Cho's Amazingly Brief Tenure....

by Krang on May 23, 2011 11:47 PM PDT

This is big news. The sudden "Parting of Ways" between Rich Cho and The Blazers is obviously going to be discussed and debated. What it means about Paul Allen, what it means about The Blazers, what it means about where the team is, and where it is headed. It's going to be met with the passion and angst that this fanbase always embraces. And deservingly so...BUT.....

I'd like to throw out a suggestion. While we are offering our opinions. While we are questioning the direction and clarity of Paul Allen, the management of The Blazers. What it all means, what it should mean.

What if, what it is all about- is exactly what The Blazers say it is all about? What if we step back from our initial stunned and dazed reaction, and take the Blazers statements at face value? What if we drink the kool-aid, only to find it may not be kool aid at all.

Bare with me. The Blazers say, they "learned" from the KP incident. That once it was determined things were NOT working they simply did not want to drag it out. That they just wanted to end it as quickly and cleanly as possible. What if that is all this is really about. To make a admittedly NOT PERFECT analogy. What if this is like buying a new car. Maybe you researched, read reviews, test drove, made what you thought was a good deal got the new car in the driveway, but then discovered that the seats killed you? Or the blind spots drove you nuts? So maybe after a short period of time you find yourself selling the car, or looking to trade it in?

Maybe that IS all that happened with Rich Cho. Maybe it just wasn't working. For whatever reason. And maybe instead of months or even years of waiting, delaying The Blazers decided to move quickly to trade Cho in...so to speak...

Because it seems to me, a lot of the uncomfortableness surrounding this decision today, is based on our memory of what happened a year ago. And is that fair?

If Cho wasn't working for Paul Allen, or fitting in, then doesn't Paul Allen have a right to make a change? If he feels he wants better or can do better, or would be better off, without Cho at the helm doesn't he owe it to himself and the fans and franchise to make that change? The fact that a year ago, we had an ugly slow disentegration of the relationship between The Blazers and KP, really shouldn't be attached to todays decision. Could it simply be that KP wasn't the person to be The Blazers GM and RIch Cho unfortunately wasn't either? So I think in retrospect you can say, hiring Rich Cho to work 10 months and be dismissed was obviously a mistake, but if he really wasn't working out, wouldn't the greater mistake be to keep him for X amount of time, all the time believing he wasn't the man for the position?

Please listen carefully when I say, I'm NOT sure I believe any of the above statements I made. I am as full of anxiety and angst about this development as any Blazer fan. But as fans and experts and pundits throw out scenario after scenario concerning what this all means, or why it happened or shouldn't of happened it seems to me the only scenario not really being lent any credence is the scenario that says maybe all that happened today was a change that needed to be made? Maybe The Blazers spin on this incident, is simply the truth?

If The KP transitiion wasn't as ugly and "weird" as it turned out to be...would we be as stressed out today about what happened to Rich Cho? Or is it only in light of the ugly handling of KP's departure coupled with todays sudden and unexpected dismissal of Rich Cho that creates a perspective that makes most fans more upset about this then perhaps we should be?

Pretend the GM Rich Cho had replaced had been a succesful GM that had worked for The Blazers for 10 years amd simply was retiring for personal reasons. Given Rich Cho's lack of head GM experience, would the sudden annoucement of his dismissal suprise anyone? Woud we as a fanbase be more willing to believe the assertion that "it" was simply not working out with Cho and that The Blazers decided to move on?

Can we find it in our collective fan psyche to NOT judge todays actions and allow this franchise to demonstrate through future actions what direction it REALLY is heading in? Or have we been so shocked that we default to numerous "easier" scenarios to embrace that simply end with criticism of The Blazers and Paul Allen?

Maybe Cho's Amazingly Brief Tenure...was simply what it was...nothing more, nothing less.

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It would really help if we REALLY knew the reason....

