Ben Golliver at Blazers Edge is one of those guys who knows where to find great statistics and has the time to seek them out. That stuff comes in real handy at times.

My suspicion for a while now was that the Trail Blazers seem to have to rush a lot of shots up at the very bottom of the shot clock. So often, somebody has to force something when that sucker says :01. Ben was able to find the numbers and it was worse that I thought.

The available stats are with :04 and under showing on the timer. I’m sure if you could find :02 it would be even worse. The Blazers are having to take way too many of those shots and they’re one of the worst teams in the league at making them. That’s a real deadly combination, folks. Or as Ben says:

I think it’s fair to call this a critical problem right now.

An understatement. And it’s also indicative of a poorly designed offense that’s even more poorly executed. This is a serious coaching problem.

Thanks for doing my dirty work, Ben!

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Go here right now. Like NOW. Ben Golliver has a review of Bill Simmons’ new book, “The Book of Basketball.” It’s one of the best book reviews I’ve ever read.

Don’t wait for my review because I doubt I’ll be reading it — it’s too long for my limited powers of concentration and frankly, I don’t think it would be particularly helpful.

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Dave at Blazersedge.com has his pre-game preview up for tonight’s Portland game against the Hawks and said something that got my attention:

In the recap of Sunday’s win against the Thunder I said that humidity was thickening around this team right now. You get the same feeling as when you step outside before an impending thunderstorm. Lightning is in the air somewhere. You just don’t know when or where it’s going to strike. This is not to say that the Blazers themselves are tense…though if things don’t change that’s coming. Rather you can start to read from defense-less losses to Houston and relieved wins against Oklahoma City that some kind of strike is impending. The question is, will it be a strike against an opponent that all of a sudden clears the air and puts this team on a strong, confident path or will it be an internal strike resulting from a prolonged struggle? One way or another we’re going to see something at least semi-dramatic happen and I’d be surprised if we got out of November before it did.

Funny, but I’ve been having the same feeling. Something weird is going on around this team. So far, it has played so far from the standard of what we all expected. Confusion is everywhere in terms of roles and responsibilities. Not only is there no improvement from last season, you could make the case there’s been regression.

At the beginning of the season, I said I thought it would take a while for the team to get straightened out. But I didn’t expect the depth of struggle we’ve seen so far. Granted, it all could change in a hurry. But it just doesn’t have the feel of something that’s close to a turnaround.

It’s fascinating, because you just don’t know how it’s all going to shake out.

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Ben Golliver at Blazers Edge, one of the hardest-working men in show business, has uncovered a bunch of old Oregonian special sections featuring the Trail Blazers and has turned them into a slideshow.

You can find it here. I wish I could tell you stories about my part in writing some of these features. But honestly, when it comes to postseason special sections, in those days I was always on automatic pilot. It was a long season and I cannot for the life of me remember writing any of these stories.

Vaguely, I remember the layout of these sections, but it’s all a blur. I think I remember Kerry Eggers’ stories better than my own. They were probably better. It’s not that I’m old, it’s that by this point in the season, I was always so tired from covering an entire season and a playoff run, that I was more robotic than I cared to admit at the time. And in a couple of these seasons, I turned right around and spent the next month writing a book about the season with somebody else.

But talk about a different time. Ben was wise to include so many of the ads in the sections. In those days, the sales people were always dinging us for special sections — because anything with Blazers on it sold like crazy. The ads were large and plentiful — thankfully, because it meant we needed fewer stories to fill the section.

As good as things are now for the team, they aren’t as good for newspapers and the economy in general. You don’t see those special sections as often — although The Oregonian did one today for college football. They got Fred Meyer to buy pretty heavily in this one, but other than that, the ad load is embarrassing compared to what the old Blazer sections used to carry.

Times change. Thanks for the look back, Ben. Would love to have the kind of energy I had in those days.

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As soon as Ben Golliver got to Las Vegas he went to work to solve the mystery, which was precipitated by Bayless denying getting together with Oden — after much of the Blazer staff said they had worked out together.

Well, Bayless now admits they did work out. Thanks Ben.

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Dave at Blazers Edge has a thoughtful piece today about Kevin Pritchard. He makes an attempt to evaluate how he’s done overall and to bring some needed perspective. He does a nice job. And I’d like to add something to the discussion.

I’ve been watching GMs operate in sports for years and the most difficult part of their evaluation is that I HAVE HAD NO IDEA which decisions are theirs and which ones belong to others. In many organizations, the head coach gets all kinds of input on personnel decisions. Sometimes the player personnel director does. Sometimes the owner overrules everyone.

My point, I guess, is that even though the general manager is responsible for just about everything, I’ve been shocked over the years how many times I’ve heard that he’s had no choice in big decisions. Many times, money plays a part. Often, the owner — hey, it’s his toy — just wants to go a certain direction.

And I think Portland is one of the toughest places to know exactly what is going on. Pritchard is old school enough that he knows any major decisions coming out of the Rose Quarter have to be fully endorsed by everyone — even if they are not onboard. Even if he lost the argument to the coaching staff or the owner. How much input does Nate McMillan have in personnel issues? I don’t know — but I bet he has some. How often does Paul Allen make a call that others disagree with? Who knows — it’s one thing we’ve never really known much about but I bet there are times when he’s said, “I want that guy.”

