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Pollakoff: Nicolas Batum Interested In Blazers' Direction

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Brett Pollakoff of Pro Basketball Talk interviewed Portland Trail Blazers forward Nicolas Batum from Eurocamp in Treviso, Italy. Batum discussed Portland's 2011-12 season and his plans as a restricted free agent this summer. ------------------------------ "For this team, we always have high expectations," he said. "And from the first day, when your go-to guy retires, that’s tough. That’s tough to replace; you can’t replace a guy like Brandon Roy, on and off the court. We were maybe the unluckiest team in the league, but we kept playing and we didn’t make excuses. We had a very good start, and then we started to lose some games and we started thinking too much. Then we had a bad series of losing games, and then we cut the coach, and we trade two veteran guys — (Marcus Camby) was the voice of the locker room. We tried to do something, we kept battling until the end, but that was a tough season for us." Batum also mentioned that the team’s choices — in terms of whether it wants to try to compete now or build for the future — will be a factor in his free agent decision. "I want to be sure which way we want to go," he said. "What they want to do, and when they want to do it. That’s going to be huge for me. I don’t know yet, we’ll see July 1 what happens. I’m going to check every situation to see which one is the best for me. I don’t have cities or teams in mind right now, but I just want the best situation." ------------------------------ -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter