Readers' questions and comments

Each week or so I’ll be going through the inbox and addressing some of the great questions that readers have sent in.  I’ll do my best to answer them.  As always, you can send questions to ripcityreviews (at) yahoo (dot) com:

From Shana in Bend, OR:

I’m not certain that I trust LaMarcus Aldridge will come back next year.  He has given us his word and pledge to be a lifetime Blazer, but what’s to stop him from joining the Cavaliers next year and playing with LeBron?  We just saw LeBron change teams.  Unless the Blazers have any agreement binding with him, it’s not clear he will come back.

What LaMarcus has given the Blazers is indeed just a pledge.  But I think we can be fairly certain he will return.

I mean, the opportunity to play with LeBron James is incredibly enticing.  And he proved himself this year, beyond a doubt, to be the most valuable power-forward in the league besides Chris Bosh (if Bosh can be said to be a power-forward any more).  Kevin Love doesn’t come close to what Aldridge can do—that’s how good he is.  So there will be a huge market for him.

But honestly I think the Blazers have made every move in the last few years that is necessary to make him more than happy in Portland and keep him here for a long time.  I mean, the team is built completely around him.  Everything is done with him in mind.  The offense runs around him.  The defense runs around him.  The long term strategy of player-acquisition takes him into account.  Everything is about how to make LaMarcus Aldridge a better player.  I honestly don’t think you can pass that up, if you are a player—even if it means you go get to play with LeBron.

That said, having the threat of leaving itself isn’t entirely a bad thing.  I think that not agreeing to the extension is a great thing for the team in the coming year: having a little uncertainty still—even a slight bit—about whether Aldridge will be as good as his word, lights a little fire under the guys to perform, I think.  It makes them want to work to keep working with and for Aldridge.  This only makes more concrete a vital team dynamic that we saw was absolutely crucial to the Blazers’ success last year, where it really came into its own: namely, one where Aldridge is the unquestioned leader of the team and the quiet but steady influencer of every single decision made on and off of the court.

It also keeps pressuring the front office to make moves: Olshey is an absolutely brilliant GM, but having Aldridge throw a little weight around last summer and making apparent something of his displeasure with losing, may well have motivated them to make some moves quicker and more decisively than they initially planned upon doing.  Getting Robin Lopez, for example, was entirely a decision motivated by the needs of Aldridge, and it isn’t entirely clear that they would have made such a risky move (at the time it looked risky, as Lopez wasn’t at all working in the teams that he was playing for) so confidently without Aldridge having the option of leaving eventually.

Olshey, frankly, can also build the team more easily when so much is put on LaMarcus’ shoulders and so much trust is handed over to him.  The team gains its focus, its vision, from Aldridge.  The less that Olshey has to provide that vision, the easier it is for him to do the dirty work of managing.  I think not letting the players set the tone makes the situation of many GMs much more difficult.  A good example is Daryl Morey: the entire vision of the team has to be his, and he takes flak whenever it doesn’t pan out.  Some people enjoy that, but I think it distracts from basketball operations in Houston’s case: often it feels as if Morey is trying to prove a theory and vindicate himself more than win championships.  The GMs Bucks, the Raptors, and the Sixers are also in a similar situation.  A lot of pressure is there.  Olshey doesn’t have to deal with that, and can manage more fluidly, by working with such a talented player who wants to take the reins and essentially create the team culture himself. 

But if that isn’t enough to make you feel better about the situation, Shana, Dirk’s recent move in Dallas, I think, reminds us that it is possible to want to be a player that is an integral part of a franchise, and at the same time fiercely want to be a champion.  The two things are compatible, I think.  And LaMarcus is pretty much in a similar situation to Dirk.  The team moves the way his career moves, and the team and the player are in a tight partnership.  Dirk has displayed some displeasure in the last few years, but he also takes his role as the team’s leader absolutely seriously.  We in turn have to remember not to take that lightly. 

From Tim:

Where is Victor Claver? Why isn’t he on the summer roster?  It seems to me that we can conclude he won't be a big part of the team next season.

He is in Spain practicing with their national team, which is why he isn't working with the Summer League guys.  Playing for Spain is obviously a huge privilege and a huge priority for Claver (as it is for Batum with the French team).  Between playing in the Summer League and playing for your home nation when they are the hosts of the FIBA tournament—well, you can understand why it’s important.

Stotts in exit interviews said he was somewhat concerned about players who play for non-US teams in the FIBA tournament, since they will be putting more kms on their legs before they get back to the regular NBA season.  But Claver is young, so it isn’t perhaps as big of a deal.

What would be a big deal is if he did it because he didn’t care too much anymore about his roster spot and what playing in the Summer League could do to improve his place in the rotation.  It’s not clear how much staying behind would have in fact done something to improve his spot, but it couldn’t have hurt.  And Claver during the season was quite frustrated this year at not being played that much.  It could also be that he thought playing for the Spanish team would help his game more than playing with the Summer League team, where he may also not have gotten a lot of minutes—which is entirely possible.

From Drew:

You have a lot of posts on the Spurs.  I’m not sure how big of a Blazer fan you are…

Drew said this in passing, and I thought I’d just address it.  I started the blog here in the middle of the playoffs, right as the Blazers were playing the Spurs.  With Portland getting knocked out, there ended up being a lot of writing about the Spurs here, because, well, yes, I do indeed like the team and follow them probably better than some of the others in the NBA.

But it is meant to be a Blazers blog, and I bleed red, white, and black, dammit.

Just from a basketball perspective writing about the Spurs last season was a treat.  But it was also a treat because it was not unlike writing about the Blazers.  The Blazers are so sophisticated in how they run their offense, make their adjustments, target their opponent’s weaknesses—and the Spurs are pretty much the same thing.

It isn’t like writing about Golden State or OKC, say, where you just have the pure amazingness of several players and rather unsophisticated offensive sets.  So think of that writing about the Spurs as just an extension of writing you’ll find here on the Blazers.

That said, I just find the NBA interesting, and all the teams fascinating.  Basketball is like no other sport in how personal and physical the game is, and this makes it amazing to write about, no matter who you are focused upon.

But this group of Blazers in particular is just an amazing group to follow and write about.  To me, Tony, Timmy, Manu, are just fascinating… but our group and what they’re going through and how they will develop is just an unbelievable situation.  Also the management, the coaching the franchise itself, is doing so much with so little, is great to cover.  And we have the best fans in the NBA: there’s no one better and more interesting to interview than a Blazers fan.

From Alice in Kennewick, WA:

I enjoy your writing and I wonder what sportswriters you particularly like and what you think about them.

Thanks, first and foremost, and sincerely.  It’s great to hear that people actually like the content you put out there, but it is even better to hear that they like the way in which you write it.

There are many different writers that I like and try to learn tricks from.  David Halberstam is the best—everyone needs to read everything by him.  A.J. Liebling is also amazing.  Hunter S. Thompson’s writings on sports are brilliant.  But those are all pretty obvious.  I’m saving a list of deeper cuts among older sports writers for a post I’ll write soon.

So let’s cut to the present.  Among current writers, I tend to like the writing of profile-guys.  I love the profiles of Jonathan Abrams—I think there’s really no writer better than him, actually, when it comes to that form in sportswriting.  Lee Jenkins is also just unbelievable. 

Roger Bennett over at ESPN FC is just great, and the whole Men in Blazers thing is just the best thing ever.  Paul Flannery of SBNation continually writes insightful and provocative columns.  Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News always has interesting output.  And every article by Scott Cacciola of the New York Times is a must-read—he always finds a good way into a story.

We’re fortunate that someone on the Blazers beat, Ben Golliver, is also one of the best writers out there.  I should mention I also love every piece of writing that our own Blazer CJ McCollum has put out—he combines a personal and revealing style with insightful observation in a way that will surely produce a really amazing body of work in the future. 

From Hector (from when the Blazers were still in the Playoffs and playing the Spurs):

Though the team is doing horribly here, and will probably lose, this season has been a total success in my mind.  If you would have told me last year we would have won 54 games, I’d have been shocked.

I may not have been shocked—those last games at the end of the 2012-13 season weren’t entirely an indicator of where the team was going—but you’re right, the improvement is impressive.  What feels so interesting about this group is the way, though, that it also is expected: all the pieces are there, have been patiently assembled.  Everything seems like it is being managed incredibly effectively, and it feels like at the bottom, this group above all wants to perform.  I don’t think we’ve seen a set of men as professional and committed as this current group of Blazers.

And so there is a way in which the 54 wins is a huge achievement, but not surprising.  I think the full scale of what these people are planning to do in the NBA is only being hinted at with this last season, and that, to me, seems to be what is most amazing about it.  The potential is there, but this isn’t like the Wizards’ season.  The potential isn’t just something that makes us happy and that we’ll live with.  It makes us hungry for more.  And that’s really special.  Not to just win, but to really do damage in the toughest conference against the toughest opponents—that’s what the Blazers did last year.  That determination and grit, even right when they are winning and on top of things, that’s what’s really impressive.

It’s like Aldridge: he scores forty points in the first game of the playoffs and doesn’t stop.  He comes back from a triumph and he does it again.  That sort of fighting spirit, that’s something I don’t think we’ve seen in a long time, and to see it so visibly last year, even when things were more than successful, that’s what is impressive.  We’ve gotten so good as Blazers fans with making do with small victories, the message these guys sent in the last season was that it was now again okay to get used to big ones.