Jason Quick just reported on our Morning Sports Page on 95.5 The Game that he spoke with Roy’s agent,  Bob Meyers, who said Roy would be out until next Thursday, when his pulled hamstring will be reevaluated.

That means he will miss the Boston and Detroit games on this road trip, as well as the Monday home game vs. New Orleans and Wednesday against Utah.

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Tags: 95.5 The Game, Bob Meyers, Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Jason Quick, MSP

Jason Quick of The Oregonian made a great point this morning on the Morning Sports Page on 95.5 The Game.

We were talking about a potential Portland trade for a big man, someone who could play power forward or center. I think, by the way, such a deal is essential for the future — an insurance policy against the questions about Greg Oden’s long-term health and just another big body to bring the roster into better balance.

Quick mentioned that he thought Kevin Pritchard was out there trying to make something happen but that a deal like that probably will mean a painful parting from the Portland roster. “It’s going to hurt,” he said.

And he is so right.

Obviously, to get something you have to give up something. Nobody is going to hand you a quality player in exchange for your garbage. At least one and maybe two very talented players are going to have to leave. And the organization and its fans are particularly attached to this group.

It’s going to hurt, Blazer fans — whether that deal happens before the trading deadline this season or sometime in the distant future. A tear or two will be shed.

And I hope the front office is willing to deal with that, too.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Jason Quick, Kevin Pritchard, Portland Trail Blazers

On the MSP this morning, with Gavin Dawson and Chad Doing, we had Jason Quick on the air, fresh off the Trail Blazers’ 1-3 road trip.

Of the many things Jason said, he predicted that Andre Miller would be in the starting lineup Tuesday night in the Rose Garden when the Blazers play host to the Sacramento Kings.

Quick also referenced some things going on behind the scenes that he couldn’t expand on, including an assertion that the team was sometimes not confident that it could win when it takes the floor. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that a lot of things are going on behind the scenes with that team? Injuries shouldn’t obscure the problems that have existed since training camp.

I believe some of this stuff is due to the mandate that coach Nate McMillan set up prior to the start of camp. McMillan said at the time that the players who played the best in camp and in the exhibition season would earn the starting jobs and the bulk of the playing time.

But then Miller went out and played better than Steve Blake throughout the exhibition season — and still didn’t win the starting job. Look, Miller hasn’t been playing all that well since the regular season started — he’s been very inconsistent — but you’d have to be nuts to think he still hasn’t been outplaying Blake. Yet Blake continues to start.

There’s something wrong with that. And of course, there’s been something wrong with this team all season. The chemistry hasn’t been right and the team, even when it has won games, hasn’t played all that well.

At this point, there isn’t much to lose by throwing Miller out there with the starters, is there?

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Tags: Andre Miller, Dwight Jaynes, Jason Quick, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazers, Steve Blake

Jason Quick worked hard last night, churning out this column as well as the news story we linked to earlier. I don’t think the free-agent situation is as dire as painted here. Holding onto that cap space a little longer isn’t the worst thing that could happen.

The downer, though, is the implication that negotiations for contract extensions for Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge aren’t going well. This organization is known for rewarding players who have produced and I don’t expect it to be different in this case. Roy, in particular, is a no-brainer.

I’ve felt all along that Aldridge might get a little sticky because I am not sure he’s a max player. A guy who hasn’t ever been in an all-star game probably shouldn’t be maxed out this quickly. He should get a very solid deal, but not the max.

Either way, KP seems to be a little stressed. I expect it won’t last. There are worse teams to go to training camp with.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Jason Quick, Kevin Pritchard, LaMarcus Aldridge

Kudos to Jason Quick for breaking this story. It says Portland is going to make an offer that’s going to burn all its cap space on the Utah power forward, who is a restricted free agent.

I love Millsap, a rebounding machine whose motor seems to run in high gear all the time. But I’m not sure it’s the right move for the Trail Blazers. First off, I can’t understand how they’re going to be able to play him enough minutes to make him worth the $9 million or $10 million he would cost. There’s already Joel Przybilla backing up Greg Oden and that leaves just the 12-14 minutes a game Millsap would get behind LaMarcus Aldridge. You can’t give a guy playing just 14 minutes a game that much money.

And I’m not sure, even at that price, Millsap wants to come here and not play any more than that. He deserves his chance to be a starting power forward in the NBA. All I can think of is that perhaps the Blazers might be considering trading Przybilla, but with Oden’s fragility to date, that seems a little premature.

I think I’d like it much more if the Blazers just held onto that cap space until later, when some team comes to its senses about its high payroll combined with next year’s low salary cap and wants to dump salaries. You might get a more suitable and talented player in a few months.

Patience here is likely better than making a hasty move.

Handing over large salaries, particularly long-term contracts, to players who don’t figure to be starters any time soon is a very dangerous thing to do for your franchise’s health.

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Tags: Greg Oden, Jason Quick, Joel Przybilla, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, The Oregonian, Utah Jazz

How much is too much information?

This time, Jason Quick tells us all about four Trail Blazers who needed to supply urine samples for NBA drug tests prior to Saturday night’s game. But that isn’t always easy — urinating on demand can be difficult, even for seasoned pros. You see, Greg Oden gets a request like that and he just has to sit down. Joel and Sergio get a little stage fright.

