What Can Make The Blazers Truly Special And Unique

[tlongII]

http://basketball.realgm.com/src_fro...al_and_unique/

Basketball was very nearly dead in Portland. Paul Allen was hemorrhaging money. The talent pool had aged and drained, while the players were seemingly being arrested on a monthly basis. An alternative team moniker that I will not mention here was unofficially adopted and the streak of 21 straight seasons with a playoff appearance was broken.

They are now five seasons removed from their last playoff berth, but nobody is wondering when they will return to the NBA's second season (that should happen this season; the discussion is instead largely centered on how many championships they will win over the next decade.

Before that question is answered, how did Kevin Pritchard and the Blazers turn around their franchise so quickly?

The turning point came in the summer following the 2005-06 season, a season in which they finished with a record of 21-61.

Despite having the worst record in the NBA, the Raptors, Bulls and Bobcats all moved ahead of them in the lottery and they were left with the fourth overall pick, but as you likely well know by now and will see below, they still walked away with two of the best three or four players in the entire draft class.

- How did a team that finished 2006 with a 106-96 loss (61st of the season) against Phoenix that looked like this..

Starters
Theo Ratliff
Viktor Khryapa
Martell Webster
Sebastian Telfair
Steve Blake (in a prior stint)

Reserves
Jarrett Jack
Juan Dixon
Travis Outlaw
Brian Skinner
Voshon Lenard
Seung Jin Ha
Darius Miles
Zach Randolph
Joel Przybilla

End up two years later looking like this..

Starters
Brandon Roy
LaMarcus Aldridge
Greg Oden (essentially and definitely eventually)
Nicolas Batum
Steve Blake (for now)

Reserves
Rudy Fernandez
Travis Outlaw
Martell Webster
Jerryd Bayless
Sergio Rodriguez
Joel Przybilla
Channing Frye
Ike Diogu
Shavlik Randolph
Raef LaFrentz

* It is worth noting that Pritchard lobbied for the Blazers to keep the 2005 third overall pick and select Chris Paul; had that happened it is almost impossible to imagine the Blazers roster looking anything like it does currently. They would have surely finished the 05-06 season with more than 21 wins and wouldn't have been in the position to land Roy and Aldridge. You can't simply trade out Webster for Paul, add him to Oden, Roy, Aldridge and the rest of them in a what-if, let's call it a dynasty scenario.

How did they accomplish this player-by-player?

- Greg Oden

Oden was drafted with the first overall pick in 2007. The Blazers had a 5.3% percent chance of winning the lottery. They of course chose Oden over Kevin Durant, a decision that stirred great debate and looks like an excellent one even though the former has only played a small handful of games.

- Brandon Roy

Roy is the rock of the franchise, but was also their most complicated acquisition. He was drafted by Minnesota with the sixth overall pick in the 2006 draft and acquired in exchange for Randy Foye and cash. Foye was initially drafted seventh overall by the Celtics, but was dealt to the Blazers along with Raef LaFrentz and Dan au for Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff and a future second round pick, who eventually became Trent Plaisted in the 2008 draft after that pick was included in the Ray Allen trade.

- LaMarcus Aldridge

Aldridge was selected second overall by the Bulls in the 2006 draft, but he was moved to the Blazers (along with a second round pick in 2007, which became Demetris Nichols) in exchange for Tyrus Thomas (fourth overall pick in 2006) and Viktor Khryapa. The Bulls preferred Thomas as it was and trading down saved paying him about $3.6 million on his four-year rookie scale contract.

- Rudy Fernandez

Fernandez's draft rights were acquired from Phoenix in 2007 along with James Jones for $3 million.

- Sergio Rodriguez

Like his countryman, Rodriguez's draft rights were acquired from Phoenix in 2006 in exchange for $3 million.

- Nicolas Batum

Batum was drafted 25th overall by the Houston Rockets , but he was traded to Portland for the rights to Darrell Arthur, the 27th overall pick and Joey Dorsey, who was the 33rd overall pick. The Blazers had the 27th pick because they bought it from the Hornets and the 33rd pick came from Memphis via the Alexander Johnson trade.

- Martell Webster

Webster was drafted with the sixth overall selection in the 2005 draft. The Blazers acquired that pick and the 27th pick that became Linas Kleiza, in exchange for the third overall pick, which became Deron Williams. Kleiza and the draft rights to 35th overall pick Ricky Sanchez became Jarrett Jack.

