Despite his draft-day brilliance, KP has yet to make a trade move, salary dumping aside, of any significance in his three-year GM reign.

????

The post did make me think though.

But Paul Allen is not your average owner. I don’t think that the Lux tax concerns him much. If the team wasn’t showing progress, maybe. I think that he sees and agrees with Pritchard’s plan, and will pay plenty to make it happen.

1. The RLEC
The current Blazers position on RLEC is that we’ll trade Raef if we get something good enough out of it, but if not, we’ll take the cap space. It’s a win-win situation. The reason why we’re not likely to trade the contract is that there aren’t a lot of players who are on the trading block who would be a good fit. In addition, the luxury tax is almost a necessity if you want to compete in the league. Both of the teams that made it to the finals this year were over the tax. You have to choose between luxury tax and winning. And trust me, Paul Allen has enough money to weather the luxury tax.

2. Of course, RAO are off limits. But almost everyone else can be traded. And I think you’re underestimating the value of some of our players on the trade market. Outlaw, Webster, Fernández, and Frye are all likely to be very good assets in a trade, especially to teams looking for young talent. Whether we would trade those players is a different matter. (And Raef isn’t needed as a third-string center. Both Pryz and GO will not foul out at the same time. Not possible. And Aldridge and Frye are both capable of filling in when Pryz and GO are out.)
3. KP has a lot of second round picks to package together along with a first rounder and some bench players to do something in the draft if he wants to. And he’s not just trading just to trade; he has consistently improved our roster through his trades.
4. As far as the 1 goes, we just improved at least at the backup with Bayless. And the one isn’t that important for winning championships. Boston won with Rondo, who can’t make a shot to save his life.
5. Your examples at the three for who we could trade for are awful. None of the players are good fits with our character or “culture.” What’s more, Marion is too old and Artest is getting there. All of them would take away too many shots from RAO. And, most importantly, they’d all too overpayed to make sense. We’re fine with Travis and Martell, who both are looking like they’ll be at least suitable SF’s.
6. Jarrett Jack wasn’t the exchange. Essentially we used the #13 pick to upgrade Jarrett and McBob.
7. Actually, a quantum leap isn’t very large. It’s rather insignificant.
8. KP’s made tons of trades for what we needed: young talent.

Sorry if that was overly critical but people like you get under my skin.

The team is fine as is. All these reporters are constantly looking for any sign from Pritchard that he may be considering making a move. I think KP thinks about making moves a lot because he is a GM and that’s his job. Just because he makes a comment doesn’t mean he doesn’t already think things are fine the way they are. He’s just saying it’s a possibility if a team comes running with a offer too good to refuse.

All this speculation about the team is just that, speculation. The truth is Bayless and even Koponen will probably be added to the team. Oden will be back, and Fernandez will fly in for training camp. They will practice for a few weeks, play some preseason games and then we’re at opening night.

I think that was a pretty valid point: “James Jones, one of the top 3-point artists in the league, was a vet, and a good guy, to boot, and he is now gone to a team that gave him just $1.5 million a year more than the Blazers were paying (and keep in mind that KP pays $3 million in cash every year just to take a chance on a low-first-round draft choice).”

Made me think a little because three point geniuses don’t grow on trees in every draft, and seeing this comparison he would have definitely been affordable on a roster where we really need to spread the floor, albeit somewhat overpaid.

The “expiring contracts” argument was less convincing, cause there has been no statement Allen wants to avoid luxury tax in the future and cap space at least gives you options. Options to (a) just re-sign whatever guys we want to keep which as stated is important on its own, (b) sign one of the oft discussed free agent, (c) use it in a trade for a vet at the February deadline, and/or (d) absorb contracts other teams want to shed e.g. in a three-team trade (see Seattle/Memphis/Minny) to be used later.

Using all chips we imagine we have or not, I still think that 2009 will be a year of quite some changes on the Blazers roster, seeing a few beloved guys go and exiting new ones come in to more or less complete the roster of our fantasies.

With the creation of a young, and incredibly talented trio that the Blazers have, there is no reason at all to make any moves for the upcoming season. The roster may not be a championship contender, but as one of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in the league, I doubt that playing for a title is the primary goal for this roster. They may say that to the media, but getting the playoffs and adding some experience to this team is what’s truly needed.

There have been so many players coming and going from this team, championship teams know when to stand pat with their roster. So, while the team may not win a title this year, you have to see what this current group is capable of. After this season, you will have a good idea of what Bayless, Rudy, and Oden are all capable of.

So, some may think the Blazers have run out of pieces to deal with, but what I’m saying is that it doesn’t really matter at this point. You have to let this team play a full season in order to properly gauge just how good it can be in the future.

