Just saw the post that Yao is most likely out for next season and may be gone for good.   If this is true, Houston may want to blow up the team and start rebuilding.  They don't have many assets that folks are going to want so why don't we target Aaron Brooks? 

Of course if we're going to get Aaron Brooks we're going to have to give them young talent and take on a bad contract.  The only really bad contract they've got is Tracy McGrady. 

So how about McGrady + Brooks for Pryz, Blake, (Rudy or Bayless) and Trout?  This should just about match salary-wise.  Houston get's marketable young talent and a starting center.  We get a starting point guard for the entire length of our run.  Sure McGrady isn't a great fit, but he can play the same role as Rudy played and he knows how to play with a dominant center so he'll be good with Greg. (If Houston's truly desparate then we go for a signed and traded Channing instead of Pryz).

We would still need to track down a backup C/PF but there should may be a few 7' stiffs wandering around the league available for our trade exception.  

Line up:

Brooks/Bayless/Roy

Roy/ McGrady/Webster

Batum/Webster/McGrady/Roy

LMA/Free Agent/Pendegraph

Oden/Free Agent

Looking at this rumor:

Boston shopping allen, rondo

What's the opinion on:

Rudy, Trout, Blake, Bayless + draft pics for Rondo and Allen.

I'm not sure if the salaries match enough to fit our cap-space, we might have to sign and trade Frye also to make things work.  We take on a huge contract for 2 years but get veteran support at the wing.  We also get our point guard of the future.  Sure we're losing talent and flexibility but we're getting the PG we need and a short-term replacement for Rudy.  

I think this is a trade we do in a heartbeat.  I'm would even do this trade with Batum instead of Trout.(although it will take more work to get the salaries to match).

So once again like last year we will be faced with an exceedingly deep talented young squad and too few minutes to develop our younger players, if we want to get to a play-off like efficiency.  

It looks like our weakest position is point guard and we should probably attempt to trade talent to get a new starting point guard.  Assume the new point guard is of Hinrich caliber or better, since we won't really want to trade for somebody that isn't much better than blake.  I'm also assuming that this trade could go down in a lot of ways with different players going at different times(during the draft, sign and trades etc...)

Here's a couple trade options(I'm assuming Sergio is on his way out)  I'm also assuming we will be able to pick up a replacement for Channing Frye if needed: 

1. Rudy + Sergio.  

Trade value: potential borderline allstar with a rock n' roll lifestyle, plus instant Spanish/Euro fan-base.  Other teams will like the instant fan appeal of Rudy, plus the marketing potential abroad.

2. Trout + Blake + Sergio

Trade value: great offensive SF, steady backup point guard and Sergio.  If a team needs punch from the bench and to solidify there back up point guard at a low price this would be the way to go.  (Chicago might find this especially appealing)

3. Trout + Sergio + Bayless

Trade value: great offensive SF, combo guard who would still be valued like a top-five draft pick.  (If your bench is not doing anything, this could totally transform your team.)

4. do nothing- Sergio

In each of these cases it's possible to work the minutes to get to a 10 player rotation where there won't be too much grumbling.  However, the question is which is our strongest rotation, and which will give us the most trade value.

Minutes

(these are approximations just to show what the rotation would look like, I'm leaving center out because we've got that covered):

Trade 1 (Rudy + Sergio)

Trade 2 (Trout + Blake + Sergio)

Trade 3(Trout + Bayless + Sergio)

Trade 4(Sergio)

So what do y'al think:

I know Portland hasn't made the playoffs yet, but it's looking more and more likely that there is no way that Phoenix and Dallas can catch them.  So we're probably going to make the playoffs and be in at least the seventh slot.  

I still don't see us as a championship team yet and  I see us losing several games in the future.  So, when we lose these games I'd really rather see constructive discussions than the usual criticisms of  Nate, calls for a new point-guard and a new small forward.  

We don't need a new coach.  We don't need to make changes to our small forwards and our point guards are not losing games for us.

1.  Nate is one of the reasons Portland is doing so well.  He has been a fine coach and done some spectacular stuff with a very talented young team.  After losses it may be easy to look back at a game and see what he did wrong, but he does so many thing's right it's amazing.  He's got two 29 year old players having career seasons after nobody projected much for them.  He's got 3 rookies making significant contributions to a play-off bound team.  Instead of bombing 2 on 2 web-forums we should be launching a Coach of the Year campaign for Nate.

2.  Small-forward is not an issue right now.  Our projected starter has been out all season.  Since the all-star break Travis has started a campaign to be included in 6th man of the year discussions and Batum has played better than all expectations and will definitely develop into a solid, if not allstar, NBA starter in the next few years.

3.  Point guards are not losing the games for us.  While point guard may be our weakest position, when Portland loses it normally can't be placed solely on the point-guards.  When we've lost,  it seems to come from inconsitent play from LMA or Roy coupled with no bench scoring from Travis and Rudy.  It's normally on low-rebounding games and games when we settle for a lot of jump-shots.  None of this is the point-guards fault.  Sure we don't have the best defensive point guards in the league, but they aren't what's killing us.  If that were the case we would have lost all our games vs. Utah, New Orleans(although we got one fluke win w/CP3 out), San Antonio, Phoenix and New Jersey.  The quality of the opponent's point guard's offense has not been the determining factors in our losses.  

This is a pre-emptive post.  After the next loss when I see the normal handwringing I can link to post directly and save some breath.   I'm not saying there aren't areas to improve, but let's focus on the important stuff.

It looks like we are starting to see what our play-off rotation is going to look like.  Nate is tightening up the minutes and I think we can see who will be in the final 8 man rotation. 

Starters:

Blake-Roy-Batum-LMA-Pryz

Bench:

Trout-Fernandez-Oden

In an overtime game on the back-end of a back to back with 2 starter's out Rodriguez and Bayless got only 9 minutes combined.  So the answer to the Bayless/Rodriguez argument will probably be:  NEITHER.  I can see both of them getting spot minutes as well as Frye playing a little back-up center or power-forward if there's foul trouble, but I think we're going to see the 8 man rotation more and more.  Considering their quality of play as of late it isn't that surprising.  

As we all like to second guess Nate.  Poll question for y'al: