley and Gay are both young and insanely athletic. Conley struggled as a rookie, but played great as a starter after the all-star break this season.

If we added Conley as the starting PG, it would allow Bayless to fill the 3rd guard role backing up both guard spots. This is the role Jarrett Jack used to play. With Rudy backing up the 2, the Blazers were forced to use a 4-man guard rotation last season. I'd definitely prefer a 3-guard rotation of Conley, Roy and Bayless over our current 4-man rotation of Blake, Roy, Rudy and Sergio. I'm sure Bayless would prefer to start, but in a 3-man rotation, he'd average close to starter minutes (probably about 28 - 30 MPG) and with Rudy gone, he'd have plenty of opportunities to score from either guard spot.

On paper, giving up Rudy and either renouncing Blake, or keeping him around in a greatly reduced role, would hurt the teams 3-point shooting. However, one of the biggest areas Conley has improved is his 3-point shooting. He shot 0.406 for the season and 0.435 from 3-point range after the all-star break. You could always keep Blake around in a James Jones designated 3-point shooter role for a few minutes a game to help spread the defense and open things up inside. The transition could be gradual - gradually decrease Blake's minutes as Bayless grows into his role. Allow Bayless to back up Roy and Blake to back-up Conley initially, and then gradually start giving Bayless minutes at back-up PG as he improves his ability to run the offense and distribute the ball.

I was very high on Conley before the 2007 draft, and hoped the Blazers would be able to trade for a late lottery pick to get him in the 9 - 11 range. I thought the 4th pick was too high for him, and like many rookie PGs, he struggled. However, he really came around during the 2nd half of his sophomore season and is looking every bit like a solid starting PG prospect.

With both his old and new BFFs around, I don't think we'd have to worry any more about Oden being depressed, down on himself or unmotivated. I also think it would help his game tremendously to have two guards on the team actively looking to feed him the ball - two guards who can penetrate, draw the defense and then dump the ball off to the big man. I'd also love to see Conley and Bayless perfect the pick-n-roll with Oden (not the pick-n-ignore that the Blazers ran this season where the guard completely ignores Oden rolling down the lane wide open).

The only question is: is Chris Wallace REALLY this dumb. Would he really trade two of his starters for a bunch of our back-ups and a low 1st round draft pick? He might as it would clear the way to draft Rubio with the 2nd pick and would give the Grizz a lot more depth. Their biggest glaring need would still be at starting 4 - what the hell, let's give them Frye, too.

BNM