Kerry Eggers has the story right here.

I couldn’t help myself on this one. When I read it, I found myself smiling. I like Greg Oden. Good kid. I think if he can get back in the lineup in time for the playoffs, it would be a real positive statement and also make going to games a lot more fun.

Plus, the Blazers suddenly would be more of a threat in the playoffs than we’ve assumed they’d be. Oh, I know there will be arguments out there — people are going to say they shouldn’t rush him back, shouldn’t take the chance or that he really won’t help.

It’s been a season with a dark injury cloud over it for the Portland Trail Blazers. I think the mere thought of Oden back in the lineup before the end of the regular season at least parts those clouds a little.

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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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If you’re a Trail Blazer fan, you may not have seen this column by Kerry Eggers in the Portland Tribune, because it’s largely about baseball old-timers in Portland last weekend.

But there’s a mention near the end about Brandon Roy signing autographs recently for a fee:

And there they were afterward, signing autographs – for free, mind you – for hundreds who snaked around the PGE Park outfield. When you consider Brandon Roy pulled in $49 per signature at a recent signing in Mill Creek, Wash., it was a display of sanity and at least a modicum of good taste.

Man, I totally understand old retired players looking for a little scratch to help them in retirement making a few bucks at card shows. But an active player in the process of negotiating a contract that’s going to bring him tens of millions of dollars charging for autographs?

Sorry, that just doesn’t seem right to me. Maybe it was to raise money for charity. If so, I guess that’s fine — but even then I think I’d advise a player to just sign the autographs for free, have someone keep track of how many he signs and then just have the player write a check that would balance out to 50 bucks per signature. For a millionaire, not a big deal.

UPDATE: Here is an ad for Roy’s 90-minute appearance, with no mention at all of charity.

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Honestly, I think Kerry Eggers scooped everyone with the most important Blazer story of the summer yesterday. And in all the fuss over Hedo Turkoglu it was sort of lost in the shuffle.

He has details of Greg Oden’s summer workouts and reveals that Oden is pretty much assistant coach Bill Bayno’s private summer project. And more important, he says that Oden is working very hard:

“I give Greg an A-plus,” Bayno says. “His effort has been fantastic. I’ve been pushing him hard. He has accepted it. He has worked with very little rest, but he doesn’t ask for a lot of rest.

“Today we went for an hour and 20 minutes straight. That’s a killer for one guy to go that long at the pace we’re going. We had two water breaks and shot free throws in between, but he’s been working really hard.”

Bayno says the workouts have been divided about equally between defense and offense.

“On defense, we’ve worked on lateral quickness, where he has to read and react and block shots,” the Portland assistant says. “Greg has surprised me how quick he is laterally. This is the first time I’ve put him through a lot of this stuff.

“Offensively, we’ve worked on counter moves, (such as) his go-to jump hook over the left shoulder. We’ve tried to get him as many repetitions as we can, and we’re adding counter moves, (such as) the spin back to the left hand. Also, an up-and-under move, where you’re trying to get (a defender) to go for the shot fake, and then use a step-through move back to his left hand.”

And this, too, from Bayno, considered one of the best developmental coaches in basketball:

“We’re working Monday through Thursday weekly, and Greg is also scrimmaging at night (at Ohio State),” Bayno says. “He also lifts weights. Bobby (Medina) got with the Ohio State strength coach and gave him a program. Greg’s weight looks good, and his body looks good. He is so respectful, such a good kid, does anything we ask – he has been a joy to work with.”

The other piece of this is that ex-Blazer Brian Grant is back in Ohio working with Oden, too:

“With footwork, it’s mostly balance. Big guys get in trouble when they get their feet too close together. It’s about being able to take hits and finish and make shots. Having Brian’s 260-pound body on Greg has really helped with that.”

The goal is not for the 21-year-old Oden, who weighed about 280 at the end of last season, to lose weight.

“He’s in good shape,” Bayno says. “It’s really about not adding a whole lot of weight. He is taking a nutrition class this summer at Ohio State, which will be good for him. To have a big guy like Greg at his age focusing on nutrition is important for longevity in the league.”

Of course, there’s more to the story and I suggest you read it. Oden’s development is still the critical piece to Portland’s NBA ascension.

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The Penguins and Red Wings delivered another classic last night. Really fun game with the shocking result of the visiting team winning a game 7 of a championship series — something that hasn’t happened in a major sport since “Pops” Stargell helped the “We are Family” Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Orioles in 1979 — the first World Series I ever covered.

I’ve been to many Super Bowls, World Series, Final Fours, bowl games and all of that stuff. None of it really rivals Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final. It’s so incredibly exciting because no athletes in sports play harder and appreciate their ultimate reward more than hockey players. Every kid who ever laced on a pair of skates dreams about getting his name inscribed on that cup and it inspires a dedication to its pursuit that is unique to the sport.

I happened to be in New York in 1994, covering the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Rockets and was able to jump into the seventh game of the Canucks and Rangers in the Garden. It was called at the time “the biggest hockey game ever played in New York” because the Rangers had gone 54 years without winning the Cup.

But Mark Messier guaranteed the win and then ensured it, along with Craig MacTavish, by all but mugging the Canucks’ Pavel Bure seconds before the final horn. It was one of the most pressure-packed final minutes of any sporting event I’ve ever seen as the Rangers hung on for a 3-2 win. When Messier picked up that Cup, held it above his head and skated around the Garden ice . . . well, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

The next day, we watched all of New York go nuts in the victory parade, too — the only time I’ve ever gotten to see a tickertape parade in that city.

(SIDEBAR: Kerry Eggers, who was also covering the NBA Finals for The Oregonian, and I sneaked down by the ice afterward and touched the Stanley Cup. No gloves on or anything. Hey — have YOU touched the Cup?)

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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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A lot of people are screaming for his hide right now. But for me, this is just Charles Barkley being Charles Barkley. By now, don’t we all know he’s not exactly Mr. Perfect? He’s a gambler, a carouser, a drinker and a guy who stays out late enough to find trouble once in a while. Is that news to anyone? It certainly shouldn’t be. His track record is clearly established and he did warn us all several years ago that he wasn’t a role model.

But does that make him any less effective in his job as the jokester on TNT trying to explain the nuttiness of the NBA to us? And really, does it matter much what he does on a night off in Arizona?

I have to tell you, though. I’m biased here. Several years ago, when Steve Brandon, Kerry Eggers, Jim Etzel and some trusting souls at Nike were trying to get the Oregon Sports Awards off the ground, we were desperate for a “name” to help draw attention to the show. Kerry took a chance and called Charles to see if he could help us out.

Barkley said, “Sure — but I hate flying commercial, could you get me a charter somehow?” Harvey Platt of Platt Electric was kind enough to make those plane arrangements for us — as long as Charles would agree to a couple of Harvey’s employees going along for a chance to meet their favorite player.

Well, Charles said, “Great — love to have some company on the flight.” Bottom line, the fans enjoyed being regaled by Barkley on the flight and the guy came to Portland and did a sensational job of speaking at the show, signing autographs and giving every interview he was asked to give. He was delightfully charming.

For free. Just the plane ride up here. The Oregon Sports Awards have since taken off and become a real sports happening and I’ve always felt we owe Charles a lot for his help. So that’s part of the reason I’ll cut him some slack here.

Besides, I can’t help myself — I just like the guy.

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A take a little heat from some people about my unwavering belief that Oden is going to be a terrific NBA player. But all I’m doing is echoing what I believe a lot of smart basketball people think. I keep hearing the same things over and over.

“I think he’s going to be great,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said Thursday night prior to the game, during a conversation with me and Kerry Eggers of the Portland Tribune.

“People have no idea how hard it is to miss an entire season and then come back and play again,” he continued. “It happened to me late in my career. I hurt a shoulder and missed a season, then it took me at least half of the next season to get back. The speed of the game, something . . . it was just really hard to get everything back.”

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