I've been trying to put my finger on why I've been feeling that media coverage of the Blazers (local, blogosphere, and what little national coverage there is) is so uninteresting to me this year, and today's Oregonian article about draft hindsight was helpful.  Not in terms of understanding basketball or the state of the Blazers, of course, but in terms of understanding what's missing from media coverage.  The first sentence states that the Blazers "enter the New Year with little reason for optimism".  What does he mean?  That they'll struggle with the Rockets tonight?  No, of course not.  He means that the multiple championships that we were promised by the pundits have lower odds than they had when the pundits were putting their money on it.  In a nutshell, this article is all about the past and the future, but there is no present in it.  One might criticize the article on its own grounds (e.g., which franchise changer should we have drafted instead of Roy -- Rudy Gay, JJ Reddick?) but at the end of the day, my lack of interest in the article comes from the fact that it has nothing to do with what draws me to the sport: basketball games.  What is so great about basketball is that it is real-time, unscripted and unpredictable.   And I may be alone in this (I suspect not), but I really enjoy watching our current starting five play (when they're clicking, which they are doing more of these days).  Eras of the team come and go, decisions are made, risks are taken (of course), teams meet or exceed or don't meet expectations -- but they always have to play the games, which is why we watch.  Right now, as a regular spectator, the media gives met this: recaps that I don't need (just the boxscore, ma'am), some useful and interesting previews from knowledgeable sources (thanks Dave and Mike Rice), and a lot of hoo-haw about spoiled expectations and second guessing.  My expectation is that there will be a game tonight at 6pm, and that expectation will be spoiled if it gets canceled for some reason.  I expect that it will be fun to see Wes Matthews try to cork up Kevin Martin.  Camby should have a good game on the boards, I expect, given the Rocket's lack of bigs.  Let's see if my expectations are met.  Would I like to have a do-over -- be able to change the past in some way to improve the team?  Yes, I'd like to re-play the Nuggets after that awful second half the other night.  Oh, yeah, we do get to play them several more times this year, so no worries.

I used to pay attention to some of the predictions/projections that are out there, but at this point I really don't know what they are for exactly.  What is the point of predicting?  To earn a better margin when gambling?  To be able to say 'I predicted it'?  There seems to be a whole media industry built up around this notion of tracking expectations of experts and measuring performance relative to these expectations, as if they have some kind of intrinsic value or should change the way we watch a game.  Such and such team will be hugely disappointed/ing if they don't reach milestone X.  That may be the case, but there are 100 odd games to be played in the meantime, each one of which is a win-loss proposition, with the potential for drama and excitement.  It almost seems like some people would just as well skip forward to the trophy ceremony if they could, which I don't understand at all -- the glory's in the games played, at least for me, win or lose, no use jumping past the good stuff.  As far as the past goes, I've never understood obsessive draft do-over debates, might as well talk about a roulette do-over, every pick is a risk, period.

Forget the past, forget the future, we've got a game tonight folks, and it's one game at a time in the NBA.  I'm optimistic that the game will meet my high expectations and we'll leave with a W.

but reading about the Blazers has become very boring and frustrating.  Not much value added to the experience of following the team, IMO.  But this is sort of a new development for me.  I very much enjoyed the extensive coverage during the rebuilding years.  The Blazers would struggle and we'd learn something about the players.  Fun to analyze and compare notes.  They would exceed expectations and it would create a fun buzz.  Even some of the non-basketball stuff was interesting, the fake GM stuff, draft analyses, post-hoc reviews of the draft or trades, etc.  (Never could get into the really non-basketball coverage of the Blazers, like what Canzano typically covers -- human interest stories, nefarious businessmen, bad actors, public image 'scandals' -- but that's a special case.)  Now things have changed a lot.  I still enjoy the games as much as before, maybe even more.  It's a mature team, head and shoulders better than what we've had in the past decade.  Solid execution (generally) on both ends of the floor.  Lost a few close ones, but they were really fun games to watch.  Been a great year for basketball here in PDX, if a bit of a grind because of the schedule.  Team's really got the chance to be something special, which is fun to plug into.  The media coverage of it?  Not so much.  National media doesn't really watch the Blazers (other than maybe John Hollinger), hence any and all opinions about them feel relatively uninformed; local media is bending over backwards to squeeze some drama out of the season beyond X's and O's, and failing; and the blogosphere is generally filled with folks throwing their typical hissy fits about this or that.  My god, Roy has chronic knee issues, who knew?  (um, anybody who's been following the team.)   I think this team is going through that transition that makes watching the games a lot of fun, but reading about them not much fun.  This is likely the sign of a solid, mature roster and a media that just doesn't spend much time on X's and O's, which is what's really interesting these days.  I know, I know, nobody's twisting my arm, guess I'll just tune out.

