Recently, Nate (in all his glorious wisdom) has decided that Nic is our 8th man, and thus worthy of less than 20 mins a game.

This has to be really frustrating for our favorite Frenchman after his breakout tour in the French League. Unfortunately for Blazer fans and Nic, his 8th man status is unlikely to change unless this roster is really reconfigured. Assuming the team resigns its current players and signs Joel Freeland Nic will be the 8th man for the foreseeable future

Starters:

Felton

Matthews

Wallace

Aldridge

Camby/Oden/Freeland

Reserves (in likely order of appearance):

Crawford

Freeland

BATUM

etc.

Recent RealGM article exposes a potential rift between the team and Batum (http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/218208/Batum_Playing_Time_Most_Important_In_Determining_Whether_To_Sign_Extension).

Even if the team misses on Felton or Oden, it is still likely that Batum will be behind Wallace & Matthews. Removing Crawford from the mix does open more minutes at the wing, so does the question become do you resign Crawford or Batum? (For the sake of this discussion I presume Wallace is a keeper as the #2 player on the team)

What is really frustrating about this is that if Nate had even an ounce of foresight and actually cared about developing talent he would have committed to playing Batum no less than 24 or so minutes a night.

How hard would it be to commit to the kid especially in a contract year? Even if they lost a game or two, wouldn't that be worth it to develop Batum's skills and confidence?

This team, and Nate specifically, has really screwed around with Batum so far.

-He lost his starting spot to Outlaw against the Lakers with horrible results(once again, Nate's supreme wisdom)

-He got fewer minutes than Travis Outlaw...let me repeat....our coach decided that Travis Outlaw was a better player than Batum and worthy of more burn..."Nate's a great coach".

-Nic was told to not even worry about playing offense..."he's the fifth option"...

-They didn't run plays for him...and heck, most of the time they still don't

I wouldn't blame him one bit if he looks elsewhere to play. The team has no one to blame but themselves...but mostly Nate.

Either commit to the kid or move the heck on.