so you know, there are many on this site, myself included, who completely agree with you on oden. if the blazers had drafted durant and seattle oden and both had similar career tracks to this point, every blazer fan in the universe would relish calling oden a bust. however since we’re the team that screwed the pooch we hear about how he’s “about to break out” and “will be a beast next year”.

tonite was a perfect example to me of just how infuriating a player oden is. in a game where the refs let everything go, he manages 4 fouls in 16 minutes and not one of them was debatable. he once fouled out of a summer league game with 12. no player in the last 17 years playing 20 minutes per game has had a higher foul rate than oden did this year. he’s not an effective nba player, period. kevin durant looks to be a future hall of famer. bad pick, it sucks but it’s true. rebounds per minute are meangingless when you can’t stay on the floor for more than a 3 minute stretch.

to those saying we need 3 more years to judge durant v oden do we need 2 more to judge roy vs. foye? sometimes it’s just as simple as it seems.

i held out hope for outlaw with all the big shots he hit to win games this year but i don’t see him as part of the solution. i pretty much agree with you there. i think many trades will involve his name this summer.

i’m less high on rudy. i think he’s remarkably over-rated. that said this is not really his fault as much as it is that of the fanbase. i love watching the guy and he does some great things but if the blazers have an opportunity to get better with a trade that involves him, they should. rudy is very easy to shutdown, he can do almost nothing 1 on 1 in iso and can only get inside if he’s defended extremely poorly. his defense is very bad. he turns his body completely and gives up drives into the paint becuase he knows he can’t stay in front of people. it’s funny outlaw is a much better man on man defender but i bet if you put a poll up 80% of people would say the reverse. for whatever reason people have a really hard time being objective about rudy.

he’s a great 3 point shooter , moves very nicely without the ball and despite being turnover prone, is quite the crafty passer. if we actually had a point guard that made plays he’d be much more effective. i think he’s a keeper but not untouchable. we need a point guard more than we need rudy.

la proved to me that he’s a keeper. i was not convinced of this before the series. i am convinced of it now.

martell webster was very mediocre in his last full season and entirely forgettable before that. i think because fans haven’t seen him play in so long that his abilities and value have grown in people’s minds. if he’s with the team next year it will only take about 20 games for people to remember that he’s really nothing special. i think batum is already a better player. i think he has trade value and should defnitely be bartered with.

sergio… i sum up with “if only he could shoot”. poor defensive point guards can be successful in the nba ( steve nash, derrick rose as a rookie, tony parker) but they have to have an offensive game to go along with playmaking ability to compensate for this. sergio has far too many flaws to play in the nba. he many have some trade value for the knicks, but no actual competitive team would make him a regular rotation guy. i would imagine he’ll be moved in the summer but maybe not.

frye is a free agent and i wish him well. nice guy, bad basketball player.

blake really needs to go or he needs to get no more than 18 minutes per game. he does not create motion on offense and he can’t create easy baskets for big men. his vaunted assist to turnover ratio is more a product of his never making a play than it is his dazzling passing.

as an aside, blake is so poor as a play maker than i think he’s skewed blazer fan’s into thinking that roy is a point guard. this was a very popular theory before the season with lots of folks advocating roy at the 1 with rudy at the 2.

i don’t think bayless will amount to anything and i definitely don’t see him running an nba offense. i love the way he’s always fired up on the bench when he’s not playing though. i hope i’m wrong about him.

roy is as good as blazer fans say he is and i really mean that. he is being asked to do too much though and as much as it pains me to admit it, i think his career will be cut short by knee injuries. that said, he’s 24 so i think he’s easily got 4 more seasons in him.

let’s sign joel for life, seriously.

coach nate – i go back and forth. i love the steadiness and firmly believe it’s a huge part of the blazers success this year. it’s ironic that in the blazers final game of the year, he caved to media and fan pressure and started fernandez. artest immediately goes off and rudy is totally ineffective in a starting role. i’m actually glad this happened. i think nate will learn from it and i don’t think we win tonite anyway.

that said i don’t know if it’s our lack of a play maker or our schemes but our offense seems rudderless as often as it doesn’t. we do not create many easy baskets or open looks and i for the life of me don’t understand why we run the pick and roll about as well as a junior high team. i exaggerate but seriously, shouldn’t we be better at this? is it nate? personnel? intentional?

kevin pritchard – it’s sacrireligious to even suggest that he’s not the best gm in sports on this site but, permanent ban or not this guy honestly worries me. i think he may be too attached to his own players and while he’s been pretty good at the acquire lots of picks thing, whether he can take the next step which involves trading many of those younger players into fewer better players remains to be seen.

although i didn’t like the rumored trades for hinrich/deng or john salmons at the time, in retrospect the blazers plus hinrich or salmons would be a much better team than they are currently. i was really really wrong about hinrich, i called the guy steve blake but more expensive even. on the one hand that’s ok because, well, i don’t get paid to manage a basketball team. on the other, i do wonder if pritchard can pull the trigger and get another top tier player. that isn’t to say that hinrich is a star but prichard’s hesitance worries we some.

anyway i’m renewed for next year and along for the ride. great year overall, that’s for certain.