I mean THE issue:
Guesses:
Not a Roy fanboy.
Not a Nate fanboy
Not a Oden fanboy

I think the logical choice to keep Oden if he is healing was not the issue.
I can picture reservations about Nate as a biggie…. but that is a guess.
Maybe PA thinks Brandon game 4 is the future.
How many reasons make sense…
“Chemistry” is not doing it for me without SUBSTANTIVE DISAGREEMENT ON REAL ACTIONS …
Draft comming up could have brought up VISION OF THE FUTURE TEAM we want to build. another biggie…
What disagreements could be TERMINAL ?
No one is talkin’ openly on that one. Maybe we will get a leak before too long.
Cho just doesn’t radiate much of a toxic personality aura to me.
He didn’t really get much of a chance to do the job he was presumably hired to do.
Probably the people counting for Cho as a positive change agent are the most disappointed with his departure.

Dump Nate

by Berkeley on May 24, 2011 1:14 AM PDT reply actions

You put your finger on the areas of potentially major disagreement

and I too see these as perhaps irreconcilable. Trading Batum might be another.

Because he is more new to the situation, I tend to assume Cho would be in favor of change. If Allen disagreed then they had a real problem.

ignacio

by ignacio on May 24, 2011 1:22 AM PDT up reply actions

I think the point is that maybe there is no smoking gun

maybe there was no massive philosophical difference between Cho and Allen/Born/Buchanan/Miller. Maybe PA just didn’t like what he had. So much speculation about what caused it…does it have to be so complicated? Can it be as simple as Allen not liking the nature of their interactions? We’ll probably never know

"If I had a dime for every basket I made today, you'd still suck!" - from the book 'John Dies @ the End'

by sammymohawk on May 24, 2011 4:56 PM PDT up reply actions

Right now, what you've laid out is all we really have to go on.

Everything else is our trying to fit our pet ideas into the situation. Now, perhaps those pet ideas are spot on. Perhaps they’re so far off base, that it’s suitable for nuclear testing. I may try to piece my pet ideas into this in a few days when it has all sunk in.

But it is remarkable that when something happens that we don’t agree with, our first reaction is character assassination rather than piecing together the facts of the events while giving people the benefit of the doubt. We go from “Rich Cho is fired,” to (paraphrased) “Paul Allen is a self absorbed jerk.” And there may very well be a logical progression to that. Cho fired is point number one. And Paul Allen being self absorbed being point five. But when we skip points two, three and four to get to point five, it does no one any favors. It may feel good. We may “know” that we are right. But without the logic behind it, we just end up slinging at the wall to see what sticks, turning the wall brown in the process.

What has been said has to factor in. What has been said has to make sense within the entire framework. Because there are only two sources of information in this whole affair. What has been said and what has been done. And it very well may be true that there is a disaster of epic proportions going on. And it very well may be true that things just aren’t working out quite right, and this was the best course of action. And aren’t our Blazers worth finding out which road makes the most sense logically, using the entire body of evidence, instead of inserting our own pet ideas?

Perhaps. But there is a thing about pet ideas. We feed them, we nurture them, we love them just like real pets. We’re proud of our pets. And we relish the opportunity to let our pets shine in all their glory. And when something big happens, that opportunity is front and center.

So maybe think of it this way. Do you let your pet figure out how to do it all on it’s own, or do you give it structure? And structure for pet ideas is exactly what I’ve laid out above. Pet idea is point five. Be sure points one, two, three and four don’t let it down. And then all of us are better off for having heard it.

I think I may have rambled. Sorry.

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason." - G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909

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by T Darkstar on May 24, 2011 11:00 AM PDT reply actions

The talking about Roy comments to the media had to play a role

It may be a small role but this decision landed like a hammer from the blue and the only new actions by Cho in the last month were those comments. I think somebody (Paul or Nate) wanted to keep that family matter in house and when the info came out heads rolled.

by Jacksonville on May 24, 2011 11:02 AM PDT reply actions