Okay, we're under .500, so let's do some controversy.  The problem is Brandon.  First, the obvious caveat -- B-Roy is probably the best player we've ever had this side of Bill Walton.  But it's a team game and Brandon is holding the team back.  For starters, this team has brilliant upside with a decent point guard.  But Brandon says his game is better suited to Blake, and Nate goes along.  So Miller muddles along on limited minutes trying to steer a host of combinations.  The running game is dead, the floor spacing dreadful, and the confusion, well, it's become an epidemic. And it will not get better until Miller gets the bulk of the minutes and the Blazers get to practice and get to work under the ball-leadership of a true point.

Second, Roy's principal offensive contribution is one-on-one.  He's brilliant at it ... just like Kobe was.  But the Lakers didn't jell and excel until Kobe decided it was time to focus his brilliance more fully within the team concept. That is something Roy has never really done -- and it's been okay with me for the last three years as he has developed and refined his skills. But now we are approaching the final level -- championship (or at least championship contention) -- and the time for one-on-one throughout the game (I'm not talking the final minutes here) has come and gone.  Roy must integrate his talents and his game with the rest of the team.

This means that he must stop convincing himself that Blake is the best option for this team because that simply allows one of the least talented players set the tone for everyone else.  Blake may make Brandon better right mow, but Miller can make everyone else better real quick, and he'll make Brandon better, as well, down the road.  To achieve this, Brandon and Nate must change their mindsets.  The sooner the better.

No, I don’t mean to sound defeatist. But if you want to beat the upper echelon or two of teams over the balance of the season, and go on to succeed in the playoffs, it pays to know how your opponent will go after you, and therefore what you need to protect against.  And in terms of aggregate performance (i.e., not considering the obvious – like, "stop B-Roy") it turns out the Blazers’ biggest "Achilles heel" is a failure to succeed at one of its biggest strengths:  Rebounding, where we have variously ranked Number 1 or Number 2 in the league overall this season, based on percentages of missed shots we get versus our opponents.

Here are the stark numbers:  When the Blazers out-rebound their opponent in terms of pure number of boards (data source: NBA.com) they are a staggering 34-6 this season; when they get out-rebounded they are a pathetic 3-16. Percentage-wise, the latter is worse than the worst overall team record in the league to this point in the season.

Now, the savvy among you will be quick to point out that, to some extent, these numbers are self-fulfilling: When the other team is missing shots (so you’re winning), you’ll naturally tend to get more boards; and when you’re missing the iron (and losing) you’ll tend to get fewer.  So let’s dig a little deeper to correct for this bias.

To do this, we’ll use other good teams as a control. This eliminates from consideration all the teams in the league that are .500 or below, as they tend to do no better than a mediocre job of both rebounding and winning.  Instead, as playoff object lessons we’ll look at the genuine playoff teams – the Big 4 of Boston, Cleveland, LA Lakers, and Orlando, and the Second-Tier 8 (sans Portland) of Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Utah.

The Big 4 average a win-loss record of 33-6 when they out-rebound their opponents and 14-7 when they get outboarded. In other words their ratio of wins to losses decreases from 5 to 1 when they’re hitting the boards to 2 to 1 when they are experiencing an off game on the glass.  That’s a distinct, and expected, drop-off, but clearly, these top teams compensate for any board decline by excelling in other areas of the game and thereby still manage to win two-thirds of those games.  Specifically, the win-loss when out-rebounded by their opponents, is Boston, 9-5; Cleveland, 15-7; Lakers, 14-6; and Orlando, 19-11.  (Contrast this with the Blazers’ nearly 6 to 1 win-loss advantage when winning the rebound battle compared with an unbelievably horrendous 1 to 4 win-loss ratio when getting pushed around in the paint.)

Now let’s look at the Second-Tier 8:  When out-rebounding their opponents, their combined average win-loss is 23-7, about a 3 to 1 ratio.  When getting out-rebounded, their average win-loss is 14-15, about 1 to 1.  This is a steeper drop-off than for the Big 4, but holds up vastly better than Portland, which simply flops to a big-time losing team when getting pounded in the board game.  (The worst of these eight when out-rebounded is Atlanta at 15-22.)

So what do we conclude?  Well, despite our self-acknowledged reputation for being soft, our top overall rebounding position in the league does demonstrate a certain toughness.  However, when we allow the opposition to out-tough or out-hustle us on the boards . . . we fade, we fold, we lose.  The lesson is that Nate can never allow that to happen. It he is successful in this part of the game, the Blazers can go a long way in April and beyond.  If not, well, Sayonara!