If you’re the GM, “that guy” suddenly becomes your guy. And nobody outside a very small room knows the real story.

How often, too, does the GM have no opinion at all but he’s just going to go with his coach or his scouts? This happens, too. Ultimately, he’s responsible for a move — but it’s based on what his coaching staff or scouts are begging him to do.

The other problem is we never really know what opportunities are there for the team. Some of any general manager’s best or worst moves are the trades he didn’t make. How often do we know about these trades or non-trades? Not often. Not very often. And most of the time when we do hear about them, even in this era of information overload, we don’t get the whole story.

That’s why, I guess, it’s one of the hardest positions in sports to evaluate. I think Pritchard’s good. Very good. But I always thought the idea that he was perfect or never made mistakes was crazy — and even unfair to him. In that job, if people expect perfection you’re going to disappoint them.

And I think that says a lot about what’s going on with Kevin Pritchard and the Blazers now.

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Ben Golliver over at Blazers Edge is the hardest working man in show business. You need to get over there and read this story about the official salary cap numbers, which says Portland – if it renounces the two Euros — will have about $9.45  $8.9 million to spend. And then gobble up this story, which breaks the news that Tony Luftman will not return as Portland’s in-studio host for pre-game and halftime shows. Bob Akamian is expected to take over the on-camera host role.

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Ian Thomsen of  Sports Illustrated says they did. And around that time such a move was discussed right here in this blog and at Blazers Edge. The reaction from Blazer fans wasn’t very positive — mostly outrage. I believe Portland did make serious inquiries about a deal for him. And I think Ian’s quotes from Shaq — there was no reason for him to say this stuff if it wasn’t true — verify that interest.

At the time, I felt two things about bringing him here would be positive: Someone to mentor Greg Oden and someone to insist that the ball be fed to the post more often that it has been around here. But I also wrote at that time that Shaq would have a “hissy fit” about coming here, which he apparently did. It’s just not his kind of town.

And by now, he’d have been politicking to get out of here and go play with LeBron, too. It might have been a move for just half a season.

But before you get all huffy about how horrible it would have been to have the Big Raindrop in Portland, stop and think a  moment. Do you think Houston could have beaten the Blazers if Shaq had been a Blazer? Do you think the Lakers or Magic could have? Honestly, I am not sure they could have.

Something to think about.

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I had no intention of writing about this today but it gives me a chance to link to a fine little piece by Dave at Blazers Edge on the subject.

Dave did a great job of rounding up available information on the subject, which is scarce, and he included David Stern’s ridiculous quote about PEDs in the NBA:

The sport of basketball emphasizes a specialized set of physical abilities – particularly quickness, agility and basketball skill – that are distinct from those required in a number of other sports. Accordingly, illicit substances that could assist athletes in strength sports (such as weightlifting and football), power sports (such as baseball), or endurance sports (such as cycling or marathon running), are not likely to be of benefit to NBA players.

We know by now how silly that line of thinking is. He’s whistling in the dark. Steroids would benefit NBA players perhaps more than any other professional athletes.

Let’s make this succinct: My feeling is that the NBA’s testing for performance enhancing drugs must be totally inadequate. A joke, in fact. I’ve felt this way for years, even prior to all the trouble baseball has been having with PEDs.

I’ve seen the evidence for years — players, a year or two into their careers, bouncing into training camp in September with entirely new bodies that they didn’t have four months previously. I mean they were carved – heavier, yet leaner.

Yeah, I know. That’s not hard evidence. That’s why I’m not going to name names. After more than three decades in the reporting business, I don’t want to face my first lawsuit.

But I believe I’ve seen visual evidence that many NBA players have used PEDs, for the last 15 years. I believe I’m still seeing it today. Some of these guys are freakier than Barry Bonds ever looked. And really — if there’s one thing baseball has proved to us it’s that in many cases, if a guy looks like he’s using, he probably is.

And as Dave pointed out in his piece, it’s pretty naive to think that with the rampant use in football and baseball, basketball players haven’t sampled them.

It’s just that even though baseball gets all the blame for sticking its head in the sand and ignoring the problem, ALL the leagues do. The incentive in any sports league is NOT to find the PED users. Players juiced up set the bar higher. Face it — they make the game more attractive with their incredible performance. And to suddenly find out they’ve been cheating cheapens the game and threatens the league’s credibility.

Baseball’s out there in front taking all the hits. But come on — you think it isn’t widespread in the National Football League? Players, good players, test positive for PEDs every season. And the NBA? There is no way it’s a totally clean league.

But I bet its “testing” procedure — which never seems to turn up a drug abuser — is the envy of all the other leagues.

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Can you believe Ben and Jim Pasero on the same show? Well, it happens tonight live from The Agency at 6 o’clock on Comcast Sportsnet, which I understand is Channel 37 on some of your cable systems.

I’m going to lob a Steve Blake bomb out there and then just see what happens.

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