Anyway, a huge day in Rip City, and I’m just starting to get my head around what all happened. Let’s take it (roughly) chronologically.

1. Blazers select Greg Oden with the first pick of the NBA draft. Not really a surprise to anyone, yet the whole town let out a collective sigh of relief because the management had us just twisted up enough about where they were going to keep us a little off balance. As I said earlier, this was the right pick. Kevin Durant may end up being the best pure scorer the league has seen in years, but unless your initials are MJ, that doesn’t matter in a league where the center is truly the key.

2. Blazers trade Zach Randolph, Freddie Jones and Dan Dickau to the Knicks for Channing Frye and Steve Francis. My feelings are really, really mixed on this one. On the one hand, I’ve been a big advocate of moving Zach for quite a while now. On the other hand, I don’t know that we got anywhere close to even value in this trade. The going theory that I’m seeing around is that Steve Francis will never wear a Blazers uniform. Widely known as a locker-room cancer and far from his exciting and productive past, Francis’ real value is in the opportunity to buy him out and create some cap space. So, this trade ends up being Z-Bo, Fred Jones and Dan Dickau for a back-up C/PF and some cap room. Eeek. The guys on ESPN were saying that Channing is a good character guy and would make a really good back-up, and that in the smaller market of Portland he might actually thrive. Still, I’d say New York walks away with the steal of the day here.

3. Blazers buy Phoenix’s #24 draft pick, Rudy Fernandez, for cash. Fernandez, from what I hear, is a tweener guard who shoots well and will make a capable back-up at both the SG and PG positions. That said, we’ll have to see what other moves the team makes this summer to see if he cracks the roster or gets shipped off to Europe to mature a bit.

4. Blazers trade second round pick (#42) and cash for Philly’s #30 pick, Petteri Koponen from Finland. This guy has some buzz around him and was apparently being scouted by the Spurs and Phoenix. That said, he’ll be in Europe for at least the next season. I figure he’ll serve as a bargaining chip next draft, or in some other trade down the road.

5. Blazers draft Josh McRoberts from Duke with the 37th pick of the draft. Interesting. McRoberts is a 240 lb forward/center. We seem to be getting a lot of these. He and Greg Oden are good friends, so I figure he’s not going anywhere and will be a capable bench player.

6. Blazers select Taurean Green with the 52nd pick of the draft. For those of you who watched Oregon make its deep run in the NCAA tourney, Taurean Green was the bastard who kept on putting 3-point daggers in the hearts of Duck fans everywhere. He’s a great shooter and was the leading scorer for the NCAA champs. A solid pick-up, and he’ll make the roster this year.

7. Blazers select Demetris Nichols with the 53rd pick of the draft. Honestly I know nothing about this guy. ESPN’s Chad Ford calls him one of the best shooters in the draft. He’s a small forward, which we need. So no major complaints, I guess.

Lots of new names on the roster, and a few old ones moved. So, let’s see what our roster looks like now.

Center: Greg Oden / Joel Pryzbilla / Channing Frye / Josh McRoberts
PF: LaMarcus Aldridge / Channing Frye / Josh McRoberts / Travis Outlaw
SF: Travis Outlaw / Demetris Nichols / Martell Webster
SG: Brandon Roy / Martell Webster / Rudy Fernandez / Taurean Green
PG: Jarrett Jack / Sergio Rodriguez / Taurean Green / Rudy Fernandez / Petteri Koponen

This, of course, assumes that Steve Francis and Darius Miles never see any playing time, which given the depth at almost all of our positions seems safe.

I don’t see this as being over, of course. We still need a stud small forward and we have some cap space and some depth to work a trade with. What’s coming?

1. Joel Pryzbilla or Channing Frye will move on.
2. Jarrett Jack is nearly certain to be a goner.
3. Martell Webster is looking more tenuous on this roster every day.

What do I predict the roster to look like when the season begins?

Center: Greg Oden / Channing Frye / Josh McRoberts
PF: LaMarcus Aldridge / Channing Frye / Josh McRoberts
SF: Unknown stud / Travis Outlaw / Demetris Nichols
SG: Brandon Roy / Rudy Fernandez
PG: Sergio Rodriguez / Taurean Green

There’s room in there for a veteran PG to back up Sergio, or to start for us for awhile. Think Steve Blake.

Who will the stud SF be? I don’t know. I have no clue. If we had Z-Bo, we would’ve traded contracts and that’d make it easier for me to figure out. But at this point I’m at a loss. I have to assume that in pulling the trigger on the Knicks deal and not drafting a SF higher up, Kevin Pritchard has a plan. A mad genius plan, hopefully.

