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Regarding CJ McCollum and his press savvy (*** VIDEO CHALLENGE ***)

If you clicked on this hoping for an impassioned diatribe about the nature of modern journalism and its effect on athletes, especially NBA athletes who have been conditioned into carefully sculpting their personal brands for public consumption... well, sorry. I have that post in me somewhere, but not today.

Today, I have a simple request.

Someone, at some point during the next year or two, needs to do a video mashup, taking footage from actual CJ McCollum press conferences, and intercutting them with press briefing scenes from The West Wing, which featured the wonderful acting skills of Allison Janney playing White House press secretary CJ Cregg. Not for footage of Janney herself, but i just think it would be hilarious to see all of the reporters in the briefing room yelling out, "CJ! CJ! CJ!!!" followed by some question about foreign policy or economics or some random non-NBA-related topic, and then cut to CJ McCollum giving some well-thought-out answer that sounds articulate and vaguely political. He's such a smooth talker, I bet he'll be into politics in 20 years anyway.

So that's my challenge, Blazer fans. With so many in the Portland metro area creative class, someone with Final Cut Pro and an ear for interesting dialogue should be able to make this happen. Maybe if you do this well enough, the Trail Blazers would feature it on their official site! Maybe this is just the opportunity that could vault some young visual auteur into prominence and onto the path toward stardom. Maybe you could end up guest directing an episode of the 8th season of Portlandia.

I would do it myself, but I'm too lazy.

Here's an example of a typical CJ Cregg scene to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

GET CRACKIN' PORTLAND!!!

I demand five minutes of the kind of light inanity that we're known for. Our national reputation is at stake.