Im driving up from Portland and will be around some of the good brew pubs before the game.  If any other Bengals fans will be there, let me know!  Seahawk fans can be unruly, but mostly towards other NFC West teams.  Not sure how they will react to a Bengals fan as we are ...a)not a rival, or b) usually any good.   Either way, I will be in all orange and black and looking for a win.

'jerry Mcguire voice'  - -  Who's coming with me !?!?

This post definitely falls under the category of "Unhearalded Blazers".

The Blazers are my team.  They have been for 27+ years.  I have seen them play great teams like the Bulls dynasty in the 1990's, and I have seen them play awful teams like the Clippers......every year.  Most every Blazer fan loves the greats.  Drexler, Walton, Williams, Porter, Petrie, Kersey, etc. etc.  But much like we all appreciate players like Joel Przybilla and Nic Batum now days, there have been many many Blazers that had great contributions through the years that did not get love or recognition from the blogs or internet.

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See, back in the day, it took a true sports fanatic to know how many rebounds per game that Wayne Cooper averaged in the 1989 season (4.3).  But with the internet and the endless amounts of sports knowledge at our fingertips, you almost seem like a fool if you dont know Greg Oden's PER, or Brandon Roy's rebounding rate per 48 minutes.  Thats what makes unhearalded players from the '70's, '80's, and '90's so cool.  They are like the fresh new band that nobody has heard of, and when you break them out at a party people think you are some kind of basketball savant.  You can almost make a game out of it.........the mediocre basketball player game.

Outside of the Blazers, you have such gems as Sedale Threat, John Konkac, Rumeal Robinson, Blue Edwards, Michael Cage, Sherman Douglas, Marc Macon, Benoit Benjamin, Thurl Bailey, Judd Beuchler, Bill Wennington, Eric Murdock, Jeff Malone, Shawn Respert, Armen Gilliam, Kenny Battle, J.R Reid, and Roy Hinson.  And believe me, thats just off the top of my head.  If you see me at a party, dont try and battle me at the mediocre basketball name game.  Just don't try it.  Ever

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The Blazers have quite an impressive roster of unhearalded players.  30 years worth.  Some dont deserve praise, but there are some, and one in particular that deserve more credit than they have gotten.

In our first championship season, Dave Twardzik, Larry Steele, and Johnny Davis were instrumental role players that helped get us over the top.  In the early 1980's, players like Darnell Valentine, Kenny Carr, Calvin Natt, and Fat Lever taught a young Clyde Drexler how to become a professional.  But past the Championship season in '77, there have been two significant era's up to the point we are at now.  The teams of the late '80's and early '90's, and the teams of the late '90's through early 2000's.  The later was more of a collection of hired guns, so I will keep my focus on what was the glory years for most of us.  The teams of the early 1990's.

That core group of players was fantastic.  We give KP tons of credit for assembling the team we have now (and rightly so), but the team that we assembled back then was fantastic.  True star players (Drexler), great supporting players (Porter, Kersey, Williams, Duckworth), and insrumental role players (Ainge, Bryant, Robinson).  Kersey was a late round pick, and Duckworth and Williams were aquired through TRUE lopsided trades.  Every Blazer fan can probably name 80% of the players on those teams, but there is one man that has been lost in the shuffle, and I cant figure out why.

Alaa Abdelnaby a.k.a The Magic Carpet Ride.

Is it merely a coincidence that our second appearance in the finals happened in Alaa's second season?  I think not.  This Egyptian force brought a certain toughness and mystique that Charles Barkley said "was terrifying".  Michael Jordan was said to have even cried before games in which he would face the NW Naby.  Sure he only played two seasons with the Blazers, but the fact that Alaa turns boys into men cannot be ignored.  Clyde was just an athlete before Alaa's arrival and Porter could barely dribble the ball. These are facts.

Even from a young age, Alaa knew that his calling was leadership.  Sure the only A's he got at Duke were when he spelled his name, but Alaa was always more heart than brains. 

 It is even said that after a meaningless college basketball game between the Duke Blue Devils and the Kansas Jayhawks on February 18th 1989 in which Alaa's Devils destroyed the Hawks 102-77, Alaa took a young Kevin Pritchard behind the stands after the game and told him about a young boy in Seattle and a young boy in Texas that he had been having visions in his sleep about. Counfused at first, KP wondered why an opposing player would share his wierd visions with him.  They parted ways that night and Alaa and KP would go on to be drafted in 1990 and follow very different career paths. But even so, a young Kevin Pritchard never forgot Alaa's prophecy that day, and when Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge declared for the NBA draft 18 years later, KP knew what he must do.  I think it is safe to say that two of the greates era's in TrailBlazer history are directly attributable to one Alaa Abdelnaby.

So while we let Danny Young, Ennis Whatley, Lamont Strothers, Wayne Cooper, Adrian Branch, Richard Anderson, Craig Neal, Rolando Ferriera, Steve Henson, and Negele Knight drift into Former Blazers obscurity.  Do not let the same happen to Alaa Abdelnaby.  We owe it to him and we owe it to ourselves.