If I’m KP, and I take a step back right now and look collectively at what has transpired over the last 3 years, I’m telling myself there is no way I could’ve planned for it to work out like this. That is to say, at some point KP probably thought bringing in a vet would be the necessary step in the formation of a championship-caliber team, only now, when looking at what he’s assembled, when seeing the balance and the potent mixture, he might not believe we need a vet anymore.

If all holds and goes as many think it will, he won’t need a new groove. We have youth… all he’ll need to do is show up with a smile on his face.

PG – TBD
SG – Brandon Roy
SF – TBD
PF – LaMaracus Aldridge
C – Greg Oden

So, we KNOW that 2,4,&5 are filled for the foreseeable future. Oh no! What to do about point guards? What do we do about small forwards? What is our primary 8-man rotation going to be?

If you didn’t let those three questions sink in, reread them, because those are the questions that KP, Nate & Co. are looking to evaluate and establish this season. I am not going to say this is a throw-away season, this is a rise to the expectations season and the management is finally putting the screws to our stable of prospects in regards to production and being counted on by the team. There wasn’t a real shake-up this year like many had expected or prognosticated. Jarrett Jack went, but that seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Jack was good enough for the NBA but not this crop of Blazers answer for the point guard role, and his opportunity to stick in the 8-man rotation was cancelled because he turned the ball over too-much, didn’t shoot well from outside like they needed and he didn’t defend up to his potential (IMO).

Is our point guard scenario going to be figured out after this season? No, Yes, maybe… But we know one thing, Jack isn’t but Koponen, Bayless or Rudy could be part(s) of the equation. That is fine with me now, finding out what we really have in the PG slot is going to take at least a little bit of time. Besides, Portland still has Steve Blake as the “fill-in” veteran starter to soak up minutes if the youngsters aren’t effective with B.Roy yet.

With the small forwards we are closer than we have been in 3 years to knowing/thinking we have our SF position sewed up. Last year KP had brought in sharp-shooting SF James Jones to pad the SF position. The year before KP brought in SF Ime Udoka to help revitalize the city’s interest in PTB with a quality veteran-of-Portland-fame player. Both of which were KP driven and ultimately I suspect that KP knew Darius was on thin ice from the get-go. KP’s first draft was B.Roy, LMA and Sergio. B.Roy’s drafting pushed previous top-pick Martell Webster into the position of Small Forward for his NBA outlook rather than Shooting Guard, which B-Roy is now going to fill long-term. Also, KP had another small-forward youngster on the team in Travis Outlaw. When KP had arrived, it was clear that both Webster and Outlaw were projects that needed to be developed.

KP & Co. have kept those two major “potential” players, have worked hard to develop them, and to keep patient with them on roster and not just going for somebody better in a trade. Fact is, this is the year finally that Webster should not need a James Jones or Ime Udoka somewhere in the lineup for protection. Outlaw should at least play up to his Blazers-6th-man role and improve again. KP and Nate are going to give Webster and Outlaw the chances they need to solidify thier long-term place with this organization or… the public will realize they are not what we’d hoped and trade them to move on. My feeling is that Webster and Outlaw showed glimpses of just how simply killer they both can be, and that this season, with Oden in the mix, and Roy and Aldridge taken further steps forward with their games, that Webster and Outlaw will have thier chance to redefine their (previous) breakout season’s.

As far as our rotation goes, everyone knows really good teams have a very solid and well-defined 8-man rotation, as well as extra depth around the roster to be able to make up for long seasons, injuries, mismatches and matchups. I believe our Big-8 are here and now: Oden, Roy, Aldridge, Webster, Outlaw, Rudy, Frye, and Bayless. Time will tell, but, I think you should put more stock into this guess that many did in fatty’s call to draft Durant over Oden.

Well, with regards to Chips, I think that while Ponch got the ladies, John was actually the better police officer.

I appreciate many of the comments and concerns that you bring up in your original post. Regarding RLEC, those kinds of contracts are most valuable at the trade deadline, to take advantage of a situation where a very good player is made available for whatever reason. KP will get a few months to see how much our RAO trio has matured, and pounce if a good player is made available for whatever reason (disagreement w/ management, stingy ownership dumping a contract, etc.)

You also allude to the fact that, long-term, it’s hard to keep three excellent players like RAO on the team together so they all get paid. San Antonio was able to do it because Manu Ginobili was undervalued early in his career and both TD and he agreed to take a little less money for the good of the team. We’re also going to have to establish a pecking order among those three in terms of who gets paid. Only one of them will get a max contract (my guess is GO) and the others will need to take slightly less but still lucrative deals.

Ultimately, whether we win championships will depend on the development (and injuries) of those three. Our large horde of young, inexpensive assets and RLEC allow us a great amount of flexibility to build around them, but there’s no way we can bring in someone who’s a top name out there (e.g. Josh Smith) and expect them to be a 4th banana. In time, we’ll see who turn out to be bananas 4-15 on this team, but it will have a marginal effect on the number of banners that end up in the rafters at the Rose Garden.