This “Behind the locker room door” series keeps getting better as it follows the natural comedy progression of fart jokes, then toilet talk. You know what’s next folks — dick jokes!!!! Come on, kids — I’m teasing. But seriously, I’m curious… some of the commenters on Jason’s episode today were a little skittish about the bathroom stuff. This series is a big hit and I’m wondering, just how much “inside” information do you want? How much is too much?

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Inside the locker room, Jason Quick, Portland Trail Blazers

Sometimes what goes on Behind the Locker Room Door should stay there:

As he is answering, Webster is squealing across the way. Blake has passed gas and Webster is calling him out.

“And he stood up to do it!” Webster laughs.

Roy joins in.

“Hey, farts need oxygen,” Roy says, imitating the motion.

It makes Roy remember a game earlier this season – he thinks it was San Antonio – when Blake dropped a bomb as the team was headed out for the opening tip. The deed was delivered at the area on the sideline where players wipe their feet on a sticky pad to make their sneakers more tacky.

“I went up to that sticky pad, and oh man, I was about to pass right out,” Roy said in his unique tone, which includes saying the last two words real quick, almost together.

Blake grins proudly at the memory.

I said it couldn’t have been any worse than Zach Randolph, who was notorious for brutal, practice-stopping gas. The players disagreed.

The title for worst ever, they say, can only be held by Raef LaFrentz.

“No, no. That’s gotta be Raef,” Aldridge said. “And he be like, ‘Yep. That’s me. Right here. Thank you. That’s me.’” All the while, Aldridge is imitating Raef by holding his hand above his head, pointing at himself.

Blake concurs, saying that Raef is the only guy who ever cleared the entire middle section of Blazer One.

“Oh man,” Roy says, his face crinkling at the memory. “I be about to jump out of that plane that day.” 

Congratulations to my pal, Jason Quick, for today’s example of what separates “Internet journalism” from the print kind. (And for the best Brandon Roy quote of the season: “Hey, farts need oxygen.” I am, though, at a loss to explain what sort of “motion” Roy was imitating.)

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Tags: Behind the Locker Room Door, Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, farts, Jason Quick, Martell Webster, Portland Trail Blazers, Raef LaFrentz, Steve Blake

I live less than a mile outside the city limits but still within Multnomah County. Suddenly, just in the last few weeks, I’m getting an earlier edition of the paper.

This morning, I got an Associated Press story — rather than a byliner by Joe or Jason — on a Blazer game in Memphis that started at 5 o’clock our time. I didn’t get a late NBA score and a late MLB score. Standings don’t get updated and all the box scores aren’t there. This has been happening, as I said, for a few weeks now.

So why should a lifetime subscriber of the paper pay for the home delivery if I have to go to the Web to get what I need, anyway? It really pecks me off. I’ve said it before but people who actually pay for the paper ought to get MORE than those who read it for free. Everyone in that business has it backwards these days.

On the Web, The Oregonian is now giving away Jason Quick’s “Behind the locker room door” series on the Blazers. It does not appear in print. The first paper that realizes it ought to go the OTHER way and make content like that exclusive to the print product (along with columns and special investigative pieces) will see a turnaround in subscriptions that will help solidify the ad base.

Sure, keep the breaking news on the Internet, but be kind to the people actually paying for your product, OK?

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Internet, Jason Quick, Newspapers, The Oregonian

Here’s the video of the entire incident (UPDATE: Thanks to a tweet from Ball Don’t Lie, watch for Kurt Rambis about 1:45 into that video, as he manhandles a towel kid in the lower left portion of the screen):

I was not sure it was so easy to figure it all out, even after all the replays. But I can tell you that on press row, the opinion was NOT divided about the severity of the foul. I talked to Jason Quick of The Oregonian, Kerry Eggers from the Portland Tribune and Brian Hendrickson of The Columbian. All of them believed it was a Flagrant Foul I, not the more severe Flagrant II, which was called. And I agreed.

Again, it was a tough one to call. The problem with the way the league seems to be calling these things is that it’s all too pragmatic and results-oriented, which encourages players to act as if they’re mortally wounded after hard fouls. It’s like, all of a sudden we’re at a soccer game. I’m not saying that’s what Rudy did this time — he didn’t. But in the big picture, it’s what happens. Guys go down and stay there, only to pop up later and play freely.

You push a guy and he doesn’t get hurt, there’s really no reaction by the referees. But you push the exact same way and the guy goes down and doesn’t move, it’s a big deal. I think the right thing would be to separate the deed from the results and call all actions consistently.

Trevor Ariza was going for the ball but caught Fernandez just right — getting his left arm and spinning him in the air so he couldn’t brace himself for his fall. I think the bad part of it was accidental. I know people believe that in a 30-point game, players should just relax on trying to stop dunks like this.

I disagree. The score shouldn’t matter. I don’t expect any team to quit playing hard before the game ends. In fact, I would hope– as you should, too – they’d continue to play hard.