And if you are wondering what that AA tatoo is on Kevin Pritchard's bicep, I'll tell you this.  KP has never had a drinking problem.  Figure the rest out.

Ok, its been an interesting offseason for our Blazers.  Hedo left us at the alter, Millsap was matched, nobody wants to trade with us, Jerryd screwed up his wrist, Greg is working his butt off, and Martell is still rehabing his foot.  Some of it is troubling, and some of it is just run-of-the-mill NBA franchise stuff that every team deals with.  Hedo and Millsap didn't mean a whole lot to me, and I am happy with the roster as is.  Jerryd probably isnt ever going to be a true PG, but I suspect that Nate, KP, and the Team already knew that.

All in all, I dont think that there was any franchise changing free-agents to be had, and the money that some are getting (Bargnani) suggests that many are getting over-paid.

But here is the dead horse that keeps irking me every time I think about it during the course of my work day.  Brandon's contract.  There, I said it. I know some of you will write me off as a paranoid fan, but after all the bad luck associated with NW sports, I feel I have a right to be irritated with the present situation.  Others will say that this is NORMAL contract negotiations, but I say B.S.  You dont haggle with the man that has brought your franchise back from the dead.  CP3 and D Will were signed almost immediatly after they were eligible, why the wait on Roy?

This topic has been hashed over ad-nauseum, and I dont expect this to facilitate some magical cure to my irritation.  But seriously, it has been 20+ days and the Blazers have swept this under the rug and tried to divert our attention to the mediocre showing by Bayless in Summer league or our players that we drafted.  WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG WITH ROY.  WHY HAS HE NOT BEEN TAKEN CARE OF LIKE EVERY OTHER TEAM TAKES CARE OF THEIR STAR PLAYER???

So I guess just vent your opinions on the situation or tell me to shut up.  But I could really care less about which low level free-agent we are going after or what the 14th man on the bench is showing us in summer league.  Take care of the Franchise and then feed me the summer league table scraps.

The free agency period of the NBA is heating up, and it looks like we are going to see 4-5 major contenders emerge.  Most of the major free agents have "verbal commitments" or look to be leaning somewhere, and as a serious Blazer fan, my emotions have been up and down over the past few days.  On one hand, it looks as if we will probably land the free agent that KP, Nate, and every other member of the Blazers top brass has coveted for months now, Hedo Turkoglu.  I have been up and down on him, especially because of his price tag, but overall I think it is a move that we have to make, and really, the only move left to make.  Hedo will keep our team amongst the top 4-5 teams in our conference, but Im sad to say that might be it.

The optimist inside hopes that Turk and Oden develop a similar bond to the one Hedo had with Dwight, and that Hedo can spur some development in our franchise Center.  Hedo is a good shooter, and no doubt makes our team much, much better.  The optimist in me also hopes that B Roy, LMA, Rudy, Martell, Bayless, Batum, and every other young player we have each make another step and our team just organically improves that much more from last year.  While I think B Roy is getting close to maxing out, I still think he is 2 years from entering his prime.  I think Lamarcus has the potential to make the biggest jump and really catapult himself into one of the elite PF's in the league.  Everyone else is a wild card, but we should see something from at least a few of them.

Now for the bad news.  With what has transpired over the past few days, we could have a rocky road ahead for many years to come.  The L*kers just got better with Ron Artest. A LOT better.  I have read posts on here wondering about chemistry, Ron going crazy, etc. etc.  Dont kid yourselves, this guy just took less money than he could have got elsewhere because he wants a ring, and is willing to do anything to get it.  With Phil Jackson at the helm, he will mold a team that will most likely dominate the West for the next 3-4 years, and they are actually pretty young.  Artest is a BIG upgrade over Ariza, and now gives the L*kers the best perimeter defense in the NBA.  Not to mention a ridiculous front line of Odom, Gasol, and a now healthy Bynum.  Not only that, but the Spurs look to be in contention for the next 3-4 years as well with their addition of Jefferson and Denver didnt get any worse.  So it looks like we will be the 4th best team in the West for the foreseable future unless we get some MAJOR development from our young guys, which could happen.  But that is a big IF.  The other option is trading some more of our players to vault into contention, but I'm afraid it will probably involve more than just Travis & Blake to get the kind of impact player we will need.  People we really like such as Rudy or Nic would probably be sent packing as well : (

Boston, Cleveland, and Orlando will be strong as well assuming they keep their pieces intact (LBJ could leave and Boston has some aging stars).

So while we all relished in the development of our young team this year with all of our young talent and quality players, calm down. I'm sure many of us were salivating at the thought of the perenial powers like Phoenix and San Antonio getting old, or the Lakers somehow falling apart, but things just got a lot harder.  Just mute the radio next time you hear people yapping about our Championship window opening up in the next year or two.  I still think we will have a good 4-5 years of possible championship contention, but with what has happened we might have to wait a while.

 All in all, I am just glad that we have such a good team but I can't say that watching all of our rivals poaching borderline All-Stars for mid-level-exception money makes me happy.  Why cant all GM's be idiots like Chris Wallace?