Oct
16
Even without Greg Oden, Portland Will Surprise Teams This Year!
With the exception of its six-game triumph over the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1977 NBA Finals, the Portland Trail Blazers have always been a tantalizing yet very frustrating franchise.
From the collapse of Bill Walton’s knees to the selection of Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft to failed championship aspirations on separate occasions in the early nineties to the collapse in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals, the Blazers have always had the ability to draw people in with the team’s potential only to let them down in the end.
So it’s not hard to blame Portland Trail Blazers fans for feeling a bit worried nowadays after it was learned that Greg Oden, the team’s first pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, will miss his entire rookie season following a surprise microfracture surgery.
With that said, Portland fans should not let the Oden setback damper their hopes on the future of the franchise. The Blazers have finally cleaned things up from the discord from earlier this decade (paging Rasheed Wallace and Ruben Patterson) and now feature a plethora of young talent, including 2006-2007 Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy and fellow sophomore LaMarcus Aldridge.
The Blazers will not make the playoffs this season but are certainly going in the right direction, with General Manager Kevin Pritchard doing a very nice job the last two drafts and building a team of collegiate winners and quality people that is starting to look like Chicago Bulls West.
Getting over Greg Oden: Ever since it was learned a little more than a month ago that Oden would miss his rookie season due to a knee injury, everyone has been lamenting the fate of the Trail Blazers. After this shocking news, sports columnists wrote about all of the red flags that Oden showed during his pre-draft physicals. It’s funny how very few of these writers mentioned this information on the Blazers amazing draft night.
Oden has inevitably yet prematurely been compared to Bowie when the reality is that fans need to let the kid get healthy and go from there. Amare Stoudemire and Jason Kidd have witnessed their careers get better following this surgery, and why can’t Oden recover from it?
Sure, Oden’s injury is disappointing for a revived Portland fan base that had bought season tickets to solely see the former Ohio State center. With that said, Oden’s injury will allow the Blazers to continue to develop its other young talent, including Roy, Aldridge, Channing Frye, Sergio Rodriguez and Martell Webster among others.
The 2007-2008 season could very well be a year in which a few of these players really develop; thus making a possible Oden comeback next year especially exciting. Blazers fans need to think positive and support this young team of intriguing talent, despite all of the disappointments in the past.
The One to Watch: Aldridge averaged 9 points a game in only 63 games last season. Aldridge really came on strong at the end of the year, making the Chicago Bulls wonder if it had botched its 2006 NBA Draft day trade when the Texas sophomore was packaged to Portland for the rights to Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Krhyapa.
While Oden may be gone, Aldridge will still have Frye and even less-than-impressive veterans Joel Przybilla and Raef Lafraentz on the court with him this year. Aldridge, who possesses a nice face-up game and improving back-to-the-basket skills, will be the Blazers go-to guy down low for 82 games, with Roy taking that title on the perimeter. It will be interesting to see if Portland’s 2006 NBA Draft Class of Roy and Aldridge can become the stabilizing influence for the organization like Chicago’s 2004 NBA Draft Class of Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Chris Duhon proved to be. What better time for these players to do so with Oden lost for the season.
The Amazing 2007 NBA Draft: Sure, the Blazers got Greg Oden as the grand prize of the 2007 NBA Draft class, but what Pritchard did as General Manager later on that night was quite astounding. Pritchard dumped Zach Randolph, a 20-10 player who left a lot to be desired in terms of defense, for a solid team player and compliment to the skills of Oden and Aldridge in Frye. Pritchard would wisely later bid adieu to perpetual pouter Steve Francis, the other piece in that Knicks-Blazers trade, and resigned point guard Steve Blake, a guy who is not as talented as other point guards in the league but survives because he’s runs a very stable show and gets his teammates going.
While Pritchard changed the face of the franchise with the Oden selection and Randolph trade on draft night, he then added some very intriguing pieces to the puzzle. Pritchard acquired the draft rights of 6’5’’ point guard Sergio Rodriguez from the Phoenix Suns and then landed Josh McRoberts in the second round. The number-one player in the country coming out of high school in 2005, McRoberts was a disappointment at Duke but has some amazing skills that could eventually be explosive off the bench in the shadows of potential stars like Oden, Roy and Aldridge. The question is whether Roberts will be a Shavlik Randolph in the pros? Not likely, especially when considering that he will not have to be the man in Portland.
Portland’s draft selections were so solid all night long, including traded pieces Derrick Byars and Demetrius Nichols, who went from Portland to the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks respectively. Pritchard also nabbed Florida’s Taurean Green late in the draft but…
Portland Is Suddenly So Deep that a collegiate winner and underrated player like Green may not make this roster or rather be relegated to street clothes with Blake, Jarrett Jack and Rodriguez also competing for point guard duties. Besides the logjam at point, the Blazers have a lot of wing players to choose from, including Roy, Webster (first round pick of 2005 NBA Draft), Travis Outlaw (first round pick in 2003 NBA Draft), James Jones and Darius Miles, whom the Blazers should get rid of. Down low, the Blazers have Aldridge, Frye, Przybilla, LaFraentz and McRoberts.
On paper, the Blazers could compete right now for the seventh or eighth seed in the East. While not quite ready to do so in the Western Conference, Portland has the talent base to begin its eventual climb back to the top as one of the elite contenders in the league. Even without Oden, expect the Blazers to be a thorn in the side of the top teams in the West all year long and to improve from 32 wins last year to 39 victories this year.
by Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com
Share and Enjoy
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Related Posts
Comments
With the exception of its six-game triumph over the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1977 NBA Finals, the Portland Trail Blazers have always been a tantalizing yet very frustrating franchise.
Good defense by the Portland Trail Blazers drama boys, if only we could patch up the difference, this will be a Portland good season. They are running, switching in defense, rebounding see those efforts. We don’t have yet the Trail Blazers team down.
I which I could see some Trail Blazers games live. I was looking for tickets all the good seats on ticketmaster were taken I had to check broker. And man you don’t want to do that especially for the Portland Trail Blazers. Thanks god there sites like Ticketwood which work as comparators here is the site
Trail Blazers Tickets
http://www.ticketwood.com/nba/Portland-TrailBlazers-Tickets/index.php
I like slam dunks that take me to the hoop my favorite play is the ally-hoop,
I like the pic n roll,i like the given goal its basketball yo, yo lets go!
Go Trail Blazers Go!!!
dumb