- Jerryd Bayless

Bayless was drafted 11th overall by the Pacers and was then dealt to Portland, along with Ike Diogu, for 13th overall pick Brandon Rush, Jarrett Jack and Josh McRoberts.

- Channing Frye

Zach Randolph, Fred Jones, Dan au and Demetris Nichols were traded to New York for Channing Frye, Steve Francis and the second round pick in 2008 that became Omer Asik.

- Steve Blake

Blake was a simple free agent signing during the summer of 2007 with a portion of their Mid-Level Exception.

- Joel Przybilla

Przybilla signed a two-year contract in 2004 using their Bi-Annual Exception. He was eventually re-signed in 2006 for a five-year deal.

- Raef LaFrentz

LaFrentz was included in the aforementioned 2006 trade with Boston.

With this group, the Blazers already have one of the deeper teams in the NBA. My absolute baseline expectation on the Blazers for the next 7-10 seasons is a perennial playoff team that occasionally moves into the second round. This scenario projects their big three of Roy, Oden and Aldridge make only marginal improvements in their games and they leave the current supporting players intact as is. In other words, no member of the big three becomes a 'superduperstar.'

It took me a while to believe it, mostly because I inherently prefer parity, but I now subscribe to the Elrod Enchilada/Bob McChesney theory that true superduperstars are unequivocally needed in order to win championships.

McChesney, who frequently writes on the Celtics for RealGM, came up with an objective ranking of the 80 best players in the NBA since 1956 and found that at least one of those 80 were the best player on every single championship team and that only three runner-ups were missing one of these top players. Furthermore, the top 11 players comprised the vast majority (34) of those championship teams. Players 17, 19 and 20 own an additional four les.

What this means explicitly is that while the absolute best players in history like Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tim Duncan and Bill Russell were each winning multiple les, the Charles Barkleys, Nate Thurmonds, Gary Paytons and Karl Malones of those next tiers behind the greats and were shutout of a championship.

Over the past 20 years, the Blazers have had two stretches with tremendously deep and talented teams that just narrowly missed winning a championship: the 89-92 Rick Adelman clubs and the 98-00 Mike Dunleavy squad.

The Adelman teams were comprised of Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams, Kevin Duckworth, Cliff Robinson and even Drazen Petrovic during that first Finals run and Danny Ainge for the second Finals. Drexler alone qualifies for McChesney's list as the 65th best player.

Using that balance of talent, the Blazers were one of the best defensive teams in the NBA and in the one year they didn't make the Finals during that run, they finished the regular season 2nd in offense per 100 possessions and 3rd in defense.

At 63-19, they had the best record in the NBA and would have had homecourt advantage against a Bulls team that was appearing in their first Finals, but they lost to the Lakers in six games during the Western Conference Finals. That Lakers team was in their second year without Kareem, but they too had great depth with a young Vlade Divac, Elden Campbell, Byron Scott, Sam Perkins and A.C. Green to go along with Magic and James Worthy.

In the previous Finals, they faced the Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars' Pistons, who are really the model of success through depth. They won two back-to-back championships without a single truly great player. Chuck Daly ensured they maximized a window in which the Bulls were still building pieces to surround Jordan, the Lakers were transitioning out of the Kareem-era, the Bird/McHale/Parish Celtics had become rickety and the group of David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing and Malone were either not quite in their prime or had mediocre talent around them.

The Pistons were greater than the sum of their parts, especially in the playoffs when they really were able to use their physicality against superior talents like Jordan and even Drexler. They were also strictly speaking deeper in talent than Portland. Mark Aguirre, Vinnie Johnson and Dennis Rodman were 6th, 7th and 8th in minutes.

In their return trip to the Finals, they met a Jordan-led Bulls team that simply was far too good to be denied.

Not quite a decade later, the Blazers reshuffled their roster and went to the Western Conference Finals in two consecutive seasons in 99 and 00.

In the lockout shortened season, they were swept in the WCF by the Spurs. That Spurs' team was decidedly ordinary beyond Duncan and Robinson, but that's the whole point of the Superduperstar Theory- the Spurs had two of them and bigs to boost.

They dealt their leading scorer that season, Isaiah Rider, out for Steve Smith and also signed Scottie Pippen to add to the core of Arvydas Sabonis, Rasheed Wallace, Bonzi Wells, Damon Stoudamire, Brian Grant, Detlef Schrempf, Stacey Augmon and a very young Jermaine O'Neal.

