Embarrassment of Riches

WHERE THEY LEFT OFF

Following a surprising season (54 wins!) and a disappointing
postseason (getting Yao’d upon by the Houston Rockets), the Portland
Trail Blazers entered the off-season in the glorious position of having
a bevy of youthful talent perched atop a large pile of expendable cash.
But parting with all that money—in an effort to improve the team
and dethrone the Lakers as the top team on the left coast—proved
to be a difficult endeavor.

The Blazers were unable to lure hulking Utah Jazz forward Paul
Millsap (his current team matched the Blazers’ offer and lined his
pockets with $32 million). Then the Blazers notably failed to woo the
wife of Hedo Turkoglu (her husband, the Turkish mound of pasty
mediocrity who had a career run during last year’s playoffs, was on
board to join the Blazers’ ranks), and the Turkoglu clan skipped town
to play in Canada for a team named after a dinosaur. So the Blazers
brass dusted off their novelty-sized checkbook and forked over $21
million to veteran point guard Andre Miller (the check’s memo line
read: “Anyone but Steve Blake”). The deal was worth it, considering
that Miller is a master at distributing the ball—unfortunately
he’s had the poor fortune of making a career of doing just that on
teams where the recipients of his passes have been the scrubs of the
NBA (my apologies, Marreese Speights).

Now on a team littered with scoring landmarks—the sunrise
reliability of Brandon Roy, the pinnacles of Greg Oden and LaMarcus
Aldridge, the casual ease of Rudy Fernandez—the arrival of Miller
should been seen as a very good thing. The team gets the veteran
leadership it so desperately craves, while locking down the point guard
position to a player who is not named Steve Blake; a true win-win
scenario. And the static and concern that accompanied Miller, when he
set foot in Portland: Will he be a backup to the perennial redheaded
stepchild that is Steve Blake? (No.) Did he flunk a team-wide
conditioning test by answering every question with the word “fudge?”
(Probably not.) Will his 33-year-old body fall apart over the course of
the season? (Doubtful, he hasn’t missed a game in years.) All doubts
are easily snuffed out by a casual glimpse of him on the court. Miller
can pass better than any player in the NBA not wearing a Chris Paul
jersey, he can score at will, and he has nearly 30 games of playoff
experience. Welcome home, Dre Miller.

WHERE THEY ARE GOING

It’s a challenge to peer at the Blazers’ ridiculously talented
roster and not swoon at the very possibility that this team teeters on
the cusp of entering the NBA’s elite—not next season, or next
decade, but right fucking now. In their home conference, Portland has
only a pair of foes ahead of them; the older-than-dirt, yet notably
improved San Antonio Spurs, and a Los Angeles Lakers team that somehow
got better on the court, while simultaneously getting significantly
crazier off the court. (Khloe Kardashian: These two words will haunt
that team worse than the presence of Adam Morrison.) In fact, the
Blazers’ depth is so staggering that the team no longer possesses a
handful of bench trolls, players stuck deep in the dregs of the roster
who are normally good for little more than a laugh and a few useless
garbage time minutes: Michael Ruffin, Ha Seung-Jin, Sergei Monia,
Richie Frahm, I miss you all so much it hurts.

Even more impressive than the Blazers netting 54 wins last season,
was that it happened courtesy of a roster where the three highest-paid
players were Steve Francis, Raef LaFrentz, and Darius Miles, in that
order. (Feel free to read that again if you want your head to explode.)
Roy got paid—excuse me, paid—in the off-season and
the team is currently backing up the Brinks truck to sign Aldridge’s
check as well. The future is not going anywhere anytime soon.

This season also welcomes the return of a non-hobbled Martell
Webster, bench veteran guidance courtesy of Juwan Howard (A player so
old that he, more or less, invented the baggy shorts look. Seriously.),
and NoPo’s very own Ime Udoka. Plus, another season of court time for
Oden will help his debilitating case of travelitis, and will do
wonders for Nicolas Batum, Fernandez, and trade bait Travis Outlaw as
well. Throw in a couple rookies—Dante Cunningham and Jeff
Pendergraph—blessed by the anointed hand of General Manager Kevin
Pritchard, and all of a sudden you have the deepest roster in the
entire NBA.

This current crop of Blazers is nearly god-like when compared to
their expected division rivals, the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz. The
Nuggets are an inked-up house of cards with a level of team chemistry
that rivals the stability of a mobile meth lab. (That wasn’t a Chris
“Birdman” Andersen joke, I swear.) Meanwhile, Utah lacks depth outside
of a few elite players, which means barring a complete meltdown, a
series of catastrophic injuries, or a Joel Przybilla on-court rage
killing (do not rule this out), another division championship banner
should be gently swaying from the Rose Garden rafters by next
summer.

TOTALLY RANDOM AND PROBABLY FACTUALLY INACCURATE PREDICTION

I’m saying 58 wins. On the grand scale of talent the 2009-10 Blazers
are considerably more than four wins superior than their predecessors,
but last year the team was a lucky bunch—a NBA best, with 9-1 in
games decided by three points or less—and it’s hard to see such
fortune repeating itself. Plus, that team snuck up on more than a few
opponents last year, since over the past few seasons a NBA travel day
to Portland was synonymous with easy victory. Well, not anymore.