It was an unfortunate incident, though, and the good news is that Fernandez seems to have not suffered a serious injury. And after the Lamar Odom foul on Brandon Roy last season, there is going to be even more bad blood tainting this series. Which is fine, too.

The next round against the Lakers, April 10 in the Rose Garden, is going to be even more fun now.

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Tags: Brian Hendrickson, Dwight Jaynes, Flagrant Foul, Jason Quick, Kerry Eggers, Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers, Rudy Fernandez, Trevor Ariza

Jason Quick did a blog post Monday about the way the Trail Blazers defend the pick and roll, aimed, it seemed at this blog. It was a very interesting post, as Nate McMillan kind of laid out his philosophy and explained what he wants to do against the pick and roll. McMillan’s comments were preceded by this remark from Quick:

Anyone who acts like they have all the answers hasn’t coached in this league. I learned a long time ago that when you start acting like you know basketball better than these coaches – who live and breathe it everyday – all you do is make yourself look stupid.

That sounds like some sort of rationalization for not questioning what a coach is doing on the floor. I mean, if you wanted, you could have taken Maurice Cheeks’ wacky explanations of what was going on in Blazer games for years and not challenged them, then woke up one day and realized he just got fired because he wasn’t much of a coach. What a shock!

And while all writers have their own style of covering a beat, I’ve always figured it’s EXACTLY their job to question coaches and hold them responsible for their actions. And take their answers, hold them up to the light and see if they make sense. At some point, you have to judge whether what you’re hearing coincides with what you’re actually seeing. (Thankfully, by the way, the people who cover politicians and the police for our newspapers feel like I do. Of course, maybe NBA basketball is just that much more complicated than the real world).

So let’s take a look at what McMillan said to Quick about the Blazers’ pick-and-roll defense:

First off, the Blazers’ pick-and-roll principles are NOT to switch. They switch only in cases the team calls “emergencies” – when the guard is surprised by the pick or unable to get through. And yes, that has happened more frequently of late because guys like Sergio Rodriguez and Jerryd Bayless are playing more now that Steve Blake is hurt. Blake is the best among the guards on the team at fighting through picks, and Rodriguez is probably the worst. Bayless, the rookie, is still trying to make sure his feet are on the ground.

Because of the increased “emergencies”, the Blazers bigs have switched, matching them against guards or in the case of the Detroit game, forwards like Tayshaun Prince. The easy approach would be to have the bigs drop down and guard the paint, giving the ball handler a perimeter shot.

“Sometimes we do switch, sometimes we don’t,” Brandon Roy said. “We switch when we are getting picked apart. Usually it’s our last resort. Right now, some games we do well in pick and rolls, and we don’t have to switch. Others, they are picking us apart.”

Wow, they switch only in “emergencies.” Well, this team has more emergencies than “E.R.” Monday night, one of our eagle-eyed readers actually went to the trouble of charting the high pick-and-rolls that the Bucks ran against the Blazers. Here’s the way they broke down, thanks to DJ Shatter:

 1st Quarter
—————-
16 Total High Picks
14 Switches
1 Over/Under Cover
1 Trap

2nd Quarter
—————–
8 Total High Picks
7 Switches
1 Over/Under Cover

3rd Quarter
—————–
9 Total High Picks
7 Switches
2 Over/Under Cover

4th Quarter
——————
14 Total High Picks
10 Switches
4 Over/Under Covers

Totals
—————-
47 Total High Picks
38 Switches
8 Over/Under Covers
1 Trap

That’s a lot of “emergencies” right there, particularly against a team that’s really not much of a pick-and-roll team. Obviously, the Blazers switch these picks a lot. I mean, you can say they don’t — but watch the games and you’ll know.

I can’t resist commenting on one other Nate McMillan observation. Here’s what he said about the pick and roll:

“In this league, you don’t stop the pick-and-roll,” he said. “You just don’t. And I don’t think there is one way you can guard the pick and roll. Regardless of how you guard it, teams will scout you and make an adjustment.”

Sorry, but the pick and roll gets stopped all the time. At least when Portland runs it. Go ahead, run back the tape of that Charlotte game and see how ineffective the pick and roll was for the Blazers. They seldom force the other team to switch and usually end up with nothing out of it. I think Greg Oden almost fainted Monday night when someone hit him with a pass as he rolled off a pick — it’s such an infrequent occurence that he was in shock.

I would also point out that some teams share McMillan’s philosophy of having several different ways of defending the pick and roll, and mixing them up throughout the game. But there are other teams who play it ONE WAY and one way ONLY. Most of those teams blitz, or double-team the player with the ball — as Pat Riley teams are famous for doing. The rationale for this approach is that Riley wanted no confusion among his players on what he demanded from them – every, single, time. But you can do it whichever way works best for your team.

Look, I don’t pretend to know as much about basketball as Nate McMillan or anyone else coaching in the NBA. But I’ve been watching this league up close for more than two decades and there are certain things we all can see. And quite frankly, it doesn’t take a great deal of basketball expertise to see that whatever it is the Blazers are trying to do against the pick and roll — before and after Blake’s injury — wasn’t working very well.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Jason Quick, Nate McMillan, NBA, pick and roll, Portland Trail Blazers, Steve Blake