Tim Duncan was hurt for these playoffs the Spurs and were quickly eliminated by Phoenix, while the Blazers cruised past Minnesota and a Utah team in quick decline to meet a Lakers' team that was in its first year of really getting it together.

The Lakers famously went on a 15-0 run during that Game 7, which is the last time I cried over an NBA game. But what is too frequently forgotten when that series is talked about is the fact that the Lakers were up 3-1 and lost the next two 88-96 and 93-103.

That above core was very good, but not one of them is on the list McChesney's list of 80 and none of them were amongst the top-15 players in the NBA that season. Sabonis was probably the closest, but the Lakers had Shaquille O'Neal, who was the game's best player by a rather large margin and a Kobe Bryant that was beginning to finally become an efficient scorer.

Had Portland defeated the Lakers, I would have really liked their chances against Indiana in the Finals and they could have been the lone team to prove the exception to McChesney's rule.

This takes us back to the present and the current edition of the Blazers.

- What are the odds that one or more of that big three eventually enters the superduperstar strata?

Oden: There is little doubt that Oden has the greatest chance in becoming a Hall of Fame center, the position of greatest importance. He is virtually guaranteed of becoming one of the best defensive centers in history in the vein of Russell and Thurmond. He is far from 100% healthy and he is blocking more shots per minute than Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum, the two centers who will be his peers throughout his career.

How will he develop offensively? He currently lacks the pure athleticism and agility of Howard, nor does he have the comfort and sophistication in the post that Bynum has developed in part through his work with Kareem. At this very early stage, Oden's offense primarily consists of thunderous 'Shaq knees in the air' putback dunks off offensive rebounds.

But I do fully expect a nice repertoire of low post moves to eventually be part of Oden's arsenal, which importantly will allow the Blazers to rely less on the jumper than they do currently. Furthermore, that low post threat will force a collapse of opposing defenses, freeing up said jumpers.

My only realistic fear of Oden not finishing his career high on McChesney's list are the twin issues of injuries and longevity. Oden may not ever be as dominant both ways as Howard is already, but he should be very close.

Roy: At 24, Roy is in his third NBA season and has been the ROY and an All-Star. Amongst shooting guards, he realistically will never be in the league of Kobe Bryant or Dwyane Wade, but I like him just about as much as any other player at the position though I admit that is erring on the generous side. He isn't the purest of scorers, nor the best on-ball defender, but there are two things that he does that make him particularly special.

a.) He can more than adequately play the point and has enough size to play the three, which gives Nate McMillan the ability to go both big or small with him on the floor.

b.) The way he is able to penetrate to the bucket, particularly late in close games when defenses tighten, is as deadly and refined as anyone in the game.

Aldridge: The member of this big three that I have the most modest expectations for is easily Aldridge.

He has made strides in his low post game, but he is not nearly consistent enough in this area and is unable to use his length to his advantage unless he is facing up and shooting over someone.

Aldridge doesn't score or rebound as efficiently as his counterparts at the power forward position and is at best just barely in the top-10.

But he's 23 and grizzling up a little bit with time in the league will help him as much as anything since he is skilled already.

Without Oden, Aldridge's odds of making this list are extremely slim, but his game could be the perfect complement that absolutely maximizes his potential in some sort of reverse McHale/Parrish kind of way.

- What if none of those three players becomes a true superduperstar?

There are three outs where winning one or more championships remains possible for the Blazers:

1.) I fully believe Portland is the only team beyond the Knicks that has a realistic chance of signing LeBron James in free agency. Portland isn't the stage of 32nd and 7th, but beyond the cap space, it has three great things going for it:

a. An existing talented young roster with a potential transcendent center who is already better than any that Jordan ever played with. LeBron has an explicit crush on New York that is unlike anything I've ever seen, but I take him at his word when he says that the chance of winning 'multiple championships' is what he will base his 2010 decision upon. The Knicks give him a stage that is incredibly special, but it almost surely will be a lateral move from Cleveland in his quest to win a championship. The Cavaliers could potentially have the cap space that summer to sign Chris Bosh or Dwyane Wade to a maximum contract in addition to LeBron (one of those two could also go to Portland), so how much better would his chances be with Portland?

b. The Blazers have an owner that will spend indefinitely and won't be handcuffed financially on upgrading the roster at any point. Evidence how they have bought a lot of their depth from Phoenix.

c. Nike is down the road. Without number one, this is an absolute non-factor, but it is enough of a factor to make it an issue. Portland is one of the smallest markets in the country, but the Blazers are still a classic NBA team and one that belongs in the inherent level of relevance just beyond the Celtics, Lakers, Knicks and Bulls.

