The Final Straw

On January 8th, 2009, my fanaticism regarding the Portland Trailblazers officially ended.

To be fair, it wasn’t just the letter to the League about Darius Miles that sent me over the edge.  Our recent play without Brandon Roy is what put me on the fence in the first place.  Sure, we beat Boston and Detroit; the defending champs and a team that had won 7 straight.  But what about our losses: the Hornets and Lakers?  If we can’t beat them without Roy, then we need to totally reevaluate the team.

Don’t get me wrong, Roy seems nice.  But a fancy left hand… well, that doesn’t earn you a spot on the All-Star team.  The Blazers need a guy who can finish games – who can push us in those last few minutes when each basket is integral in deciding how the game ends.  Until we get that, we’ll never be able to get a W against the good teams of the NBA.  We’ll just keep losing to teams like the Lakers and the Hornets.

And don’t give me this crap about “development.”  It has been months; the rookies should have things figured out by now.  Greg is a #1 pick (I didn’t see LeBron have any trouble transitioning into the NBA), Bayless doesn’t even seem like he wants to get better, and all of Rudy’s wide open 3-pointers have resulted in an abysmal 39% 3-point percentage (tying him with the over-rated Ray Allen).  I just don’t see what more we can squeeze out of them.  Batum is okay…

Anyway, with all this drama and carelessness, I’m done!  The Darius Miles situation was the final straw.  Now, the entire league will hate us forever.  They’ll never forget that one time we issued a statement that we might take legal action.  Clearly the Blazers are unaware of the negativity surrounding this subject, so I’ll bet they may even take that legal action.  They don’t seem to understand that there is a line of teams ready to pick Miles up for perfectly “legal” reasons so that the Blazers will not be in such phenomenal financial shape.  When they sue Memphis, it’s going to start a hellfire of lawyers and bad publicity that will cost us even more millions.  Until then, this threat of legal action will go down as one of the most memorable threats of legal action of all time.  It joins… well… others.

Above all, it’s disturbing that I’ve never heard a word from Kevin Pritchard indicating that they were planning for this.  With both players and leaders that are failing so miserably, it is inevitable that the entire organization will do the same.  Thus, we must begin to prepare for the rebuilding.  I look forward to restoring my faith in this team with new, capable personnel.