What up Blazers Edge?! I'm happily moving back to Portland in the next couple weeks (from Central Oregon) and I've decided to conduct a little experiment  and try to determine the full communal value of the "BEdge."

My proposal is this: I am moving back to Portland and I need to find a cool house, with cool housemates that like the Blazers, are happy Barack Obama  is going to President in 11 days (sorry rabid conservatives - no offense), like to have a good time and don't mind the fact that I have an awesome half-dingo dog (who is very well behaved and friendly unless you are a squirrel).

I am fun, awesome, people like me and I LOVE the Blazers (and have lots of cool Blazer stories from my time working as a courtside server behind the Blazer bench), think this could be a good match? Hit me up below.

As a side topic, was Wednesday night's game vs. Detroit the ugliest win you can remember? I can't remember an uglier win I was this happy about. Go Bayless.

***UPDATE*** If you have a spot I might be interested in, email me at: redmandan77@yahoo.com

A heads up for everyone stuck out here with only the nationally televised games. I talked to Bend Broadband earlier today about the Blazers, like I do almost every week.Today I got a slightly different answer than usual...

When I started going off about how we need to watch Blazer games in C.O. they gave me a survey about how much I wanted to watch them play, etc. They asked whether I was willing to pay $1.50 more on my cable bill if I could get the channel, and also wanted to see if I was willing to upgrade my cable package slightly to get CSN.

This makes me think Central Oregon is very close to coming up with a deal.

To voice your displeasure with no deal currently, call Bend Broadband at 541-382-5551. I went through the options and talked to someone at the executive office, that seemed to be fairly effective. Let's put some pressure on them to make this happen.

Even if I don't stay in Bend to watch the Blazers this season (I'm probably moving back to PDX shortly), I think everyone deserves the chance to watch them play, and everyone in the state should have the opportunity to watch the upcoming Blazers glory.

I know you can't put lipstick on a pig, but I'm a veteran and I'm going to take that as free license to put up a post (with a controversial name) on how excited I am about seeing a lineup with Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge. Seriously, the Blazers are going to be ridiculously good, right?

I would probably even be excited by LMA and Channing Frye as our twin towers but instead we're faced with an even greater possibility.

I'm taking up words at this point but I want to see what is up with the Junk Drawer today and I need the recs.

Now, we all know who we'd want to get if we somehow landed picks 1 or 2. But what if, a big what if, what if we get a lucky ping pong bounce and move to the #3 pick? Let's say that KP decides that we can't make a worthwhile move to get a vet PG so we're getting one in the draft at #3. Who do we take? Bayless, Mayo or everyone's favorite darkhorse, Russell Westbrook?

 As things look now, even if Darius' contract comes off the books we still won't have cap room until 2009, when Raef's contract comes off the books. But that might not be the case for long.

I don't know the specific rules regarding this, but I'm sure the NBA wouldn't void a contract of ours (a FA acquisition as a result of freed up cap space) if Darius signed with someone else and his contract came back on our cap space. That contract can't go back on our cap space until he has played 10 minutes in the regular season, so if he goes off the books this summer we have his cap room but if someone signs him and plays him 10 minutes next year we won't have that cap space. This raises the question of why KP made this move now instead of next summer (the evaluation by the doctor usually only takes a few days to complete). I think this to get into the FA class in 2008.

How? We get the $10 million + trade exemption from  Golden State that they got in the JRich deal. We give them an expiring contract in Raef plus a nice young player or two and/or picks in exchange for their trade exemption (they can only add cash or picks - no players in a deal involving a trade exemption) and then PRITCHSLAP!!!! we have a ton of cap space this offseason for trades or to sign free agents.

UFA includes Arenas, Marion, Maggette, possibly Baron Davis; RFA include Ellis, Louis Williams, Calderon, Deng and more (of both categories). If we get rid of Raef and a couple more contracts, we might have room for a couple of new contracts.

I personally think we make a major play for Calderon if this scenario plays out but there are many great players out there available this year. Thoughts?

Ooh, just realized that we still have Francis contract on the books so I'm not sure how much room we'll actually have. Might take away all of that "room" I was thinking of. I'm not sure we can do anything about that.