2.) A portion of their current depth is consolidated into a single star via trade

The 08-09 season is young but Pritchard has been reportedly very active attempting to make a trade. The point guard position is their area of weakness/insecurity and the second most difficult one to fill at a high level beyond center.

Fernandez and Outlaw have enough value around the NBA to be combined with some other considerations that would allow Pritchard to find their guy at the position.

3.) The Blazers become the first team since the Pistons to win championships based primarily on overall depth of talent

This is really, for me, the most interesting path for these Blazers and the main reason why I loved those Drexler and Rasheed teams, as well as the reason why they are so compelling to me right now.

I believe in Portland because I believe in the pieces around that big three as I do the big three themselves. But that in of itself isn't fair to the big three and overly simplistic. I believe in the cast around the big three because I believe the big three has the kind of character and game to allow a supporting cast of five or six guys to be as essential as that core of three. But as has been well-established by McChesney, it is not necessarily a path of least resistance/most championships.

Bayless has the skill set to be an ideal point guard to start with Roy because he works so well without the ball in his hands in the halfcourt and will be strong and athletic enough to effectively guard any point guard in the league.

Fernandez is already a very special scorer from distance and is already the closest thing to Reggie Miller we've seen since 31 retired.

Batum has a good chance at remaining the starter at the three indefinitely. He will eventually be called upon to guard the best wing scorer and he also is an efficient scorer, though less dynamic than Fernandez who fits the 6th man extraordinaire role.

Outlaw has dramatically improved his spot-up shot and is skilled and long enough to play and defend either forward position.

These four, in addition to the big three, is the current essential core of their club. I believe Bayless, Fernandez and Batum are All-Star caliber talents, even if they never are given roles big enough to warrant serious consideration.

But the remaining balance of the club gives them plenty of options and insurance.

Webster is still a very young almost 22 and though it is difficult to see how he exactly will fit in at the wings, he is good enough to start on a lot of teams and his new extension makes him very affordable.

Frye has unquestionably plateaued and is as good as he will ever be and probably isn't as good as he was initially with the Knicks, but there aren't a whole lot of 7-footers that shoot it as well as he does and is a solid 8th or 9th man.

Przybilla isn't going anywhere as an efficient low ceiling big.

Whoever ends up ultimately surviving between Blake and Rodriguez is certainly adequate as a 15-20 minute per night backup point guard.

Furthermore, the Blazers are owed three second round picks in 2009 from the Knicks, Clippers and Nuggets (at least two of those will likely be in the 30s), which could be packaged into a chance to move up.

Also, since they won't have to pay Aldridge and Roy extension raises until the 11-12 season, that cap room I mentioned earlier is massive and incredibly unique because their core is set and yet is extremely affordable without any dead weight after LaFrentz comes off at the end of this season.

The model of building used here by Pritchard isn't much different from the ones currently being used in places like Memphis or Minnesota where they try to stockpile enough lottery picks over a three or four year period of time in the hopes they all get good at just about the same time and age.

But Pritchard has benefited from the excellent fortune of winning the second most important lottery of the decade, and as important, he has benefited from the coffers of Paul Allen to create a unique opportunity of depth. Allen bought Fernandez, Rodriguez and Batum (essentially) from other teams for a sum of $9 million.

They also already have the rights to Petteri Koponen and Joel Freeland, the latter is finally beginning to deliver on some of his potential in Europe.

- Conclusion for Rip City

The conclusion is that this is the beginning of a fourth special era of Blazers' basketball, regardless of how good Oden, Roy and Aldridge become.

- Conclusion for the NBA

The ways in which the Blazers can win multiple championships, even with the Lakers and wherever LeBron ends up looming, is copious.

[JamStone]

In the previous Finals, they faced the Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars' Pistons, who are really the model of success through depth. They won two back-to-back championships without a single truly great player.

How do you mention Isiah Thomas in the previous sentence and then go on to say that Pistons team was without a single truly great player? Ridiculous. Isiah is considered one of the 50 greatest players and one of the five best point guards ever. That's a dumbfounding statement.

[Allanon]

It's not that complicated really.

They got rid of the Jailblazers and became the Trailblazers once again. Having a multi-billionaire owner certainly helps.