As we speak, the Blazers are losing to the Mav's which is not a surprise at this point in the season. Whatever minute playoff hopes we had disappeared the moment that Aldridge was ruled out for the rest of the year. The only particularly positive thing that can happen in the remaining games, other than the team competing and possibly winning a few more games, is evaluation.

With that in mind, this is my list of the top priorities for the remainder of the season:

1: Showcase the young guards. Smith and Flynn, Flynn and Smith, however you do it, both need heavy minutes to figure out if either, or both, can be viable options going forward.

2: We got Thabeet? We need to give Thabeet some serious run, and figure out if he can play at this level or not. If he can, I think we should try to sign him to a small deal, he may never been an All-Star, but true 7-footers are very rare.

3: Where's Rhino? I don't know what happened to Craig Smith, its possible I may have missed an announcement of some kind (?). He looked promising earlier in the year, but hasn't played much in the 2nd half of the season. The team needs to a) find him, and 2) figure out how to incorporate his invisibility cloak into the offensive and defensive schemes.

4: Coach K: I've been pretty impressed with what Kanales has done thus far. Does turning a sub-500 team into 500(at the moment)-team warrant becoming the young head coach in the league??? I don't know, but I'd like to at least see him kept on the staff and developed more.

5: Feed Batum! The most imporant thing the team needs to do, in my opinion, is feature Batum. With every other viable offensive option out of the way, we need to see what Batum can do as our true #1 option. Sure, he won't be a #1 going forward, but we need to figure out how he's most effective, in a vaccuum, then use that knowledge to fully utilize him going forward. Run him off screens. Post him up. Put the ball in his hands and see how well he can create for himself and others (my personal favorite). Think of it as an audition, or a final exam. The more he's able to do, the more valuable he becomes.