Helin: Projecting 33 Wins, Lottery Trip For 2012-13 Portland Trail Blazers

Kurt Helin of ProBasketballTalk offers his 2012-13 Portland Trail Blazers season preview.

What Trail Blazers fans should fear: Meddling ownership. Paul Allen and his Vulcan crew stepping in to make decisions. The best owners stay out of the way - hire a smart GM, a smart person to run the business operations, then let the basketball people do their thing. Don't let personal relationships with a coach or anyone influence business decisions. Only change the GM when it's clear he has failed. But Paul Allen likes to stir the Blazers pot, and when he does plans seem to reset. It happens too often.

How it likely works out: Even if Batum does have a breakout year and Aldridge is once again an All-Star, the Blazers are trusting a rookie point guard to lead them to the playoffs. Which means it is going to be a long season. The Blazers will be entertaining and not an embarrassment, but when the inevitable injuries of any NBA season come the depth of this team will be exposed. And it won't be pretty.

Prediction: Portland finishes 33-49 and is back in the lottery, hoping for a lucky Ping-Pong ball bounce. This is a year to be measured in growth of young players that lets them build for the future. They have Aldridge for three more seasons, they need to find a way to win with him in that time or the rebuilding may have to start again.

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter