We Lost The Battle, But The War Is Far From Over

     To start things off right with a little Grateful Dead quote, what a long strange trip its been.

     All these injuries, our coach blows his achilles, Paul Allen has cancer. As a fan I say--WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!!? All the sudden it seems like our beautiful team has imploded! Last week our problems were so much simpler than they are now. Last week I was posting poems to lighten the mood around here because we(myself included) were all down in the dumps about our record, our losing streak and Nates management of players time on the court. What I would do to have ONLY those problems to worry about. Now we subtract Greg-The BIG GO - my favorite player. Geez, I could go from writing Blazers poems to Blazers country songs because I just realized reality bites.

     Losing Greg, to me was such a blow, I went to bed bummed and woke up bummed. And most of all I was bummed for Greg himself, because I know that he knows he can play, and he was finally starting to show signs of being great. He was finally starting to live up to some of the hype that surrounded him. At the same time he was squashing all the haters, doubters and analysts with great game play and proving he was worth #1 pick. Sure he was fouling, but his other numbers were way higher than I expected them to be.

     So for me, as well as all fans of the Blazers and Greg Oden, (my favorite player) let me commiserate with you. I feel like crap. We feel like crap. Greg feels like crap. Nate feels like crap. KP feels like crap. We are all down in the dumps. As a collective Blazer group, we all are feeling it.

     Ive read all the fanposts regarding Odens injury and how it will affect us. I read Daves report last night. I read John Hollingers story over at ESPN. I read all the comments by Nate and KP. It got me thinking--1. If anyone brings up Oden vs Durant ever again im burnt. 2.How will Odens absence affect us? 3. Whats up with trade rumors?

I started to get the feeling maybe all wasnt lost.

Oden vs Durant: HINT: Never ask or talk about this again!! EVER!! This is my last comment on it EVER!!!

This started and came up because I read this quote from Adrian Wojnarowski:

"For all the bows taken in Portland, Kevin Pritchard's legacy will likely be reduced to this: He picked the wrong player in the '07 Draft."

First of all--if I even hear one person say anything about KP fudging the #1 pick by picking Oden over Durant ever again, im gonna freak out. The nerve of that guy--what a jerk.

Here are 2 great quotes from Dave of Blazers Edge fame, and John Hollinger from ESPN that should be the endall for this discussion..

Dave:

"And I know my heart is bleeding into my head as I say the following, but that doesn't mean my head is totally divorced from the equation.  I am still overjoyed Greg Oden is a Portland Trail Blazer.  In fact were I the owner or GM of this team visiting him the very first thing I'd say is, "I am glad we picked you and if we had to make the pick all over again I would choose the same way."  I don't expect Oklahoma Thunder fans to look at it that way.  Heck, I don't expect anyone in the whole rest of the league to look at it that way tonight.  I get that.  I know all of the reasons it makes sense.  But that makes sense for you.  For me, and I believe for the Blazers, Oden is still the right guy.  I would not want anyone else.  I've been watching this game for a long time.  I've been through the 62 stages of early fandom and have managed to come through passion intact but also, I hope, with a pretty good sense of distinguishing truth from wishes, that which is solid from that which is just convenient and noisy.  Greg has shown me something.  Even as raw as he is, even as little as we've seen of him compared to what we'd wish, his presence on the court is unique among his teammates and has the potential to be unique in this league."

Hollinger:

 "In a roundabout way, it's unfair to Pritchard too. I know what you’re all thinking, so before we go any further: All you second-guessers out there, just stop it. All 30 NBA general managers were prepared to take Greg Oden over Kevin Durant. All of them. There wasn't even any question about it. One can fairly ask whether this consensus was borne more of the hope that infects every personnel evaluator upon seeing a talented 7-footer than of common sense. That said, it's hard to single out a front office for doing what everybody else would have done too."

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So I ask, How will Odens absence affect us?

Dave:

Here's the good news:  this team has always played better when it's been the underdog facing adversity.  Whenever you thought the Blazers were dead and buried in the last couple of years they bounced back and ran off a winning streak.  I'm halfway expecting the same to occur here in the short run.  I think you're going to see a ton of energy out of everybody still in uniform, especially from guys who heretofore haven't had the chance to utilize their talents to the fullest. 

Hollinger:

But in a weird way, Oden's injury takes some of the heat off a Blazer team that was visibly pressing, and off a front office that may have felt pressured to do something rash. Expectations bred by last year's 54-win season had caught up with this team, and with Oden's injury they can get back to relaxing and playing basketball without feeling like they need to win every game by 20 points.

They could also get back to playing a similar style to a year ago, when Joel Przybilla started at center and Oden came off the bench. I mentioned to Roy that tonight’s game was the first one of this year that felt like last season's games, and he didn’t disagree. McMillan made similar comments in his postgame press conference, admiring his team’s cohesiveness and scrappiness in rallying to beat the Rockets.