So, the NBA draft is over. Portland’s roster gets a major overhaul, there’s a huge buzz in town, and if you don’t get season tickets soon you’ll be screwed. It was a long, fun, night, and I suspect that the shot in the arm to the franchise from this will last for quite awhile.

What do I expect next year? If we get the stud SF, I suspect we make it to the play-offs for sure, and maybe even bust through the first round. I suspect in three years we’ll be competing for the Western Conference title. I suspect in 4-5 we’ll be playing for the league championship.

Blazers fans, our time has come. Rip City has returned. Bingo Bango Bongo and all that stuff.

And I, for one, couldn’t be happier to be back home in the land of Blazermania.

Welcome to Portland, Greg Oden.

One interesting quote from Mike Barrett’s Blog (for those of you who don’t know, Barrett’s one of the Blazers talking heads during the season, so he’s both in a very good place to give information, and at the same time presumably somewhat to be distrusted since he has to stay with the team’s agenda):

I talked to Kevin Pritchard this morning, in his office, and he once again stated that nothing has been guaranteed to anyone. So, that basically says the reports you’ve been hearing on ESPN are false. It doesn’t mean Portland won’t actually take Oden, of course, but no one has been promised anything in advance. Kevin was adamant about that, and said “don’t believe the reports you’re hearing.” He said he’s not ready to go public with anything yet. That’s still the correct strategy, and we’ll talk more about that tonight during our show.

He also said it’s been an extremely quiet morning around the league, as far as phone calls are concerned. It seems like everyone is in a holding pattern. We’ve seen this before, and we’ve also seen an explosion of moves and deals once one key deal happens. But, something tells me that is not going to be the case this year. Of course, if the Blazers simply end up with just the number-one pick, it’s still a fantastic day. History though, has shown us, anything can happen on draft day. Kevin did state that several times.

The deal it appears everyone is waiting on, is the possible three-way deal between Minnesota, Phoenix, and Atlanta. It’s unclear at this point how close that deal is to going down, but that likely explains why there is just no chatter right now. If this deal officially dies, it could also open the flood gates to other moves. One way or the other, something will have to happen before much else can happen.

So, what does this mean? Well, it’s clear from many reports that the Blazers are really pushing to get a second lottery pick, with it appearing they’re trying to get the #11 pick from Milwaukie. I’m sure they’d also love to move a big contract, like Zach’s, but the reality is that doesn’t seem to be in the cards today. That’s probably a late-summer trade, or else a mid-season trade. If Seattle gets Durant, they’ll be looking to get rid of Rashard Lewis, and though I don’t expect the Blazers to want to send Z-Bo up I5 to a rival who we see alot, that trade may be one that’s becoming more realistic.

There’s also talk about the lakers looking at Z-Bo since they’ve fallen out of the Kevin Garnett sweepstakes. I don’t expect that to happen, either. I think when Z-Bo goes, he’ll be headed east. Ultimately, I see our most likely trading partner being New Jersey, once the dust from the draft settles.

But as everyone waits for the three-way deal to go down, or else officially get rejected, the “holding pattern” is a bit disconcerting, I suppose. Not because a lack of draft-day trades is bad for us. Only because we’re expecting something exciting again, like last year.

Poor Kevin Pritchard may end up the victim of making too good a showing his first time around.

Anyway, here’s hoping for some excitement this afternoon, and at the same time here’s saying that even if we don’t pull off some awesome deal(s), walking away with Greg Oden is a very, very good day…

Lately, MetroFi is working.

I still can’t get it in my house, despite having 2 bars on my Palm. But when I’ve been within a block of a node, with line of sight, I’ve been able to connect downtown, in NW Portland, and in SE Portland in nearly all of my recent attempts.

I still hate the fact that I can’t get a free connection in my home without buying some sort of boosting gear. But MetroFi seems to be pulling it together, and since I’ve been a huge nay-sayer, I needed to share that.

Of course, if you’re still experiencing craptastic service with MetroFi, we’re all ears!

Great movie, great theater, and you can never go wrong with Flying Pie and a Drop Top, but I digress…

Since perhaps the greatest suspense item of today’s draft (for Blazer fans, anyway) appears to be resolved, the next step is to figure out what’ll happen next. I think you’re a damned fool if you think that Portland’s roster won’t go through a bit of shuffling today, and you’re a damn-der fool if you think that Kevin Pritchard is going to settle for one first-round pick and four second-round picks. We will pick again in the first round. The question is where, and at what cost?

