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Dwyer: Blazers Face Tough Decisions

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Reacting to Portland Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan's comments about the many questions facing his roster, Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo! Sports writes that he feels Nate's pain... ---------------------------- He's not wrong. Fernandez and Matthews have their moments, but they're limited at times. The older Gerald Wallace makes Batum superfluous, on paper at least, but can Portland ignore Wallace's age and injury history? Will Greg Oden ever play? And that's not even getting into either Miller's permanence, or his role on the team. It is still the coach's job to squeeze a result greater than the sum of its parts from his team, but hasn't McMillan already done that? And with the draft approaching and the window in which teams can wheel and deal shutting down for an underdetermined amount of time due to the lockout, McMillan's got to be feeling the itch. It's not that he doesn't like these guys, far from it, he just knows that this particular combination has gone about as far as it can go. And even that was a result of an impressive batch of hard work on McMillan's end. I know Paul Allen's money is nice, but could you imagine having to coach this team? ... Portland was right to get geeked up over its Trail Blazers this time last month, but from ownership on down to the rooter on his couch, this team has some tough decisions to make. ---------------------------- -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter