A lot of people are comparing the Trail Blazers giving Marcus Camby this contract extension — $25 million including the incentives — with the ones handed out to Darius Miles, Theo Ratliff and Zach Randolph.

I would disagree. Not just because Camby, the person he is, the position he plays and his veteran leadership make him a better investment, either. The big thing in this contract is the number of years. A two-year deal is really nowhere close to the anchor Portland got stuck with on those other contracts. Anymore, a two-year contract is not a problem if you can just get one more productive season from the player in question.

During the second year, he’s carrying an expiring contract — in this case a sizeable one — which makes his trade value extremely high to teams looking to shed salary. I’m not at all afraid of the Camby contract. It doesn’t run long enough to get you into any major trouble.

But of course I’ve advocated all along carrying three centers as long as Joel Przybilla and/or Greg Oden are the others at that position. As we’ve found since Camby came here to fill the hole in the middle of Portland’s defensive doughnut, we’ve seen how important it is to have a quality center. On a 15-man roster, there certainly should be room for three centers.

If you’re worried about what will happen if all three are healthy at the same time, well, congratulations — I think you may be the most optimistic person I’ve met this month! It may not ever happen. If it does, no problem — Przybilla and Camby can play power forward, too. LaMarcus Aldridge can probably also play small forward against some teams — opening the possibility of a huge front line, which incidentally, is the best chance of matching up with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Did they overpay Camby? Yes. But in order to keep him off the market in a free-agent summer where a lot of teams are going to have more money to spend than there are decent players in the pool, it was necessary.

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Remember all those high expectations at the start of the season? Back when everyone was saying the Trail Blazers would be one of the top teams in the West? When they’d be battling the Lakers for the conference championship?

Well, wake up Portland. Whatever you thought of your team then, I’m wondering where those expectations went. The team the Blazers are putting on the floor right now is just about as talented as the one you thought you’d have before all those injuries struck.

Look, other than Joel Przybilla and Greg Oden, all the injured players are back playing. And playing well. And in place of the injured centers is Marcus Camby, who is certainly more talented than Przybilla and would also be thought by some as being as talented as Oden at the defensive end.

So why not expect big things from now on this season? Those injuries cast such a major pall over Portland for much of the season, I don’t think a lot of people have awakened to the concept that what the Blazers are putting out on the floor now is pretty good.

And pretty darned close to what we thought we’d see at the beginning of the season. Sure, the depth isn’t as good at center — but this team is talented enough to play with a smaller lineup and all that time when the young players got big minutes has paid off with many of those players now being capable of reliable contributions off the bench.

So don’t totally give this team a pass the rest of the way. Don’t feel sorry for them. There’s a lot of talent on the floor right now in Portland.

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Seriously, what did you give up to bring the second-leading rebounder in the league here? Not all that much. Camby is Joel Przybilla with a foul-line jumper.

You could now make a case that the Trail Blazers have a chance to make a little noise in the playoffs. Now don’t go thinking they’re going to win a title or something, but they could end up being a tough out.

Camby solves a real big problem on defense and the boards and if Brandon Roy is healthy, this team can win a series, depending on matchups. And it’s a team you couldn’t say that about prior to this deal. Basically, two teams traded players who don’t fit their long-term future — and Portland came away with a big advantage.

But what about the future? Well, it isn’t likely Camby will stay — just as it wasn’t likely Blake or Outlaw would be around next season. But let’s just say Camby fits real well here. That he becomes an overnight success.

Well, in that case, I wouldn’t be surprised — even though right now it seems a longshot — if Portland wouldn’t have the means (that means Paul Allen’s possible willingness to spend money) to keep him here. But that’s a question for a few months from now.

For right now, I think this deal provides an opportunity to be excited about the playoffs. I would caution fans not to fall in love with Camby, because odds are, he won’t be back next year. But in the short term, he ought to be just the ticket.

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Oh, it gets real different now. Way different.

The Portland Trail Blazers without Joel Przybilla are going to have rebounding problems, second-chance points problems and some serious defensive problems.

But if approached correctly, I still believe the Trail Blazers have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs. But they have to modify how they play at the defensive end.

Przybilla, and Oden before him, were intimidating forces on the inside. It was the backbone of the Portland defense. I would expect teams now to attack the Blazer basket relentlessly, without that big shotblocker inside.

For Portland to survive this, there has to be a change in the style of defense. I think the Blazers have the talent to play small ball, though. Throw all those guards out there with LaMarcus Aldridge and see what happens. And really, Przybilla won’t be missed on offense. He didn’t offer much other than a stiff pick-and-roll once in a while.

The big question, though, is whether Nate McMillan is willing and able to convert his style over to a faster-paced, uptempo, small-ball game. Certainly, we haven’t seen that sort of flexibility out of him.

I’d advocate telling the players at this point to have some fun — run it up and down, pressure the ball, double-team and help each other. Uptempo the game to try to take other teams’ big people out of the game. Spread the floor and attack the basket — then kick to open three-point shooters.

My goodness, Golden State — not nearly as talented as Portland — has hammered the Trail Blazers with that style of play enough over the last few years and so it should be no mystery how it can be done. It would provide a fun element to the second half of the season for the players and the fans — and really, everyone could use a little fun at this point, after all the injury sadness.

Can it happen? Yes, it could. Will it happen? Hmm. It would require a real sea change here and I’m not sure Nate McMillan is ready or willing to make that happen.

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He’s such a nice kid. He worked so hard. And now the whole thing starts again. What does it mean for the near-term prospects of the Trail Blazers?

Well, I don’t think it necessarily means this team can’t get a playoff berth. In fact, when you look at the roster, the team isn’t really all that much worse off than it was last season, when it won 54 games.

Yes, no Oden. But don’t forget, he wasn’t much of a part of the late-season surge the team made last season, anyway. He lost his starting job in the second half of the season to Joel Przybilla. Yes, Nic Batum isn’t here — although he may be prior to the end of the season. But Martell Webster is here — and I still believe, if the coaching staff shows faith in him, gives him a chance to play through mistakes, he can do a decent job.

Yes, Travis Outlaw is gone. But Andre Miller is here — a better player than Outlaw throughout his long career. Juwan Howard is also here, along with Dante Cunningham. Is it enough to win the eighth spot in the West? Yes, probably — for one reason:

The team can now go back to its comfort zone. The biggest problem this season has been change — it seems to me the coach (by not making the big Miller-for-Blake move in the starting lineup) was resisting needed change. Brandon Roy was resisting change by squawking about Miller. LaMarcus Aldridge was just resisting — resisting the label of “soft” while constantly playing as if he is soft.

Oden wasn’t getting the ball enough, either. The team refused to change its style for him. Ironically, in the game Saturday night, Oden, more than four minutes into the game, still hadn’t touched the ball one single time on the offensive end of the floor — with nobody on the floor big enough to guard him!

Now, Roy and Aldridge can go back to dominating the ball, passing it to each other and getting their points and touches. McMillan can go back to talking about being “scrappy” instead of making the difficult decisions that were necessary to move this team to a higher level.

Everyone will loosen up now, too. You see, all the pressure is gone now. Expectations are down to very little. There are plenty of excuses for poor play now — so players and the coaches will relax and improved play will likely be the result.

This season will now officially be remembered for this ridiculous string of injuries and illness that’s hit everyone from the owner, to the coach to several players. And people will forget how much of a struggle this whole thing was from the very start.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Blazers — free of all the pressure they were facing — take off on a nice run, as strange as that seems.

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I was really not sure what Nate McMillan meant with his post-game remarks last night. But it sure sounded as if the coach was calling out his two stars. Kerry Eggers seemed to think so, too. And he put it all into context with a Brandon Roy quote I haven’t seen anywhere else that seemed to say, “right back at you” to the coach:

McMillan seemed to single out Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge in his postgame remarks to the media.

“Brandon and LaMarcus are our captains,” McMillan said. “They’re the guys we feed off of. They’re the guys who can do a lot encouraging and support. We need that. We’re going to play off of them.

“In a game like that, we need somebody to gather the troops and we ride them. It’s not calling them out – (but) those are our go-to guys, the guys who make it happen.”

Sure sounded like a coach calling out his stars.

Roy was only 9 of 22 shooting but had a near triple-double with a game-high 26 points, eight rebounds and nine assists. Aldridge made 7 of 16 shots and finished with 16 points and five boards.

“We’re still trying to find a rhythm,” Roy said. “We have a number of guys who can play, and we’re still trying to figure it out how to (spread) it around.

“I don’t think it’s energy. I think it’s guys confused on what exactly who we’re going to, and are we going to go inside out or outside in, or are we going to pick-and-roll. Because of that, we go through stretches where we look like we can’t score.”

That would seem like a star player calling out the coach.

To me, last night was one more example of this team not really having enough structure at either end of the floor. That’s why there’s confusion.

There’s too much one-on-one on offense and that eventually catches up to you when the other team has some energy and is willing to help each other out.

Then, on defense, the Blazers don’t help at all. They expect Greg Oden or Joel Przybilla to mop up whatever messes they create on the perimeter and it’s too much for them to handle. Good teams involve everyone in the help defense, not just the centers.

The other thing that happened to the Blazer defense last night was that percentages really caught up with them. They’ve been playing bad teams, especially some poor offensive teams, lately and have been allowing a lot of open shots. But the teams missed those shots. And on those nights, you look like a pretty good defensive team on the stat sheet.

But does anyone really think this is the best defensive team in the league? Portland allows too many open jumpers, too much penetration and a lot of layups.

Meanwhile, the Blazers get outscored every night on fast-break points and in the paint. That’s going to make it, in the long run, difficult to ever improve much.

All is not right with the Portland Trail Blazers. You can talk about it being early in the season all you want, but there are some problems to be dealt with and it’s better to do that sooner than later.

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And one would hope they’d actually do that — remember what they did and how they approached the game Monday night against the Chicago Bulls.

Portland played inside-out… almost all night long. Established all the big people — Oden, Przybilla, Aldridge — inside. Got them the ball early, often, late, frequently, and in position where they could score. And it opened so much of the court for the guards to operate.

And I’ll say this, too… since Andre Miller showed up with that killer lob pass, it’s become something like a new toy for his teammates. It’s as if it’s some new invention they’d never seen before — everyone wants to try it! Passing is infectious and the Blazers have that disease all of a sudden.

Offensively, it was as good as we’ve seen from Portland this season. They played — dare I say it? — the right way. Now, lest you thought I was just going to gush all over them, it’s only fair that we point out another thing about that game:

The defensive end wasn’t so hot. Portland still doesn’t close out on three-point shooters. I lost count of how many open jumpers the Bulls got. They didn’t hit a lot of them, though. In fact, in the second half, they really struggled from the outside. But the shots they wanted seemed to be there for them. And they couldn’t rebound at all and that killed any chance they had of staying in the game.

Oden continues to improve, though — and Portland’s defensive improvement is tied almost strictly to his improvement.

And for a guy who wasn’t expected to be much of an offensive force, he’s turning into a beast, real quickly. Now he’s not going to do that against every team. But some of these teams just don’t have anyone who is physically capable of defending him. And he simply overpowers them, the way he did against the Bulls.

And the only way he’ll keep improving is if he continues to get those chances with the ball. He’s not polished or perfect yet — far from it. A Kareem he’s not. But he’s already better than a lot of people thought he’d be this season and improving at a rapid rate.

And I’m sorry, doubters, if you can’t see the potential of what this guy means to an NBA team, you really don’t understand the game.

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This story is interesting in the wake of the Trail Blazers’ ridiculous defensive performance last night at Houston. I’ll have more tomorrow on this topic but it’s crazy to assume that Portland’s inability to defend (not just for this season but for most of last season) has everything to do with a lack of effort. One player hinted at the problems and he was backup center Joel Przybilla:

 ”Same (stuff) as last year,” center Joel Przybilla said, his cheeks red from agitation.

And here:

“It’s not one guy, as a team we weren’t on the same page,” Przybilla said. “We have to get it together as a team.”

These guys do not seem to have a team-defense system that allows them to consistently rotate and find defensive help, the way the good NBA teams do it. We saw the same thing last season. But people are constantly fooled by one-game shooting percentages. Just because a team doesn’t make shots against you, doesn’t mean you are playing great defense. It’s one indicator, but hey — some nights opponents just don’t make open shots.

That’s what happened in the opening game of the season when the Rockets couldn’t buy a basket against Portland. But they were getting good shots.

It’s NOT too early in the season to make a point about this. It’s a problem that has dogged this team forever, as Przybilla indicated. And effort alone is not going to cure it.

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Jason Quick writes that Nate McMillan is leaning toward the same starters as late last season:

“That group, they know how to play off each other,’’ McMillan said of last year’s starters. “We have been trying to build a rhythm this preseason, and I just feel that group knows each other.’’

I think if that’s the case, McMillan is just putting off some decisions. That means Joel Przybilla starts at center. Greg Oden has earned the starting nod at center. I’m not sure the other positions are resolved yet — but that one certainly is. And I don’t think it does anyone any good to hold off.

I know, I know — it’s not who starts, it’s who finishes. I keep hearing that. But the point is, if a different group of players is going to finish, that group needs a lot of playing time together so it functions at the optimum rate when it’s out there at the end of games. That’s why most teams put their best team on the floor at the start of games — to make sure the best players get plenty of time to mesh in each game.

Remember, each opponent brings a different set of problems and players. In every game, those guys you want on the floor at the end should have played together a lot in that game in order to execute at their best.

I’ve always felt there’s way too much time spent worrying about the “second unit” around here. That’s your bench. Sometimes it helps win you a game, sometimes not. A lot of teams win championships without a “second unit.” Phil Jackson used to always keep either Scottie  or Michael on the floor at all times with his reserves — at least in games against tough opponents.

I don’t mind using a second five — a 10-man rotation — especially on a team as deep as the Trail Blazers. But worrying about taking one of your best players and putting him on that unit just to help it out seems a little silly to me. It’s almost a penalty to a good player.

Anyway, I just want to go on record right now that taking a player like Oden, who may well be the cornerstone of any championship push around here, and not putting him in the starting lineup is a mistake. It’s going to hurt him with the referees and it’s going to diminish what he’s done in the summer and exhibition season.

And by the way, weren’t the starting jobs supposed to go to the guys who played the best?

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We’ve spent a lot of time talking about whether to start Andre Miller or Steve Blake. But let’s not forget down the stretch of last season, Joel Przybilla was the starting center over Greg Oden. Coach Nate McMillan has indicated that the starting lineup, going into camp, will be the same as the one that ended last season.

Should that continue?

I would certainly vote no. For me, if Oden is going to improve, if he’s going to be perceived by referees as a legitimate player worthy of being allowed to play his game without cheap fouls, for him to improve as much as possible, he MUST be the starter. And really, he wasn’t taken No. 1 overall to be a backup center.

Isn’t that really a no-brainer? I mean, Joel Przybilla wasn’t invited to the U.S. National team mini-camp, Greg Oden was. It feels kind of silly even debating this, but you know how the coach is. He’s pretty loyal to what I’d call “his guys” — Przybilla, Blake, Outlaw and Roy and Aldridge, of course.

But really, is there anything here even worth debating about? Oden will start, right?

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