An actual new article about the Blazers.....

You're dead on. The team is definitely a contender if Oden recovers and has a great season. A tandem of him and the New Improved Aldridge is just such a dominating front court. Defense, rebounding, low post scoring, blocked shots. Paired with shooters in Felton/Matthews and defensive SFs like Wallace and Batum, that's just a really, really nice mix.

Of course, there's maybe a 10-20% chance of Oden having that kind of season. And without Oden, all the other pieces just kind of fall apart and we're looking at a 7th or 8th seed.

It ain't much, but there is a glimmer of hope.

 

a glimmer of hope is all a fan needs! im a niner fan, no hope ever lol

 

I don't think we need a "GREAT" season from Greg to contend. He gives us 30 minutes 12/12/3 and we are a quality team!

 

So sort of the numbers Camby put up?

 

Which goes to show that numbers aren't everything.

 

Take out the part about Felton/Matthews/Wallace and you pretty much just said what fans have been saying for the past three seasons.

 

And it's been true for the past 3 seasons. If Oden is able to play, the Blazers are a contender. If not, not so much...which is the way it's played out. I guess I don't quite get what it is you want to see the Blazers do here. Dump Oden now because you don't think he'll ever be able to play, or wait and see what actually happens when he gets back on the court? I'm in no hurry to jump back into rebuilding mode, so I'm in favor of seeing if the basketball fates will finally stop peeing on Oden and let him play before we venture back into lottery land in search of the next big thing.

 

Well, maybe we'll actually get to see if they've got anything in them. In some ways a lockout shortened season (assuming it's not cancelled of course) favors any team with a lot of question marks; the fewer games played the more importance and impact outlier performances have and maybe a team gets hot at the end of a 40 game year and makes a run on fresh legs. After that though? Yikes, talk about uncertainty. (Felton, Batum, Oden, Camby and Wallace hit free agency, with whatever rules exist after a new CBA gets ratified).

 

Well they should obviously give him a five year, 50 million deal so that we can have two hobbled players eating up huge chunks of our cap.

 

Nice. Instead of answering a legitimate question about what you think the Blazers should do in this situation, come back with the snarky one-liner. Care to try again?

 

Regardless of what they do with Oden, we are not going to be in "rebuilding mode". The team has done okay without Oden for the past three years, so it would appear as though they've moved on without him. They're even talking about Aldridge playing as center, so if that's not indicative of the team thinking past Oden, I'm not sure what is.

Honestly, I'm tired of playing the waiting game on him, and now we have to pay even more money to keep on playing the same game. It's not like he's a euro-stash that we hold the rights to, he's a #1 pick that's due a lot of money if we want to keep him. I would either sign and trade him or let him go. He's not worth the 50 million or whatever it's going to take to sign him at this point. I'd say there's less than a 50% chance that he actually goes on to do something great, and those kind of odds are not worth eating up our cap space for another four or five years.

 

I agree that the team has done "okay" without Oden, but isn't the constant complaint around here that "okay" doesn't cut it? Without Oden and with Roy reduced to cameo appearances as a dominant player, the Blazers will probably consistently be in the hunt for a playoff spot in the West as long as Aldridge stays healthy. But Portland fans, and I think Paul Allen, are tired of one-and-done teams and there's nothing harder in today's NBA to do than to take a team with consistent late first round draft picks and lift it back into contention without first sliding back into rebuilding mode to replenish talent. The days of being able to buy a roster of stars through free agency aren't likely to come back any time soon. As I see it, the current incarnation of the Blazers has one chance to get into serious contender status and that's for Greg Oden to get healthy.

