Building a Team

(picture from Yahoo! sports)

Holy moly mother of guacamole, this has been a weird season for the Blazers.  2 of the three pillars are still out in Oden and Roy.  Now Roy is retiring!  Now Oden needs 2 knees surgeries!  Now there is only 1, LA.

So our supposedly "soft" LA became an all star.  He deserved it last year and definitely earned it this year.  He is an amazing player, I wouldn't trade him for basically anyone in the league.  But it seems kinda weird having him as the team leader, right?  I mean he was backseat to Roy for so long.  Either way, he started the season charging the Blazers to a 7-2 record, so I was happy.  From that point on the team stagnated.  A large enough sample size developed with Felton to realize he was a downgrade to Andre Miller.  Wallace and Crawford were completely inconsistent.  Batum didn't have enough playing time to develop into that player that we all believe and want him to be.

The Blazers were crashing out of the playoff picture.  Leading up to the trade deadline there were numerous reports of locker room mutiny against Nate McMillan.  There were some significant losses against all sorts of teams ranging from the lowly Wizards (the Wizards!?!?!?!) to the likely playoff bound Celtics and Knicks.  It was easy to point fingers at the new guys, Felton and Crawford.   The Blazers front office got into action and traded away 2 starters for draft picks and cap space.  I will miss Camby and Wallace, but they were there to help our foundation, and with our foundation broken they became dispensable.

I loved these moves.  The Blazers did this when they last gave their fans hope at the end of the Jail Blazer era.  They picked up 2 amazing stars in Roy and Aldridge as well as got lucky with Oden as the first pick the next year.  I was so excited, we were the talk of the NBA, the Blazers were the up and coming title contenders for years to come.  We added veteran studs to the roster like the defensive master Camby and the king of hustle Gerald Wallace.  Once our stars were healthy we would take on anyone, anywhere.  Injuries stripped us of that dream, and instead of rebuilding by putting up new spackle on a mostly rotten foundation, we tore down and will put up a new, stronger base.

I would much rather suffer a little now and end up like the teams that build well through the draft (Thunder) or through cap space and trades (Celtics), or the draft and trades (Clippers).  The Thunder, Celtics, and Clippers are all teams who were patiently awful for awhile, and are now very successful.  We could have stuck with Lamarcus as our core and not given him enough to ever build a championship with (see the Suns and Steve Nash), but we have higher aspirations.

I am excited to see what our draft picks will become, hopefully they both land in the top 10 (very likely according to this article).  We can trade for quality veterans around Lamarcus' age, or develop through the draft.  Either way I'm excited.