Nate:

They have a chance as long as they stay together, play together, and play with the effort and intensity. I thought that team came together tonight after Greg went down. It was, I really feel, the first time I've seen them play like we're capable of playing and like we played last year, with the scrappiness, with heart, together on both ends of the floor. Execution was better. We end up pulling out a tough game against a very good team.

I thought they rallied. Whether they relaxed? I thought they came together. They huddled and they talked and they said some things to each other. That was what we've been looking for. Sometimes it takes adversity, like what has happened in the last few weeks, and the last couple of days, and tonight.  But they came together, that's what they are going to need to do to give themselves a chance to win.

ROY:

Keep playing. Opportunity. That's all I really look at things. Opportunity for guys to step in and we a lot of guys have opportunities now that Greg, Nic and Trav are down.  We have a chance to make something great out of what people think are bad.

For me, these were all really encouraging signs that, because we were already dealing with injuries, one more wasnt surprising and our team is ready to rally behind this adversity. I like what Hollinger said. It is true, that trying to incorporate GO into our offense was going a little slow and was affecting our other players rhythm. I remember so many posts on here like--"cant anyone post pass?" and stuff like that. Now we have to adjust and recoup. I aint sayin its gonna be easy. But its just refocusing our efforts through other players that we know can hack it. Ive thought ROY was slightly under performing anyways and now he is forced to step up. Gregs numbers will have to be made up by everyone else. I could think of alot worse lineups to go into battle with, even if our line up is injury riddled, our main core is still healthy and really good.

As you can see, Im trying to maintain a positive outlook and spread that to my fellow Blazer fans.

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I found these little tidbits interesting on the speculation of trades.

Hollinger:

Pritchard dryly noted that the league doesn’t allow injury exemptions until a team is down to seven healthy players, and that he wasn’t rooting for two more injuries. But he admitted it may be time to look at roster moves to bring in reinforcements.

A trade is one possibility, especially one that uses the expiring contract of Outlaw. Another is to cut Mills and sign a “stretch 4” from among the league’s waiver-wire flotsam, since that spot is the most glaring roster need at the moment.

KP:

"Time to make a move?" he responded "I'd like to get past tonight but maybe it's time to look at that."

"What move might that be?" he responded "I don't know. Right now I'm just trying to support all of our injured players. That's the big thing."

3 questions later  KP responded slightly differently when he was again asked:

"Make a Move?" He responded "That's purely speculation. Right now I'm trying to focus in on helping Greg and Rudy in the short term and the other guys long term."

But also from John Canzano:

"Pritchard and McMillan are goal guys. They both set preseason goals for victories and accomplishments for the team. And Pritchard said on Sunday that he still "wants to make the playoffs." And he talked about not lowering expectations. But also, he mentioned that he doesn't expect the Blazers will make a move.

They cannot afford to sit still.

The starters, the reserves and the front office must find their way through this.

We're talking about an organization that had major traction after last season. And we know that Oden was a cornerstone to the Blazers championship window, and it would be easy today to simply slide that window back by two years or more and call it a day. But the organization shouldn't sit around waiting for Oden to heal because if they do, it ends up their legacy.

The Blazers are 13-8 and could cut Patty Mills and do something with his No. 15 roster spot. They have the ability to trade Miller after Dec. 15, if they can find a sweetheart of a deal for a veteran player with a short-term contract. And there's the February trade deadline and a load of floating possibilities.

What they can't do is fold."

     Hmmmm.....a load of floating possibilities?

     So, there is some trade speculation going on. I had heard there was even before Odens injury, but now they better be burning up the phones. We need another scoring option and a defensive minded player as well. We now need a backup center also. If Joel goes down, forget about playoffs, cuz we have noone else who can bang out center. I have no idea which player might be traded from our team or to our team. Or who would help us and gel with our system and players quickly. I dont even know if you can trade an injured player like Outlaw who was our best trade asset before injury. Even Rudy, our other tradeable asset is injured.

Who wants damaged goods?

Im sure KP can pull something off.  But what? Any Ideas?

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     In conclusion, trades or no trades. Injuries or not, we still have reason to hope our team can pull it out. We have some studs left on this depleted roster, now maybe they play with a chip on their shoulders, or with an axe to grind.  We did it last year with almost the exact same cast of characters, we can do it again. Lets keep our heads up. No one know what the future holds, not even Miss Cleo. There is still alot of fight left in this team. And like they say " No Guts No Glory."

Or to use another one of my usual cheesy analogies:

Gentlemen, we have lost many battles, but the war is far from over.

I STILL HAVE FAITH!!!!!!!!!

Peace,

Cave Junction Blazer

PS- I dont have any Blazers jerseys. I know, I just havent got around to droppin the dough on one. I actually have only 2 Blazers shirts, my fav is a giant blowup of Greg Odens smiling face. I have a game ritual I go through where I put on my Oden shirt and then all 3 of my Blazers hats(1facing forward, 1 facing left, 1 right). Now with GO out, should I still wear my GO shirt during the game or wait until he returns? What would you do? Greg was my favorite player on the team. Now he is gone. Should I still wear the shirt or will it maybe jinx my pre game ritual?