 

Mark this record down:  14-6, 8 over .500, 1st place in the NW, 2nd in the West, 5th overall.  It could all go down in flames . . . or fan deep-run playoff hopes . . . starting RIGHT NOW.

Blazer fans should be overjoyed at the current record considering only a third of our games have been at home. But temper the enthusiasm with the reality that of our last 11 games -- i.e., since we were 5 and 4 -- only 3 have been against strong teams (Phoenix, New Orleans, Detroit), with just 1 against a .500 team (Miami), and no less than 7 versus league dregs (Minnesota, Golden State, Chicago, Sacramento [twice], New York, and Washington. That's a cream-puff schedule if ever there was one, and we won only 1 of the 3 against the very good teams. Although much of this journey was on the road, and road games are certainly challenging, look at the league stats and you will see that playing on the road is not as difficult as playing against good teams home or away.

Now look at the 15 games ahead through January 7:  Just 2 against the dregs (Clippers and Kings), 2 against a .500 team (both Toronto), and 11 against genuinely playoff-caliber outfits (Boston [twice], Orlando, Utah, Phoenix, Denver [twice], Dallas, New Orleans, Lakers, and Detroit).   This run in the schedule is the most demanding for the Blazers of the season - thank goodness most of them are at home.  If we come out of it more than the current 8 games above .500 (equivalent to a 45-win season), we should have improved so much and have such an easier schedule ahead that a 50-win season and the playoffs is assured. Something short of that and we will probably be sweating games for the rest of the season.

There once was a great team called the Blazers

Whose edge dulled from razors to grazers.

In the cellar they dwelled

And the fans, they rebelled.

Hideous misfits needing shedding and lasers.

 

To bring to a terminus the era of scofflaw

There came from the south an innocent young Outlaw.

Though his skill was but nil

He could leap o’er a hill.

And ‘Sheed, Bonzi and friends bade their final hoorah.

 

But the B’s were still losers and the league, well, it laughed,

‘Till the Bulls and the Wolves got the shaft.

For a Foye he nabbed Roy,

For a Thomas, LaMarcus,

The day that ol’ Pritch stole the draft.

 

One more sleight of hand the GM must crack,

And Isiah was all too tempting a target to thwack.

With Frye thrown in

It seemed as like sin

To unload on the Knicks the lumbering Zach.

 

Then Trout and LA figured out how to score.

And Web – well, the 3s through the rim did he pour.

While Pryz centered the realm

And Blake manned the helm

ROY Brandon turned Star and created his lore.

 

All t’was needed was for one little ball

To catch a breeze that would cause it to fall.

With numbers for gauges

In a draft for the ages

The B’s made the league’s biggest haul.

 

All hail new Court King, Greg Oden!

His fortune and fame are pure golden.

But he played just one day

On bones made of clay,

Then rehabbed all year and looked olden.

 

With that bit of gloom Blazermania saw doom

And they measured the team for its tomb.

From champions’ alure

To mediocre for sure

Would the good times never resume?

 

But Nate said, “Hold on, our Five has a fate

That’s not less than good, it’s really quite great.

Young Roy and LA

Are the core for today,

And tomorrow and winning are only a wait.”

 

So the team cast its gaze on Europa,

To places unseen since RopaDopa:

Mallorca, Helsinki, Paree.

Arrives the magician Rudee.

And now for the faithful there’s hopa!

 

A talented young man is the Bayless,

Another theft by KP on Draftdaylis.

With quickness foreseen

He sinks shots as routine,

If only he cracks the start gatelis.

 

Announcing!  A healthy Court King return!

As the world will inevitably learn

He’ll dunk and he’ll block

Every team on the rock.

At last, Portland’s a thriving concern.

 

Now, with playoffs in view and titles in sight,

The trail wide open for our boys to give fight,

With the pieces in place,

The men primed for the chase,

A new Blazer legend awaits green for a light.

 

But the west show must slow for post-season to glow.

Will Suns sink in the desert? Nuggets rust in the snow?

Will the trio from Texas be bucked from their horses

While Hornets and Warriors veer off their courses?

Can Grizzlies and Wolves remain unprotected?

Can Kobe and Co grow disconnected?

Will Clips ground their ships, will Kings drain their moats,

And the Jazz end their song with sours for notes?   

 

Yes, if good health remains while talent sustains

And the luck of the draw yields ever more gains;

When it falls into place and our men earn their dough  

Blazermania dreams become All Systems Go.

 

 

 

 

The Marcus Camby salary-dump giveaway is, of course, great news for the Blazers. Combined with the Nuggets also jettisoning Eduardo Najera and their first-round pick, they now appear to be the second team above the Blazers in the standings likely to fall this season, and with high-payroll teams like the Mavs and Suns fading or retooling – our playoff hopes are getting brighter by the day!

