Many of you may know who Pete Newell.  He was a great teacher of the game of basketball.  Sadly Mr. Newell passed away Monday.  I wanted to honor his memory by sharing a childhood memory of my own involving Pete.  I encourage anyone else to share their memories as well.

Many of you may be aware that Pete ran a basketball camp in Portland every year back in the 90's.  The camp was always well run and had a wide range of ages and skill levels participating.  I went to the basketball camp when I was nine years old and had never played basketball with a men's regulation sized ball.  At the time I didn't have the strength to make a shot on a 10 foot hoop with the large ball.  I had massive range, pretty impressive I know.  But the coaches at the camp always kept me involved in games and taught me some fundamentals, which was the staple of Pete's camp.

Halfway through the camp I was scoreless and as a result of my lack of scoring the coaches, led by Pete, offered to buy my entire team ice cream if I ever scored in an actual game.  An amazing offer for a bunch of nine and ten year olds.  I still remember vividly scoring a basket, my only two points of the camp, on a fast break and the whole team giddy with excitement.  That afternoon Pete and company took the team out and got us all ice cream, which will be a memory that I cherish forever for the big heart that Pete showed me. 

I was procrastinating from my finals studying today when I came across a very informative piece at True Hoop.  Check out the piece here.  It's a bit lengthy, but I found it to be one of the best reads that I have seen in a while.  Very insightful and informative.  I just hope for the sake of the NBA that the bulk of the "fixing" of games isn't true.  But I digress...

Dave has brought up the subject for discussion and has been a very interesting read.  I wanted to take a slightly different perspective on the topic.  The gambler featured in this piece made it clear that he would be very interested in an NBA job.  A poster, TheVolv, made an interesting point in that a man with the vast amount of NBA knowledge would be a great asset for an NBA front office.  I was also unaware that our own Blazers currently employed a notable ex-gambler for similar statistical analysis.  To this I posit the question: Would the Blazers benefit from the analysis of this gentleman?  

My initial reaction is this would be a great acquisition.  He's knowledgeable and very successful in what he does.  Would this fit with our current culture? Would this be taking badly by the media and the fans here in Portland?  I'd like to see where the community stands on this idea.  Should PA look into hiring this guy to improve our front office even more?  One big strike against him is that he did profit from our Western Conference Finals meltdown in 2000, though isn't enough not to look into this prospect in my opinion.  

There has been a lot of discussion throughout the NBA about the whole Seattle-Oklahoma City issue.  There's been a lot going on, especially in the last week of the season.  With the owners voting yesterday (28-2) to allow the move the Sonics to Oklahoma City.  I applaud both Paul Allen and Mark Cuban making a stand and voting against the move, but in the light of the litigation that the Sonic's ownership is facing the vote should have been postponed until the legal issues were worked out.  Stupid move on David Stern's part, especially should the Bennett and Co. lose the litigation and be forced to stay in Seattle until 2010.  

While I am not a fan of Bennett and Co.'s tactics to move the Sonics, as it bodes poorly for other NBA franchises and their fans, I went searching for info from another side of the issue.  I came across a Clay Bennett interview on the Sonic's website talking about the vote to move the franchise.

Here's the link.

After reading this I am not convinced that Seattle is going to win their last ditch effort to keep the Sonics in town, even for a short while longer.  Bennett talks about how his e-mails were misconstrued, which any source, including the media, if it fits their goal.  Bennett represented himself well, but I am on the fence as to whether Bennett and Co. are evil, for lack of a better term, for what they are doing to Sonic fans.  Did Bennett and Co. create the disconnect between ownership and the city of Seattle just to accelerate the process of moving the team to Oklahoma City?  Maybe so, maybe no.  Either way it is looking worse and worse for Seattle fans.

I was watching the game last night and was absolutely amazed with KP.  The Mike's do a great job with the play-by-play, but KP definitely took the cake during the 2nd quarter broadcast.  Despite skirting all of the questions, which I can't fault KP for doing...I certainly wouldn't have made that info public, KP showed how much he knows about each player in the league.  He was constantly chiming in with tidbits of how __________ player rebounds well but really doesn't have a long range shot.  

Maybe I'm making more out of this than I should, but KP seems to know personnel from every team and can evaluate each player in terms of strengths and weaknesses, often off the top of his head.  I found that segment immensely entertaining and just reconfirmed my belief that we have the best GM in the NBA.  I'm extremely excited for the offseason, but we have one game before our winning season is complete!

Last night's game showed me a number of things that are great indicators for next season and our ability to finish this year with a winning record (albeit a difficult proposition at this point).  

-The energy that was shown last night was phenomenal.  It makes me wish that we had 8 home games against the FL*kers every year.  The offensive execution in the two home games this season was superb and we got huge games out of Brandon and LMA.  Hands down we just come to ball when the L*kers are involved.  If our guys can get up like this for every game, particularly the home games I see many more 13+ win streaks in the near future.

-Nate's post game comments were spot on last night.  Most interesting to me was the comment on how our guys tend to have "too much respect" for our competition.  Odom's Flagrant foul on Roy was a real wake-up call I think.  LMA and Troutlaw getting in Odom's face was a great sight to see.  They didn't take it too far, but it showed that we aren't going to get pushed around by anyone, title contender or not.  

-There's been a lot of speculation as to what KP will (and should) do concerning the two weak spots in our line-up.  Last nights game showed me one thing: we can play playoff caliber basketball with the guys we have, even short handed (No Pryz and Webster).  We could use an upgrade, but if the price isn't right I think KP should sit and be patient.  KP has a lot of leverage with our young talent, so a deal is entirely possible, but I'm sure KP will not overpay for any player in a trade.  

-Raef doesn't get much credit for anything, his influence on this young team is invaluable.  He may not be a big minute caliber guy, but he's an intelligent player and knows the ins and outs of the pro game, and confers that knowledge to our young guys.  While his contract is ridiculous and I foresee him as part of a trade this year with his expiring contract, I think he deserves some props for his positive attitude all year and mentorship of the young Blazers.

Any other fans out there think that waiting until we see Oden in the line-up to pull the trigger on a huge deal?  Do we want more draft day theatrics from KP?  Do we wait till the trade deadline to make our blockbuster deal?

Draft day gets my vote.  It's easier to rip off a team draft day with all of the excitement that most GMs get over unproven players, especially since deadline deals depend largely on the state of each team involved.  

I wanted to take an in depth look at how the blazers have been progressing so far this season, month-by-month, as well as looking at what we do well when we win games (statistically speaking).  Based on these trends I'd like to think about what changes need to be made this coming off-season.  

Not counting October (we played one game and lost to San Antonio), we have played 65 games so far this season.  So what exactly do the numbers tell us?  To get an idea of what the blazers do well when they win, let's look at the differences per game totals of each major stat.

PPG +12.2
APG +4.2
RPG +0.2
Off RPG -0.2
FG% +4.9%
3P% +7.3%
BPG +0.3
SPG -0.3

Based on this you can tell that our defense tends to be pretty similar on average in our wins and our losses based on our BPG and SPG totals.  However we score considerably more, have more assists and shoot the ball better when we win.  Logically that makes perfect sense.  Rebounding seems to be roughly equal in our wins and losses too.  Based on the assist numbers, the more that we move the ball the better our chances are to win.  When we play one-on-one ball primarily we lose more often than not.  BRoy and his unselfish play would seem to be a major catalyst for this trend, especially since we win more often than not when Roy plays well and gets others involved.

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