From owner Paul Allen via the Blazers:
The Trail Blazers made a change in the vice president of basketball operations position and that's all. Decisions like this are made at the top levels of Blazer management, and are not made unless we have good reason, have worked through the issues involved, and we feel we should make an immediate change.
We are not going to make any more long-term decisions today. When the season ends we will evaluate how best to move the Trail Blazers forward. That's not different than the way we have operated for the past 21 seasons.
I support everyone who works for me, including Kevin Pritchard, and that's why he's our general manager. We all have the same goal - to bring another NBA Championship to the great fans of Portland.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)
P.S. My reaction, since people are asking:
I actually think this was done fairly well. It's short, to the point, and honest enough. It's silly to expect them to change their position at this point. This reiterates their position, says Mr. Allen supports it, and puts everything else off until summer, where it belongs. No amount of extra explaining was going to undo the last week. This does well enough putting a period on it.
Some will say, "What about KP?!?" They're obviously not going to come out with a public endorsement or condemnation at this point. Given that, this did what they needed. In my view, people are confusing two separate issues here:
1. How you feel about KP staying or going.
2. The Blazers front office handling their business in a competent manner and achieving their stated goals.
It doesn't bother me so much that they want to put off discussion of #1 until summer. In fact my exact argument was that they would have been better off doing that with Tom Penn. My big problem with the last week was that point #2 was lacking. This statement passes muster on that count.
--Dave