One of the perils of having a very public e-mail account is that you get tons and tons of spam mail. As I was going through my bulk e-mail folder tonight to make sure nothing real got filtered out it struck me how similar the junk e-mails are.
"Get a bigger (you know what)!"
"Viagra, cheap!"
"Answer immediately and you will get six million dollars from the account of my dead client Mr. Zaboobwe!"
"You are the CHOSEN ONE!"
It seems that a lot of people think they're in touch with what attracts folks...with what folks want. It's silly in this case because I'm perfectly happy with all the aspects of my love life (like you wanted to know), I don't necessarily think six million unearned dollars would solve all the problems in my life, and I have little or no need to feel more special than everybody else because my account has been CHOSEN.
That got me thinking...we all talk as if we assume we know what people want out of the team--be that winning, character, championships, or whatever--but very rarely do we just sit down and say flat out, "This is what I want." How many media folks, bloggers, team officials, PR departments, and even normal Joe fans shoot for the stereotype or the odds-on-percentages and fall out of touch with the people they're serving or talking with without ever knowing it? Are we all operating under junk-mail assumptions? Is there more to following the Blazers than we acknowledge?
The only way to know is ask. So this weekend do us a favor and answer this simple question:
What do you want out of the team? At the end of the day what matters most to you?
(Note that the question is not expectations for this year, nor even the near future. It's more general than that, probably having little to do with specific players or eras. KP could trade the entire squad for, say, the Bucks and still not necessarily change what you want overall out of the team and the experience.)
It will be interesting to see the responses.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)