I confess to not understanding at all the perspective (put forth mainly by Dave in a couple post-trade posts) that Camby won't likely be around next year because all the minutes that he would get will go to Greg and Joel.   Let me just quickly outline the reasons that I don't see this as completely obvious.  (Polite way of saying I disagree.)  

First, Marcus Camby, unlike Greg or Joel, can play either the 4 or 5.  So if we expect LaMarcus to play around 35 minutes per game (which would be much preferable to the 42 minutes or whatever we're expecting him to play now), then we would expect that Camby would get some burn at the 4 with the other big fellas.  If we track Oden at between 20 and 25 minutes per game (which he got this year before the injury) and Przy less than 20 minutes (again, reasonable), then Camby could expect some burn at the 5 as well, totaling probably 20 mpg.  Again, this is under the assumption that everyone is healthy, which is frankly not realistic.  Yes, we've had unprecedented injury issues this year, but does this mean that we won't have any injuries next year?  Between Aldridge, Camby, Oden and Przy, we should expect to be with less than four of them healthy for some not insignificant stretch of the season, even it is just short stretches off with typical bumps and bruises.  None of these guys is an Andre Miller style iron man.  If Aldridge goes out for a week or two with some little thing, Camby starts at the four and plays 30 minutes instead of 20 for that stretch.  Oden or Przy go out, same deal -- Camby steps up his minutes as needed at both the four and the five.  Frankly, we haven't had a genuine 4/5 with the versatility of Camby, and it will serve us well, in the course of even a typical season of injuries.  

Three final thoughts on this issue.  First, Dante Cunningham -- whose time may be squeezed if Camby's the primary backup 4 -- is different from some of our other young players in that (IMO) his progress won't be stunted in some critical way by playing behind other veterans.  Dante's game is really pretty mature and if anything he will benefit from having such a group of veteran savvy players around him, much as he and Pendergraph have benefitted from having Juwan Howard around this year.  Also, Camby will likely be signing his last substantive contract, and the Blazers could probably manage to give him a contract that would make him happy while letting him compete for a championship on a team he digs.  Finally, between Oden, Camby and Przy, It's not clear to me at all that, in a minute crunch, Camby would be the one riding the pines.  We should put the best team we can on the court, and Camby may very well take minutes from one of the others (likely Przy).  If he can, is it a bad thing if he did?

In sum, far from not seeing a role for Camby next year, I say: let's make it worth his while and keep his versatility and savvy right here.  We'll likely need it.

One thing that I have enjoyed about this Blazers era is how unusual the team is in certain key respects.  For example, how they are extreme outliers in terms of mean age on the roster versus wins (or pace).  I am curious now about our on-going spate of injuries, how that compares to other injury-plagued teams in NBA history, and what happened to those other teams in terms of W/L.  I gather the operative statistic is 'games lost to injury/illness', by which I think is meant the sum over the roster of the number of games each individual was unable to play because of injury/illness.  The current Blazers team is likely to achieve a high historical rank on this statistic, based on what we already know.  Assuming that things play out more-or-less how they are projected to, here are estimates of games lost of the seven players currently out, over the whole season:  Aldridge 2 games, Batum 50 games, Rudy 30 games, Blake 5 games, Oden 62 games, Outlaw 60 games, Przy 52 games.  Some of these estimates are known (Oden, Przy), others are rough estimates, but I think this is a pretty conservative estimate  -- which means it is likely a lower bound -- and the total is 261 games lost to injury/illness.  Doing a quick Google search to find a relevant table, the best I could find was in an article about Clipper history, that cited their 2002-03 squad as the '7th highest tally for games lost to injury/illness with 293'.  I think there are some questions about how to count such a statistic, such as: are the games lost from players who would not have been DNP-CD anyhow?  For the above seven players, there is no question that they would have had minutes in every game, if healthy.  One could imagine counting Patty Mills in the tally -- he has been on the roster from the beginning of the season, and has been out with injury.  Somehow those games lost don't count the same, though, since he would not have been playing anyhow had the roster been whole.  Not sure how to quantify this notion of 'core rotation player', but I suspect there is a way.

