Bad apples + Brandon Roy + This American Life=fanpost

In the Blazers Edge quest for the most "should we get player x?" type of posts out there we invariably get a player x whose talents could really help this team, but who has questionable character. I dont want to name any names but their initials are Ron Artest.

I always liked the saying that you can have one ass (is that ok to type on BE if it is referring to an animal? We will find out.) on a team, but you cant have 2 because they will multiply. So I have been of the opinion that we can tolerate on questionable player due to this logic. After today I started to question the soundness of this reasoning due to the basketball well of knowledge that is This American Life. (The show aired on 12/21.)

Not to go into too many details, but they interviewed a researcher who did an experiment where he had groups of students work on a project with a monetary reward attached to it. In half the tests a student was planted in the group that was a bad apple and acted as either a jerk, a pessimist, or a slacker. The usual thinking is that groups are so powerful that they will pull one bad apple into line, but this study showed that the opposite happened. The bad apple was able to destroy the groups ability to work together. So from this study we might conclude that we cannot tolerate even one bad apple on the Blazers.

That is not where the story ends though. One of the groups that had the bad apple planted was able to stay on task and accomplish the goals of the project despite the presence of the bad apple. What set this group apart? They had a student who was the son of a diplomat who was very good at diffusing conflicts by asking lots of questions, which also helped people feel that they were contributing. To me that type of natural leadership is demonstrated by Brandon Roy. So I am now conflicted as to whether or not the Blazers could tolerate a Ron Artest like player due to Brandon's strong leadership.

Let me make a bit of a case on why I think Brandon is the type of leader that can keep a bad apple from ruining the Blazers. Exhibit A: the 2006-2007 season. Some may remember that we had a bit of a problem child in Zach Randolph. Brandon managed to wrestle away control of the team from Randolph and got us playing some better basketball and gave us all some hope for the future with his ROY award. This also might be used as evidence why we cannot tolerate a bad apple as we didnt win much that year and Randolph still got a lot of shots in the offense that were of questionable quality so Brandon was not able to fully real in Randolph.

A brief argument against bringing in any sort of questionable character may be the decision of KP to keep Miles away from the team during his rehab. KP, who I think has proven to be an excellent judge of character and very capable of crafting a winning culture, may not have been positive that Brandon would be able to take control of the team while having two bad apples to overcome. In KP and Brandon's defense maybe KP may have been playing it cautious as he did not know the full extent of Brandon's leadership, or KP may have been of the school that one ass is fine, but 2 are not.

To BE readers. Does this team have the leadership to tolerate a talented yet troubled player? You can answer thoughtfully in the comments or ignorantly (j/k) in the poll.