There are many, many great blogs out there devoted to the Blazers, and they will all be abuzz throughout the day and into tomorrow. I plan on throwing out a post at around 4:30 or so discussing the draft to that point, unless we haven’t made any moves. I also plan on throwing up a draft review tonight after I’ve had a chance to stew upon what we’ve done.

In the meantime, you can use this as our draft day open thread. If you aren’t a regular Blazer news follower and are looking for some places to go, you can check out my blog which won’t have any new stuff today, and use the links under “Blazers News” and “Sports Blogs I Follow,” which should all be lighting up throughout the day…

Do I believe it? No. Luke Ridnour’s a solid NBA point guard, but he doesn’t have the upside of Mike Conley Jr. or Acie Law, who are the two people most expect Atlanta to be choosing between at #11.

But, anyway, the article goes on to say that there may be a reason Seattle would do this deal:

They want Greg Oden, so they’d package #2 and #11 in exchange for Portland’s #1. . . Other trade scenarios between Portland and Seattle get messy because of salaries; just trading draft picks makes things a lot simpler.

Personally, I don’t think they want Oden that much. Really, Kevin Durant would be great for them. What I really see as a possibility, given how Portland has used the much-maligned smoke-screen to confuse the crap out of anyone who thinks that Oden’s a lock at #1 is the following (that is, if this trade happens at all):

1. Seattle trades Ridnour to Atlanta for the #11 pick.
2. Seattle trades the #2 and #11 pick to Portland for a promise that the Blazers will NOT take Kevin Durant at #1.
3. Blazers laugh all the way to the bank and score Acie Law at PG, which is fine because I think Jarrett Jack is moving in a draft-day trade.

Interesting to think about. But since I don’t think Atlanta makes the trade for Ridnour, completely an academic exercise. Your thoughts?

In the past week, both Greg Oden and Kevin Durant have come to town for their workouts, and as such a couple of us Metrobloggers have made our cases for each. I think we should pick Greg Oden. Alex thinks we should take Kevin Durant.

One of the main reasons people have for taking Durant over Oden, and one of the things that secretly nags at me in the whole thought process, is our historic experience with taking a center over a scorer. We are very much in a similar situation to where we were back in 1984 today.

1) We need a dominant center.
2) We have a wing who we’ve tabbed as our man of the future (Brandon Roy, versus Clyde Drexler back in the day).
3) There’s a guy on the board who we’d be more open to taking if not for our wing of the future.

And so I wake up at night haunted by dreams of what may be to come; Greg Oden going down with bad knees (or back, or ankle) while Kevin Durant single-handedly takes Chicago to the promised land.

It’s with this in mind that I direct you to Dave’s discussion of this very issue over at the Blazers Edge blog:

I just finished reading a book called Tip Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever by New York Daily News columnist Filip Bondy. (We’ll have a full book review on Monday.) The story looked not only at the players but at the draft process itself. It’s unbelievable how different things were then compared to today. There were no individual workouts. There was hardly any game film. Scouting staffs were small. If you were lucky you saw your draft pick on national TV and then maybe for a day or two at a combine or pre-draft camp. You relied on coaches’ recommendations, inside information, and your own gut instinct. When you were right you looked like a genius. When you were wrong–and that happened pretty often–those were the breaks. If you go back and look through those drafts in the 70’s and 80’s you’re going to see a lot of names that look completely misplaced…far more than you’d see from recent drafts. Guys like Jordan and Bowie wouldn’t be bursting on the scene in their last couple years of college nowadays. They would have left a video and statistical trail through scouting departments since the 7th grade, much like Greg Oden has. I would never tempt fate by saying a Bowie-type pick couldn’t happen again. But I would argue it’s going to be rare compared to back in the day.

People often forget that 1984 wasn’t the Bowie draft or the Jordan draft, it was the Olajuwon draft, plus Barkley, Stockton, and a few others. With the information gathering and analysis techniques available today it’s overwhelmingly likely that, given the same draft pool, the order would go Olajuwon first, Jordan second, and then Barkley, Bowie, and a couple others might have been duking it out for 3-6. The correct analogy for our choice, then, is not Jordan-Bowie but Olajuwon-Jordan. Either way that goes it has a happy ending.

Indeed, put that way, and with a better idea of how much more advanced the process is today, I’m feeling much more comfortable in my decision on Oden.

So now the interesting part is figuring out how the rest of the draft will go. Portland has several 2nd round picks, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who expects a flurry of trades on draft day that will land Portland a second 1st round pick and a solid small forward, in exchange for some or all of the second round picks and, hopefully, Zach Randolph (though more likely Jarrett Jack or someone along those lines).