So, this post is a request for somebody to go beyond the anecdotal worst-Juwan-Howard-has-seen-in-16-years label to some concrete data: which NBA squads suffered the worst injury plagues, and how did those squads deal with the adversity (in terms of W/L)?  I know we have a long season of ups-and-downs ahead of us, but I really believe that this team is destined to be an outlier, rising to the challenge and exceeding expectations.  It has been a blast to watch so far, even with the pain of players going down, and has the feel of an unforgettable season already.  Go Blazers!

I have generally been thinking about the RLEC contract (the 'super-expiring' asset) in terms of what it can bring back at the trade deadline, but tonight I thought I would step through a possible scenario if we just sit tight.  So, suppose we sit tight, let the contract fall off the books.  I'm going to make (and justify) three assumptions of what would happen in the off season in such a scenario: 1) we relinquish the rights to restricted FAs Frye and Diogu, making them unrestricted FAs; 2) we pick up the team option on Outlaw; and 3) we don't pick up the team option on Blake, making him an unrestricted FA.  (Hear me out, Blake fans, the plan doesn't necessarily mean losing Blake, though it is a risk.)  Now, to justify the assumptions: 1) Frye and Diogu are out of the rotation and at this point have fairly limited value for the team, certainly the around 9M cap hold required for each to keep them as RFAs is not justified; 2) The 3.6M of Travis' option is less than his perceived value in the league, hence we would run a real risk of losing him to free agency if he becomes unrestricted; 3) Steve Blake is a big picture guy, who loves the organization and the town and whose first choice would be to come back.  The mid-level exception would be a raise for him, so we would have plenty of room to sign him to a new, comfortable contract after any other free agent signings have been completed, with relatively limited risk that he would quickly bolt for another club.  There is risk of losing Blake with this scenario, but it is, I believe, a moderate risk.

Okay, so under these assumptions, here's what our roster (for salary cap purposes) would be:

Joel Przybilla (6,857,725), Greg Oden (5,361,240), LaMarcus Aldridge (5,844,827), Travis Outlaw (3,600,000), Nicolas Batum (1,118,760), Martell Webster (4,319,654), Brandon Roy (3,910,816), Rudy Fernandez (1,165,320),  Jerrod Bayless (2,143,080), Sergio Rodriguez (1,576,696), and Darius Miles (9,000,000). Further, we need to place a cap hold for Koponen and Freeland, which is (together) another 1,681,600.

This leaves a total of 46,579,718.  Even if the salary cap doesn't rise, that gives us around 12M in cap space to sign a free agent or work through a jointly advantageous sign and trade, which is roughly the size of the LaFrentz contract anyhow.  We then would be able to re-sign Blake if so desired, up to whatever is allowed under the CBA.    Further, we have a tremendous number of young players if we want to then consolidate talent, either in that sign and trade, or perhaps on draft day.

This little exercise makes me quite comfortable with sitting tight and letting RLEC fall off the books -- the team reserves flexibility for improving the team in the off season, after having seen how things fall out through the rest of this season and the playoffs.  Of course, if the perfect deal falls in their laps, pull the trigger, but having seen all of the tortuous trades that folks have been pitching, I'm just not seeing such a deal at this time, at least none that I believe the other team would entertain.  Clearly broken teams like the Bulls will actually be easier trade partners at that time than they are now.

Anyhow, I offer this up as therapy for the trade deadline junkies.  We may just have another roller-coaster draft day in our future!  I think I've talked myself into being happy sitting tight.  The one sticking point might be the risk of losing Blake, but I truly believe that he's 'on-board' enough with folks here that he and his agent would understand the rationale and play ball with the Blazers.

Josh Childress signs with a Greek club, leaves NBA:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3501488

This is a really big deal, throws a monkeywrench into the whole restricted FA thing.  Watch for loads of people to get extensions that they otherwise wouldn't.  Like B. Jennings leaving Arizona for Europe, this changes the set of options that the NBA execs were assuming when they drafted rules.

