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Here at the Mercury sports desk—it’s in the far corner of the office, by the furnace and the intern cage—we’ve been covering the 2008-09 Blazers season since the very first pre-season game (a 110-81 victory over the Kings in early October), and it’s pretty obvious that last night was a great big steaming pile of disappoint. In fact, the best thing to happen on KGW last night was the episode of 30 Rock that came on after the Rockets ended the Blazers’ season with a 92-76 thumping.

So while we all hang our heads and tick off the 30 or so weeks before next season begins, we should look back on a pretty damn entertaining season. One where the second youngest team in the league picked up a shocking 54 victories, tied with Denver for first place in the Northwest Division, and reignited a loyal hometown fanbase.

So buck up Blazers fans. While the offseason might be long, the Kevin Pritchard era has taught us that the most exciting things usually happen for this franchise off the court. Perhaps this means trading for a real point guard (Steve Blake’s line from last night: four turnovers, two points), resigning blogger Channing Frye, or maybe more draft day shenanigans… who knows? Regardless what happens, I have feeling that come May 1st next year, the city of Portland will still have a basketball team in the playoffs.

Ezra Ace Caraeff is the former Music Editor for the Mercury, and spent nearly a third of his life working at the paper. More importantly, he is the owner of Olive, the Mercury’s unofficial office dog....

8 replies on “Blazers Eulogy”

  1. Off-season moves I’d like to see:

    1. Bring in a tough veteran. Someone along the lines of Battier or Harpring.
    2. Sign Andre Miller. Steve Blake is a serviceable PG, but should be coming off the bench. Mike Bibby’s also an unrestricted free agent this year…
    3. Fire Mike Rice.

    Portland still has some great bargaining chips, too. Stacked at SF… could move either Outlaw or Webster and still be in good shape.

    I’m not huge on Bayless, either, and wouldn’t mind if he was part of a deal. If we have to have a project PG, I’d rather it was a “real” PG rather than a midget SG. Maybe move way up in the draft and bring in Ricky Rubio.

  2. I like all those ideas. I think a combination of Miller/Bibby (as the starter) and Blake (as the backup) will be significantly better than what the team had this year. I still like Bayless, but he needs a few years under his belt first.

  3. Can we trade some crap and take Aaron Brooks away from Houston? He was easily the most fun player to watch the entire series.

  4. I think you could make a good case for Kirk Heinrich, who seems to be kind of the odd man out of the rotation in Chicago. He does a lot of things well, and is relatively young, also plays great defense…at any rate, this was a terrific season, it was a crappy way to go out, but thinking back to 2 seasons ago when we were rolling out lineups with Telfair and Ha, we’ve come a long way.

  5. Portland needs to learn how to keep a team together long enough to win a title. If you keep playing the trading game, the players never gel together as a cohesive unit. This team shows great promise and should be allowed to grow together to win a title for Portland.

    Oh, and Mike Rice is awesome!

  6. I think the area for improvement is definitely getting a non-dogshit PG. Weirdly, I have a feeling that we land either Felton or Sessions (or Hinrich) and call it a day. I’d be fine with that. Felton/Crash would be an AMAZING improvement.

  8. Steve Blake is the right stuff. Remember how he embarrassed Allen Iverson? Blake is not a dogshit PG… Senor Turnover however, could go sometime soon with no argument from me.

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