So, what are your predictions for how draft day will shake out? I plan my last post here at the Metroblog to be a draft day recap, so I’m as excited as many of you to see what our wunderkind, Kevin Pritchard, is able to pull out of his magician’s hat…

But the important thing, too, is that as the franchise moves forward it’s now mindful of its past. If there was ever a team that needed to reconnect with its history, it’s this one.

And one big step was taken in that direction Wednesday. Almost unnoticed, there was a homecoming. Former Blazer President Harry Glickman was on hand for the workout, seated courtside.

This is a man who had been on the outside of the organization in recent seasons, a shame given his role in bringing the team to Portland as an expansion franchise and the number of friends he cultivated for the club.

But he was back, at Pritchard’s request. And in fact, when Oden arrived on the floor, Pritchard grabbed Glickman and introduced him to the player — giving Glickman the kind of respect long overdue from the Blazers.

I know that to some people, that probably doesn’t mean much. But to a generation of Blazer fans, the ones who were with the team from its inception, Glickman’s presence — even as a guest for a few hours — is a major event.

Glickman stands for a lot of good things in Portland. He brought the NBA to town, but he means much more than just basketball.

He is a man of character and integrity who always prided himself on his team’s role in the community. He’s one of those old-fashioned businessmen whose word is his bond. He made the team his family and loved it accordingly.

For years, Glickman was the local face of a franchise that was respected for its contributions to life in Portland, on and off the basketball court. And Glickman’s presence around the franchise at this point certainly means that those qualities of his are highly valued once again.

Isn’t that just one more reason — along with that No. 1 draft pick — to look forward to next season?

I love the Blazers of the past, but I’m just young enough that I was completely oblivious to anything off-court that was happening pre-Whitsitt. Only when he arrived did I start to realize how The Office was every bit as important, and sometimes more important, to a team’s success as The Court.

So, for anyone who remembers the Glickman days of the Blazers, I’d love your thoughts on his re-inclusion. And, really, how much classier does Kevin Pritchard seem every single day?

From the Blazer Evangelist blog (a good read, by the way):

For Kevin Durant’s sake, I hope Kevin Pritchard is right and that the Texas Longhorn comes in here like an “assassin” because I think that’s about what it’s going to take to knock Greg Oden off his lofty perch as the odds on favorite to be the #1 pick in next week’s NBA Draft. Like everyone else who was fortunate enough to be one of the select few that got to witness Oden’s Wednesday workout with the Trail Blazers, I went away impressed. But, what’s really captivated me during Oden’s visit is Oden himself. What a perfect match for P-Town. Funny, clever, articulate, self-effacing, and humble are all words I would use to describe the Big O’s demeanor.

I was watching Oden’s interviews on SportsCenter last night, and all I could think of is how comfortable this guy is in his own skin. At only 19, he not only looks older than he is, but he acts it. He’s incredibly mature for his age, and I think is a sure-fire hit…if the concerns about his health are over-blown.

And how is his wrist? Oden was asked. His answer, courtesy of Brian Hendrickson’s Blazer Banter Blog (also a must for news-hungry Blazer fans…)

On whether his wrist is still bothering him:
Oh, no. I was doing one-handed pushups the other day.

Nice. Very, very nice. So, at the risk of repeating the Sam Bowie (taking size, which you can’t draft, and then finding out the wheels were coming off the car) I say draft Greg Oden.

Your thoughts are, as always, welcome.

I was personally glad when King James’ Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Detroit Pistons to get to the NBA Finals, because I thought that a Spurs-Pistons series would really suck. Watching two defenses battle it out and seeing lots of games where the combined scores of both teams just topped 100 points didn’t sound too exciting.

But the Cavs had nothing on the Spurs. The Spurs, after all, are a dynasty.

A dynasty that will be carried on, in a couple of years, here in Portland.

Look at the Spurs, and what do you see? A game built on half-court play dominated by big men, defense, and hard-nosed effort. A team with off-court character, no soap operas, and a “culture” that local fans love and adore. A franchise player known as “The Great Fundamental” who’s most interesting soap opera is one member’s engagement to a TV star.

Kevin Pritchard, Portland’s GM, came up under Greg Popovich and through the Spurs’ School of How-To-Do-It-Right. He talks “culture.” He values character. He seeks substance over style. And he’s building a team in San Antonio’s image.

I noted somewhere online earlier this week that one pundit (I wish I remembered who–it was some ESPN guy) was saying that Portland is setting up to dominate the west for the next 10 years. When it does, the NBA’s best team of tomorrow will look a lot like the NBA’s best team today.

And, as the Spurs have shown, that is no coincidence when you focus on fundamentals.