It talks about his visit to rookie orientation, his recuperation from surgery, and the expectations for next season--mainly a human interest story. The article speaks very highly of Roy and Aldridge. There are some new quotes from Nate and Greg, presumably given to the interviewer who wrote the article. There is a hilarious photo of Greg wrapped in a chair, while seated beside him is a row of what can only be described as hobbits by comparison. The guy looks like he is practically a different species.

To read the article, you will need an account with the New York Times if you don't already have one. This is a no cost membership, but the NY Times requires you to sign up to read their paper.

The URL is http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/basketball/index.html. Enjoy

Last season, as everyone know, shooting guard was a real strength for the Blazers. In fact, 82games ranks the Blazers 4th in the league on the basis of net PER last season:

Net

Rank Team PER Players

1 L*kers +8.5 bryant-vujacic

2 San Antonio +6.5 ginobli-finley-barry

3 Boston +4.4 allen-allen-house

4 Portland +4.3 roy-jack

Detroit and Denver tied for a very distant 5th with a net PER of +3.7 at SG, so the race for 4th place was not even close. This got me wondering...

We believe our team made a major upgrade by replacing Jack with Fernandez, so we expect the Blazers to improve at the 2.

Boston has the same cast of characters at shooting guard, so, given that ours and theirs played neck-and-neck in the stats sheet last year, it would not be very surprising if our improvement propels the Blazers to overtake the Celts in this category. If this happens, then the Blazers would have at least the third best SG tandem in the league next season.

But I think it gets better. The Spurs lost Brent Barry to the Rockets, but replaced him with Roger Mason from the Wizards; the jury is still out on whether Finley re-signs with the Spurs. Barry was a +4 on/off court player, while Mason was a -3 for a lessor team. This suggests the Spurs might lose a bit at SG next season. Also, Ginobli will be coming off the Olympics and that ankle injury he had at the end of last season, so will he run out of gas sometime during the year, or even start slow? Even though the statistics say the Spurs were dramatically better at SG than the Blazers last year, all of these things makes me wonder whether we might surpass even the Spurs at this position, especially if Rudy does well or the Spurs fail to retain Finley. The Roy-and-Rudy show would then be at least second best.

So leads to the inevitable question: will our guys begin their reign as the very best SGs in the league next season? Or is that still a bit too much of a leap?

While it is premature to say much before even the first summer league game, what will the Blazer's active roster look like on opening day?

As of this minute, and barring any further Kevin Pritchard intervention or injuries, there seems to be a consensus that the Black Unit will consist of Blake, Roy, Webster, Aldridge, and Oden. And the buzz is Bayless, Fernandez, Outlaw, Frye, and Pryzbilla constitute the White Unit. Makes sense. That leaves LaFrentz, Rodriguez, Diogu, Batum, and perhaps Koponen vying for the remaining two roster spots.

It sounds like the Blazers are very high on Diogu, as everyone seems to expect him to be a tougher inside presence than Frye--a really good option for Coach McMillan to have on the bench. He also has his rookie contract player option at the end of the year, and the Blazer's have to play him or trade him to get any value. These two considerations suggest the Blazers have to be thinking of him for the 11th spot. if this happens, it leaves only one spot for which LaFrentz, Sergio, and Batum (and maybe Koponen) must compete. Now the problems begin.

Does Sergio get the final slot? He has a player option at the end of the season as well, so again will have to get some playing time, or else he is gone. He has more experience than Koponen (and Bayless), so perhaps he can play his way into the 12th slot or even onto the White Unit?

A constant drumbeat out of summer camp is how much better Batum is than anyone thought. He can shoot much better than was believed; he is as fast as Webster; he can already defend. The only knock reported is he will be pushed around until he bulks up. Sounds like Batum might already be one of our 12 best players, in which case you have to expect to see him on the active list sometime. Still he seems like a good candidate for the inactive list and to be spending time in the Development League.

If the Blazers sign Kopenan, no one expects him to take too much time away from Blake or Bayless, but would he be good enough for the final spot? The Blazers have seen sufficient development to give him a real look for a spot on the team, but that is a far cry from being the 12th guy even if he is ready for an NBA contract now. If the Blazers give him an offer, do we expect he will be on the inactive list and playing in Idaho?

Finally, while he isn't on the short list of our best player, LaFrentz can still play, is useful in the locker room, and one can never have too many big men, so does he merit the 12th slot? Or does the addition of Diogu reduce him to practice and insurance against injuries to one of the other big men? My guess is LaFrentz starts the season on the inactive list if he is not traded first. 

This makes me think that Rodriguez and Batum will be fighting for the 12th and final slot come fall. Sergio will really have to come back turn heads in the fall, or he is toast. It's a mean business.

This post (my first) muses about some of the threads since the 2008 NBA draft, viz., how many wins should we expect for Portland next season, who will be on the Black and who on the White units, etc.

All Blazer fans celebrate the creativity of our general manager, and everyone delights in the talent of our players and depth of our roster, but the discussion about the future thus far lacks any consideration of the role Coach McMillan played in the success of our Trailblazers last season. 

Last season, most experts predicted the Blazers to win around 25 or 30 games. This might be explained that, in the NBA, experience usually trumps untested raw talent. We may believe that in perhaps a majority of games last season the Blazers fielded a more talented rosters than opponents, but everyone expected that wily veterans would outfox our naive youngsters more often than not.

But a funny thing happened to that projected 25 win season; the Blazers achieved 25 wins already by the All-Star break. While Roy and Outlaw achieved breakout seasons, while Aldridge was acknowledged as the third most improved player in the league, while James Jones had a career year, and while many of the other pups grew by leaps and bounds, it seems to me McMillan must be given credit for putting the players in a position to succeed. When playing against Utah's Foul Ball defense, body checking anyone who dared to come near the paint, can you think of a better strategy than letting Webster go crazy from behind the arc? Can you think of a better use of matchups than McMillan created for the San Francisco and L*ker games we won? Can you think of a better defender against Denver's Carmelo Anthony than Roy in the closing seconds of the thriller in December? Whose idea was it to transform Outlaw into Mr. Fourth Quarter coming off the bench? What about that zone defense during The Streak? While James Jones launched daggers that drained the opposition of all hope, it was Coach McMillan who set the timing for bringing Jones to work his magic. At the close of the regular season the Wall Street Journal reported that the Portland Trailblazers were by far the league's most effective team coming out of timeouts. While the players executed, the plan was Coach McMillan's.

it is easy to multiply these examples ad nauseam. Given the historical precedents, it is difficult to comprehend how the players could by themselves have accounted for a win total much above the low 30's, in spite of the roster's talent. I cannot think of any other explanation for 41 wins than Coach McMillan's leadership, his game strategy, his tactics, his ability to create matchup problems for the other team that limited exposure of our own weaknesses, and his innovation of 5 man combinations that opposing coaches would never see coming until it was too late. I cannot see how his calls did not result in 5 to 10 more wins that we could rightfully expect, and more wins in close games than we could rightfully hope for. He took a talented but inexperienced roster of players who did not yet understand how to defend, and deployed his assets in a way that compensated for their collective inexperience and that maximized their talent. It took half the season for opposing teams to respond. I in no way want to diminish the accomplishments of the players, but Coach McMillan put them in a position to succeed.

If this analysis is not entirely off-base, it is premature to handicap next season's starting lineups. Coach McMillan is likely to continue to innovating lineups a least until the players are judged experienced, to learn who plays well with whom, what combinations work best in what situations, give the players an opportunity to mesh their styles, and, most of all, the maximize the talent available on the Blazer's bench while minimizing its weaknesses. Assuming no more roster changes (a big assumption), we should expect Roy and Blake to start when experience is THE key to the game, but not necessarily otherwise; perhaps Bayliss in place of Blake when the opposing team fields a super-quick opposing point guard to defend. Based on the evaluation of the experts alone, I think we might expect Fernandez to become Roy's most frequent back court partner at the start of games. Can you imagine a small-ball back court of Bayliss, Fernandez, and Roy? We will undoubtedly see it. We should expect Diogu to back up Aldridge when we want to respond to a Utah or Houston's power game with power, and Frye when finesse works better. Outlaw will play small forward when we need points, and Webster or Batum when we need defense. 82games.com had blake-jack-roy-outlaw-aldridge as the league's third most effective 5 man unit last season. What will it be next? Coach McMillan will find out.

I think we can attribute 5 to 10 "extra" wins from the recently ended season to his leadership. Perhaps we might expect his strategy and tactics to assume a less central device for racking up extra wins once the roster learns how to play in the NBA, but there is no reason to believe Coach McMillan's importance to inflating our win column will diminish before then.