 

Just as significant, however, the Camby debacle shows just how onerous the Luxury Tax is. The Nuggets had to pay $13 million last season. They won’t this year. Down here in Miami, owner Micky Arison and President/GM Pat Riley swear, after forking over an $8-million tax payment last month as an extra “bonus” for a 67-loss season, that they will never again put themselves in that position. The Knicks, of course, paid $45 million of tax a year ago and $20 million this time for one of the consistently worst teams in the league, and are desperately, and I do mean desperately, clawing to get out of that rat hole. Money CAN buy you wins, but it carries the great risk that if the guys you decided are worth super big buck fail you, your expectations are shattered, getting out of the hole while still fielding a good team seems impossible, you descend into hopelessness, and you pay and pay and ….

 

In a recent post (“Chips?  What Chips?”) I suggested that the new era of Blazer fiscal sanity tends to dictate against the team growing its payroll down the line to a level that would require it to pay the NBA’s luxury tax. (Thanks to Paul Allen, several of you disagreed.) I went on to note that if my assumption was correct it would mean that the team would probably let Raef LaFrentz’s $13-million contract expire next Spring, and thereby reduce the overall payroll in order to give the team room to pay Roy-Aldridge and company large raises over the next couple of years.  (Even stronger dissent.)  And I concluded that Raef and his contract are therefore probably not chips that will be used to trade for other players of similar salary. (At this point, I might as well have lied that I also just hate the Blazers.)  My observations are obviously speculative, but how the Blazers deal with this issue may play a key role in what the team does next, if anything, to attract big talent. So allow me – at obnoxious length (I apologize in advance) - to explain my reasoning:

 

In a sentence, the luxury tax requires any team whose total salaries exceed the luxury tax salary threshold ($71.15 million for the upcoming season) to pay a tax equal to the amount of the excess. If your total team salary, as computed for luxury tax purposes, exceeds that level by, say, $10 million, then not only do you pay your players their $81.15 million of combined salaries, you also write a check for $10 million to the NBA at the end of the season.

 

This tax is EXTREMELY onerous.  In effect, it requires you to TRIPLE PAY on the salaries of some of your worst or most overpaid players. Here’s why:

 

First, let’s deal with the “worst player/overpaid player" concept. Regardless of when a player is brought onto your payroll -- even if it’s a great player signed to a big contract after all of your other player contracts have been set – you either have the opportunity to reduce or eliminate the luxury tax by getting rid of marginal players at permissible points in their contracts (or dumping an overpaid player like the Nuggets did to an under-cap team) or you should have been smart enough to control your payroll beforehand. If you naively fail to make one or both of these offsets, you pay the tax. Hence, it is the salaries at the margin that actually trigger the luxury tax, and the marginal salaries are generally those paid to either the worst players (usually the ones who seldom play) or to the most overpaid players on your roster.

 

To perceive this on a personal level, if you’ve screwed up your household budget by a thousand dollars this month it won’t be because of the groceries you bought at Fred Meyer; it will probably be because you purchased some things you didn’t really need.  Or if your company loses money this quarter on increased volume you won’t be looking to cut back on raw materials costs; instead, you’ll try first to reduce overhead. It’s the marginal things, the things least need, and not the necessities that are responsible for financial problems.

 

Second, as most of you already know, the tax means you double pay for those lousy players.  Not only do you pay them salary, you pay tax equal to their salary (to the extent, of course, that their salary takes you over the tax threshold).

 

Third, although the luxury tax check is made out to the league, each of the 30 NBA teams that are under the luxury tax threshold, which is most of them, receive one-thirtieth of the total luxury tax money. This means that most of your luxury tax money goes right to your worst enemies.  How evil is that!  Imagine if the U.S.A. had to pay an annual tax to the U.N. related to the amount of our military expenditures in Afghanistan and all that money went directly to the Taliban.  The Taliban gets our money to finance the killing of our soldiers. That, in an extreme lethal form, is exactly how the luxury tax works. Last season, the New York Knicks paid nearly $20 million of luxury tax, and most of it went to teams trying to beat the pulp out of them on the court – and succeeding! So not only do you double pay your worst players, you pay yet again by giving your court competitors your own money to spend on players to compete against you. Add it all up and you’ve triple paid.