On the flip side, what does it say about Josh Childress that he'd rather go play in relative anonymity in Greece instead of in the NBA?  This is the opposite of the decision that Rudy made -- choosing to take (short term) more money to play against inferior competition.  Will NBA teams still be there making offers three years from now if he wants to come back?  Not so sure.

With the limited FA pickings next summer, it would be nice if some of these RFAs this year -- in particular Luol Deng, who would be a great fit on this team -- would become unrestricted FAs next year.  They can do this, at substantial personal risk, by signing a 1 year qualifying offer.   For Deng, this amount comes in much less than the mid-level exception, which the Blazers can offer to anyone.  How about taking the risk out of his  taking the qualifying offer?  Sign Deng to a 5 year mid-level exception with a player option after the first year.  The Bulls can match it (and likely would), but he could simply opt-out (or not opt-in as is done for the option) and be a FA next year, when we will have the dough to give him what he's worth.  As it stands, it looks like nobody is going to give this guy a serious payday this year.  With the 5 year deal, he has his insurance policy against something happening in the year to ruin his chances.  And with the player option after the first year, he can immediately opt out after next season, thus becoming an unrestricted FA, everybody wins.  Are there any rules against putting in a player option after the first year?  I don't think so -- although it may affect things like Bird rights or whatever (not sure).

"And though a league source said Ellis has drawn sign-and-trade interest from the Heat, Cavs and Blazers, nothing is likely to materialize. Any scenario would require approval from the Warriors, who are intent on keeping Ellis and Biedrins."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/14/SPJB11OM4E.DTL

I think he's a hell of a player, and would fit the 'combo guard with B. Roy' model for the roster.  He's a real scoring guard, super quick.  We'd presumably give Raef plus assets (SRod, Bayless + X, where X could be one of the usuals).  What would it take for you to pull the trigger on such a deal?  (About 8 nanoseconds?)  

If the extra X were Webs or Travis, we'd need some SF help back, don't you think?  Or would we be happy spreading the time at three around to Rudy?  Imagine an Ellis, Roy, Rudy, LA, GO lineup, that would move.

Not too many players that would make me think of dealing with the current roster, at least not this year -- Ellis is one of them.

I was interested in why Bayless went from being a consensus top 5 pick to showing up at 11 for us to snag with a clever trade.  Last week, Chad Ford wrote a column about how he comes up with his mock draft.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/draft2008/insider/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=Tiers-080619

In it, he describes a 'tier' system, whereby he places players in tiers based on where GMs have the players on their draft board.  Obviously, Rose and Beasley were alone in tier 1.  Interestingly, Mayo and Bayless were alone in tier 2, because

"Virtually every team I spoke with has Mayo and Bayless as the No. 3 and No. 4 picks in the draft, regardless of team need. A few teams argued that Mayo should be in Tier 1, but for now, I left him in Tier 2."

I think this is part of the reason why Bayless fell -- most teams in the lottery had favorites that they talked themselves into valuing over everyone but Rose, Beasley and Mayo.   Instead of taking BPA, they either filled a need or chose their individual fave.   I don't think Bayless falling has anything to do with Bayless himself, but more to do with how teams manage their draft process and think about who to take.  This is an amazing coup for the Blazers -- because of how they acquired him, but also likely because of the disinformation that they spread trying to dampen hype around their targeted player.  Exciting stuff.

I've seen Bill Simmons (and only him) mention Brandon's knee on a few occasions, and I read it as him spewing his typical sour grapes hate towards the Blazers.  Does anyone have the true scoop on the state of his knees, what the risks are, and whether this is something to really be aware of moving forward?  BTW, I can't stand Simmons, he appears obsessed with dissing the Blazers at every opportunity, he must really be hurting inside.

how will it work in the summer of 2009?   We have to offer a qualifying offer to Webs (and Frye and Jack), then they will be restricted FA.  If we sign them to large amounts, then salary cap space will be tight.  Can we first sign another FA, using whatever cap space there is, then match Webs on whatever RFA offer he got?  My understanding is that there is a sequence that is important: first sign non-Blazer FAs, so that it stays within salary cap, then sign Blazer FAs or extend contracts, where the salary cap does not impose restrictions.  Does this seem correct?