I totally understand the frustration with the waiting game. Right now, it's impossible to predict what kind of money that he will be offered as a RFA. Depending upon what the new CBA looks like, teams may or may not have money to take a flyer on him. The Blazers will be in a position to look at the offers and decide whether they want to match or not, or they may decide to try to make an offer of their own. Whatever they and other teams do will be dependent upon Greg continuing to show progress in his rehab and his medical tests continuing to look positive. In any event, he's likely to be a gamble that the Blazers or some other team is willing to make simply because he has the tools to be such a game-changer. I'd be willing to bet that Sam Presti is thinking about what it would take to put Greg into a Thunder uniform in place of Kendrick Perkins. If you want to win in the NBA, you have to be willing to roll the dice. If they come up snake eyes, you may have to start over again, but you'll never get the chance to win big by playing it safe.

 

The Spurs have played it safe for two decades and they have won how many championships? It's not about rolling the dice, it's about getting one or two nice pieces and building around them with good role players. Aldridge and Wallace are both nice pieces, but we need a GM who can put good role players around them and we need a coach who can find a system that gets the most out of what we have. Without Roy or Oden weighing down our cap, we might actually have some cap space in a couple seasons to go out and get another star. That's why I'm against rolling the dice on Oden when we already rolled the dice on Roy and came up snake eyes. Now we're stuck with four more years and a max contract for a guy that may or may not be able to come off our bench.

 

The Spurs? Seriously, that's the comparison you're going to pick? Let's think optimistically that Aldridge is equal to a young Tim Duncan, although I think even the most homer Blazer fan would be a bit embarrassed asserting that position, the Spurs were first able to pair him with David Robinson and then got some amazingly good breaks with Manu and Parker panning out as legitimate stars. They got those guys cheap through late draft picks (Parker #28 and Ginobili #57). You may be happy writing Greg off and looking for the Blazers to get that lucky in the draft building around Aldridge, but I'm not. Roy's salary, which seems to be a constant burr under your saddle, may be able to be dumped with an amnesty clause. The Blazers will know that before they have to decide what to do with Oden. The new GM will have a tough choice to make with Oden, but I'd be extremely unhappy if they don't at least give him one more shot.

 

I strongly suspect that in a lockout shortened year, most teams with a hint of interest in Oden would rather put the onus of his future squarely on the Blazers' shoulders. Playing contract chicken with the Blazers might be done to force Allen/Miller/Bozo the clown to match, but they'd also run the risk of overpaying for a guy who hasn't demonstrated an ability to stay even remotely healthy.

Maybe I'm way off base, but I think Oden will end up playing out his rookie tender and go completely unrestricted next July ... at which point God only knows what will happen -- will Greg want to stay here, will he have been productive and healthy or (yet again) unhealthy and unproductive. All I can safely say is that I don't envy the guy who gets to sit in the GM chair next.

 

Roy's contract should be a bur in everyone's saddle. The guy is a major burden on our salary cap and he's not contributing much on the court. I used the Spurs as an example because they were able to stay in the mix despite losing Robinson, Avery Johnson, Sean Elliott, etc.

 

Dude, that IS a great season!

 

Assuming the Blazers plan on keeping Felton, Batum and Wallace around after next season, they're going to be over the salary cap regardless of Roy's contract. If the new CBA has some sort of hard cap in it, then it will also have to allow for some sort of amnesty clause and I would think that the Blazers would use it to free themselves from Roy's contract. I didn't have a problem with the Blazers giving Roy the contract when they did, so it would be pretty petty to begrudge him his money now simply because he got injured. Crap happens.

 

You didn't have a problem with the Blazers giving Roy the contract when they did because you didn't know what they knew. The front office was aware of his knee problems and still gave him the max. That's the problem that I have.

 

They knew he had knee problems and probably wouldn't have a long career, but they didn't know Ron Artest would step on Roy's foot while he was making a move to the hoop and cause an injury to his best knee within a few months of signing the extension. They didn't know that would cause him to lose the meniscus in that knee and that this would cause him to overcompensate so that his other knee would fail. In short, they took a calculated risk on one of the top 3 SGs in the league and it blew up in their faces. Like I said, crap happens. I fail to see any benefit in whining about it now.