 

Triple paid on your least important players, I emphasize. Imagine, hypothetically, that at this very minute Paul Allen decides to tear up the contracts of Roy, Aldridge, and Oden and give them all big raises (raises that he might, in fact, pay them a couple years down the road). Imagine further that this puts the Blazers $13 million over the luxury tax threshold. The reality is that the luxury tax accrues not on the raises to R-A-O, but on the $13-million contract of Raef LaFrentz, who is inarguably the most overpaid and most superfluous player on our roster. In this situation, Raef would actually cost us $26 million, which exceeds the salary of the highest-paid player in the league! Even worse, most of the $13 million of tax money would go to the Jazz, Hornets, Warriors, Nuggets, and other teams trying to beat us to the playoffs this year. All this would be Mr. Allen’s and Mr. Pritchard’s fault for putting their team in that position by having traded to get Raef two years ago at the cost of a one-year-longer contract than the man we sent back east in exchange, and then not doing anything about it. A $13-million tax on Raef’s contract, not on R-A-O’s raises.

 

(An aside:  Please don’t get me wrong about Raef. I admire him. He seems like a great guy, ready to play to his utmost whenever needed, and I salute the ability and dedication that enabled him to acquire the contract that will help take care of him and his family for the rest of their lives.)

 

Obviously, I can’t KNOW whether Paul Allen would ever be willing to increase his team’s salaries to the obscenely high levels they reached a few years ago. Since the current luxury tax went into effect with the 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Blazers have been consistently under the tax threshold and have therefore not paid any tax. And for salary negotiation purposes, Mr. Allen would never disclose his future intentions one way or the other, anyway. And just maybe Kevin Pritchard, having now almost run out of high draft picks to deal, has found the ideal trade match and is in the process of exchanging Raef LaFrentz for some other high-priced contract even as this post prints to the blog. That I don't know.

 

But I do know the following: Just one year ago, Mr. Allen hired a savvy player compensation expert to deal with issues just like this, so at least it’s on his mind. I know that team after team (nearly every one owned by multi-billionaires) saddled with the luxury tax is desperately trying to get out from under it. I know there is recent precedent (Jamaal Magloire) for the Blazers letting high-priced contracts expire rather than trading them. And I also know that it’s been two long, splinter-filled, bench-sitting years for Raef, and two long and very expensive years for Mr. Allen since Raef came to the Blazers in a trade; that Raef now has just nine months left on his contract; that every month we get closer to the end of Raef’s deal, his contract becomes vastly more valuable if just left to expire; and that Raef is still here. I suspect for good reason. 

 

Many Blazers Edge readers just ASSUME that because Mr. Allen appears to have more billions than they have thousands, and because he actually comes to the games, he will spend virtually unlimited amounts of his wealth on player salaries. My estimate is he would, indeed, be willing to pay generously to Roy, Oden, and a select few others if he felt they could bring him and the Portland fans a championship, and he might at the end of the day even be willing to pay a few – a very few – luxury tax dollars to achieve it.

 

But I also believe Mr. Allen will be loath to pay any significant, and avoidable, luxury tax on the salaries of overpaid veterans or second-round draft picks sitting at the end of the bench, especially when his tax dollars are going to the team on the opposite end of the court.  And this means cutting superfluous salary when he can so that he will have the luxury of paying winners later when he must.  

When does Kevin Pritchard use his chips? And what chips does he really have to use?

 

First off, let’s pose a threshold question:  Does KP truly want to add a veteran presence?  He says he does, but the facts and the passage of time are starting to argue against this proposition.  James Jones, one of the top 3-point artists in the league, was a vet, and a good guy, to boot, and he is now gone to a team that gave him just $1.5 million a year more than the Blazers were paying (and keep in mind that KP pays $3 million in cash every year just to take a chance on a low-first-round draft choice).

 

The more time that goes by, the more one gets the feeling Pritchard just might believe we are gradually evolving our own veteran presence in the form of Roy and Aldridge. (Plus, there are Pryzbilla – a hard-nosed vet if ever there was one - and Blake.) And another vet, a really good one, would be expensive.  Passing the threshold, then – and perhaps we shouldn’t, perhaps the whole story really ends right here – what chips are available for Pritchard to acquire a championship missing link?

 

Behind Door #1 sits Raef LaFrentz’s $13-million contract expiring next Spring. I can’t count high enough to tabulate the number of times Blazers Edge bloggers have cavalierly placed this asset onto the hypothetical trading block. But is this really a usable trading chip?  Again, facts and time say no.  Once one of the most financially extravagant teams in the league, the Blazers have put a lot of effort into restructuring player salary. There is an overriding goal:  Generate enough money and “cap space” to give Roy, Aldridge, and Oden big raises in the next 2 to 3 years, and hopefully significant salary increases, as well, to one or two other young guys that turn out great. For R-A-O alone, you’ll probably (again, we can only hope!) have to give them raises totaling about $30 million a year (I’m rounding here) above the amounts in the final years of their rookie contracts.

