Blazer news: Aldridge is becoming the Blazers' Tim Duncan

Reliability isn’t the most appreciated virtue in sports—just ask Kevin Durant, who gets called the very opposite when he doesn’t put up more than 25 points a night.

That is why LaMarcus Aldridge has felt in the past a little overlooked by the media in his role for the Blazers.  But it is also why he is expanding that role by not committing to an immediate contract extension, and promising to sign a bigger contract next year to become a Blazer for life.

It is a common theme in Aldridge’s life that he strives to be someone people can believe in.  All the way back to his childhood, he tries to be the center, the rock, the foundation on which people base their certainties.  Reliability comes easy to him.  Reliability is what he has always been able to give people on and off the court.

But in the last few seasons he has taken on a different role.  He has become a player upon which people can base their hopes. 

“I felt like once we lost Brandon [Roy], everybody thought we were done. But I wanted to show that I was still here, and you could believe in me, too.’’ Aldridge said in April.

Aldridge has become a player most large decisions in the organization consider.  He is constantly in the mind of people in every move they make.  What he seeks to do with his career, is what the Blazers organization seeks to foster and develop.  The offense is crafted to run around him.  Players are acquired to make his role on the court more effective.  The actual running of the organization seems to revolve around making things for him easier, and sustaining his success.

Anyone who saw Aldridge in the locker room congratulating the team on making it to the second round of the playoffs, saw that he has become not only the most stunning player on the court, but the voice, the strength of the whole team and the franchise.  In him the franchise’s dreams live, and he has taken it upon himself to continually keep those dreams alive.

It is arguable—and people indeed make the argument—that the rebuilding process that the Blazers were forced to undergo after Roy and Oden got injured was something that set back the career of Aldridge.

But it can also be argued that tasting the incredible success of those years, and then being forced to remake his role on the team, gave Aldridge the opportunity to do something he wouldn’t have been able to do, had the Blazers not gone down that sometimes painful path.

Being part of a rebuilding effort allowed him to place himself at its center, and not only provide occasional stability for the team, but give the team a piece to build around and project its development into the future with.

There surprisingly few players in the league that actually create the culture for their team.  There are locker-room guys, like Luol Deng.  There are morale boosters, like Patty Mills.  And there are strategists that work closely with the organization itself in its moves: one could argue Dwayne Wade for Miami, but through cunning than by changing the working environment itself.  LeBron James isn’t one yet.  Part of his move to Cleveland is to see if he can do more than be the most essential asset of the team on the court.

The real contributors are really only three in number.  There is Kobe Bryant for the Lakers.  There is Dirk Nowitzki at Dallas.  And there is Tim Duncan in San Antonio.

The last is the most influential and important example for Aldridge of course.  Bryant shapes most of the aspects of the Lakers organization more in the manner of Jordan, and thus does so much to the chagrin of the organization itself.  Nowitzki is very laid back about certain franchise developments.  Who would blame him?  He has Mark Cuban to put his energy into it instead.  But the point is that he grows impatient with lack of success rather than makes cultural contributions—he is more like a conduit from the court to management than a trendsetter organizationally speaking.

Duncan is the central element that makes everything the Spurs do work.  He sets the tone for the organization off the floor and on it.  His outlook as a player is the central factor in nearly every decision that the team makes.  The team, its moves, are an extension of that player.  People speak about how this requires a lack of ego, but really it also requires an incredible kind of leadership: one that distributes a work ethic and a vision for how success can be achieved that distributes itself right through the organization.

Of course, in this, Duncan is helped by Greg Popovich and R.C. Buford setting the stage for him.  But Duncan himself embodies the ethic that they can only talk about and attempt to build, and that is essential.  It is this work, work which requires a huge amount of activity, a huge amount of centralization of decisionmaking through the work of his body, his effort, his performance, that actually leads the team, physically, into the future it envisions for itself.

San Antonio beat writers sometimes say that the one thing they are most surprised about is how much pushback Duncan sometimes makes against Popovich.  But this is simply the other side of how closely he is actually doing the work of directing the team.  He is not coaching it, indeed.  He is physically leading it. 

And Aldridge has put himself in the position to create a truly similar dynamic with the Blazers. 

It is a style and a philosophy of team-management that Paul Allen has recently seemed to embrace.  It worked in Seattle with the Seahawks: a team that he began to build around the roster itself, with an emphasis on the cohesion of its personnel, rather than the immediate results they produced.  The development of organic connections between the team, and the organization of its moves to foster those connections through a bottom-up style of management, was absolutely crucial in getting them a championship.

Similarly, fostering those connections, and centralizing moves around a leading player, brought Portland to its most successful season in a decade, and promises to take them even further next year, possibly deep into the playoffs.  The following year after that, when they can take significant steps in maximizing the efficiency of the roster, and building it entirely around Aldridge, it is not hard to see them having have a real shot at bringing a second championship to Portland.

Allen’s recent personal visit to Aldridge together with Neil Olshey to discuss various options that would make Aldridge become a Blazer for life is yet another indication that he seeks to make this philosophy even more a part of how the Blazers do business.

Reports upon Aldridge’s contract discussions have emphasized his commitment to making contributions to the history of the Blazers.  They have singled out in particular one statement which Aldridge made to Joe Freeman in discussing his eventual signing with the Blazers next year:

I want to be the best Blazer – ever... If I stay the rest of my career, I should be able to catch Clyde by then. I should be able to leave a mark on a big-time franchise that is going to be seen forever. And I will be able to say I played here my whole career. This city has embraced me and grown with me. I have so much history, it just makes sense to stay.

Surpassing franchise records is a force that motivates Aldridge to succeed, indeed, and this is what is stressed when accounting for his motivation to continue with the team.  But too much emphasis on merely adding to history can make it seem as if the choice is between staying in a good franchise and happily becoming part of its story, and taking risks elsewhere that bring a player glory.  It reflects the old small-market self-consciousness that the only reason people stay in little cities is settling for good instead of going for what is best.

In reality, catching and surpassing Drexler also clearly means making it to the Finals and bringing a championship trophy to Portland.  It is just as clear that Aldridge means this as well, though he puts it in more modest terms which don’t make the foolish promise of instant success.

It is, in other words, a further indication not only that he will stay—that worries about his ditching Portland to play with LeBron, for example, are silly—but reflects his willingness to take on fully this Duncan-like role he has been cultivating.

It is a powerful indication of nature of the relationship he is building with the Blazers and tells us a little about what it means: that it is by these patient but definite means that they will be making their achievements.  And nothing could make clearer just how thoroughly he is embracing the role of embodying the hope that fans and the franchise itself have for this team.