 

Which brings us to the crucial number in this whole analysis. It is NOT the salary cap (about $59 million); it’s the LUXURY TAX threshold of about $70 million. You have to believe Allen, Pritchard and Partners, LLC, don’t want to go above that level again and start paying 2-for-1 on marginal salaries. And this, in turn, brings us to the root of the problem:  Assuming the LaFrentz, Francis and Miles contracts ALL come off the books next spring, all of the other existing player contracts project out to about $40 million (also rounded). Quite clearly, $40 existing + $30 raises take us right to the $70 luxury tax level. In other words, we need Raef’s money for the guys in house. We can’t spend it twice, so that means Raef’s contract can’t be dealt. If not, what else can?

 

Obviously, this brings us to Door #2:  Existing talent to trade. Oops!  We’re told R-A-O are off limits.  Well, that leaves all the “riff raff” (pardon the expression) future-potential guys, who probably aren’t valued as highly around the league as we Blazer bloggers think they are.  Oh, yes!  There’s a couple of vets – the kind of guys KP says we need to get, not trade away.  So, yeah, we could deal Pryzbilla. But Pryz is a vet, and even more important, he’s a vet with a mean streak (in addition to being an all around worthy fellow – i.e., a person of “great character”.)  True, a lot of teams need a decent veteran center. But we don’t yet really know for sure if Oden will avoid further injury or, if he does, whether he will foul out of half the games he plays. So you can’t let Pryz go. (For that matter, you can’t let Raef go for the same reasons – to commit fouls #13 to 18 next year at the 5 post, and to back up two injury-prone centers.)

 

That leaves Door #3 -- draft picks.  Sorry, there’s very little left behind Door #3 because we’re about to run out of worthy draft picks. For starters, you can ignore second-round picks for big-time trading – about all they’re good for is more second rounders. So now to the crux of Door #3. First, we have the B team that we just drafted, Bayless and Batoum; now, that’s a thought – although we then lose our “point guard of the future”. Second, the 2009 draft is likely to be (at least, one can hope) the last one in which the Blazers will have any kind of a reasonable, though depreciating, first-round selection – meaning it’s the last one KP can deal that has anything close to decent value.

 

But we all know KP LOVES to wheel and deal in the draft. The question is, Can he bring himself to give up next year’s wheeling and dealing to, instead, use our last semi-valuable #1 pick to help us acquire a good player -- hopefully sooner rather than later -- knowing he won’t then have any draft-day fun for the rest of his life?  This will be a wonderful test of Pritchard’s flexibility – to give up the favorite part of his job resume (and a creative task at which he is exceedingly brilliant) to finish off the rebuilding of this team. If he doesn’t, well, come next summer you can take draft picks off the trade market, too, for Door #3 will then conceal . . . nothing.

 

Conclusion:  With positions #2, 4, and 5 covered, our obvious “holes” (such as they are) are at point and small forward. Alas, there isn’t much quality in the available point-guard market around the league these days. There is, however, a number of very talented – and available - forwards that can slot in at the 3, especially if you’re willing to make some “culture” and “character” allowances. Examples include Marion and Artest, plus Josh Smith in the restricted free agent sector, just for starters.  The best assets we have to deal are our “overvalued” young guys, the BB ’08 draft twins, the fading ‘09 #1 pick, and anything else we can find via a three-way deal. Alas, as we saw with Jared Jack on draft day ‘08, one of our top young guys was barely able to move us from #13 to #11 in the draft – not exactly a quantum leap.  In the balance, then, while the value of our draft picks is rapidly dwindling, the good news is that for a very short window of time there is still some value here, and there is a modest amount, although not a great deal, of trade value in our young players.

 

All of which means time and money is running out for Pritchard to make a major trade to help this team.  Will KP use his dwindling stockpile of tradable assets to get a needed vet?  Or is the whole “we’d like to get some veteran presence” thing now a myth?  One thought: Despite his draft-day brilliance, KP has yet to make a trade move, salary dumping aside, of any significance in his three-year GM reign. Here’s hoping he can find his new groove. He’ll need it, because the old groove is running out of time.

 

 

 

 

Joe Dumars says a new Pistons coach may only be the beginning of change in Detroit. Could point guard Chauncey Billups be had for the right player/draft position package? True, he will be 32 come the '08-09 season, and his style is half-court playmaking rather than running, but wouldn't he be a great set-up guy for Oden, Aldridge, and Roy, not to mention his own scoring and defensive abilities?  Especially over the next 3 years or so as the Blazers transform their youth into playoff veterans, and continue to look for/develop their longer-term PG of the future.