Folks, it’s all about controlling the message. And it’s all about your Internet presence.

The Portland Trail Blazers introduced a new general manager Monday. And on the first wave of news, he was introduced to Portland, and Portland learned about him, almost exclusively through the team’s website.

In effect, that allowed the team to control the message and shape the story as much as it possibly could for as long as it could.

Remember what happened? Word got out that Rich Cho would become the team’s general manager and within minutes there was an interview with Cho on the Trail Blazers’ home page. It was taped Sunday night and packaged for web use. A little while later, there was an exclusive interview with team owner Paul Allen on the site — to this day the only interview with the reclusive owner available on the subject.

Mike Barrett, the team’s play-by-play man, did both the interviews.

This is the wave of the future, not only in sports but with news from any major corporation: control the message, control its distribution as much as possible. Own it! Potentially make money off it, through the web, if possible. But mostly, just make sure the message gets sent — at least initially — exactly as the company wants it spelled out.

What happens, of course, is that the story gets only one treatment. One slant. Now you can argue all day that newspapers, blogs, magazines, radio stations all have their ax to grind. That they all shape the message in whatever way they wish. Maybe. Sometimes. Of course. But at least you have the opportunity to take a look at all the points of view, consider the slant and make up your own mind.

But long term, those of us in the media aren’t real happy with the new reality and I don’t think you should be, either. I don’t think tough questions will be asked and I’m not sure truth will always be found until some form of independent media — be it blogs, newspapers, TV, whatever — gets the chance to ask questions. And I’d be plenty suspicious of the message until more people have a chance to pass it along.

As far as the Trail Blazers go, though, I’m sure they saw the whole production Monday as a very big success. They had statements up on their site from Larry Miller and Paul Allen, they had the exclusive interview with Cho and got plenty of run from all of it. They got a positive message out there for a few hours during the critical time, the breaking of their story — and I’m sure their web traffic was incredible.

In short, the team maximized the impact of the hire in two important ways — potential revenue through massive traffic increases on the site while having complete control of the content of the message.

At the same time, they kept media away from Allen, Miller and Cho until the team had its own spin on the story fully distributed and explained. Now granted, this wasn’t the most controversial story you’re going to find. But it’s an indication of how companies — and teams — will attempt to handle such stories in the future.

They want control. And through their skillful use of the web, they now have a convenient and powerful way of doing that.

But do fans win? You’re going to have to decide that. And I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to that.

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Quick question: What do YOU have in common with the new Trail Blazer general manager? (Answer below).

Cho made a big hit, it seemed, with local media during the first news conference of his life Monday. He came across as humble, smart and even witty. For a guy often described as “not a big personality guy” he did a very nice job.

You’ve already read a lot about him (and you should read this) and I’m not going to attempt to recap his career, other than to say he’s worked his way up in the business, known for how hard he continues to work, packs a couple of pretty heavy college degrees and you can’t find anyone around the league who doesn’t like him.

I think there’s every reason to believe that this guy can be a very clever and effective general manager. And I’d also make the case that you shouldn’t get too involved in worrying about how much autonomy he’s going to have in this job. Nobody here has ever had TOTAL autonomy. Not many GMs anywhere have it. The owner is almost always going to have his say.

The only GMs who act like they have total control are the ones who want total credit, which is something to be suspicious about.

The Blazers have made the Finals twice under Paul Allen’s ownership and should have been there a third time or fourth time. I don’t think Allen himself kept any of those teams from going all the way. He isn’t the reason a championship hasn’t been won here since 1977. Relax on all that stuff.

In fact, I’d advise you to relax a little about the GM situation. Rich Cho is going to be fine. In fact, there’s evidence he’s the smartest guy in just about any room he’s in. Why do I think so?

Well, let me get to the answer of the question I asked at the top of this blog. He’s smart because he’s like you — Rich Cho reads this blog! At least that’s what he said Monday, and he backed it up by recognizing me from that goofy picture on your right.

Good move, young man. You have the Godfather’s blessing, Rich. At least for now.

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There is a persistent rumor that began last night that the Blazers think they have, and that they’ve moved ahead to the negotiations phase of the hire. Not sure if that’s true, but I’d assume by now owner Paul Allen is at least in the interview process with the final candidate(s).

Make no mistake, no matter who Larry Miller recommends, Allen will have the final call on this one — even though it’s expected the new GM will report directly to Miller.

A couple of things I’m pretty sure of, too. First, I believe there’s another candidate other than Danny Ferry, Richard Cho and Randy Pfund. Sources have told me that San Antonio assistant general manager Dennis Lindsey may also be among those considered.

Lindsey would fit right in with the others – another low-profile guy who isn’t going to call a lot of attention to himself.

Still, I’m guessing that Cho, who apparently made a huge impression with his first interview, may now be at the top of the wish list. Cho, who has engineering and law degrees and is a member of the Washington State Bar, better be pretty good if they’re going to pass a man with Pfund’s resume to hire him.

But hey, he went to Washington State and is a Seattle guy — so do you see anyone with better credentials than that?

One other thing I’ve learned in the past 24 hours: It’s my understanding that Portland’s two lead scouts, college director Chad Buchanan and pro director Mike Born, are reporting directly to — guess who? — Hat Guy, Steve Gordon. He’s the same person, by the way, who Kevin Pritchard was reporting to in has waning days as Portland general manager.

As you know, this is about the only place where you’re going to find any background on Hat Guy.

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– Pretty amazing how this team puked on itself right there in front of everyone. I’m not sure why Paul Allen has never appeared to listen to any advice regarding PR. He always seem to maximize damage for decisions he makes. This was incredible — firing Kevin Pritchard on draft night. I cannot believe it went down that way.

– That said, the notion that KP was fired for “no apparent reason” is ridiculous. There were reasons and they’ll come out. And they certainly don’t have anything to do with Paul Allen being jealous about how much publicity KP has been getting. Allen doesn’t WANT publicity. Doesn’t care about it. Now would he be concerned about someone getting credit for doing something he didn’t actually do? Yes, and I think rightfully so — if that happened.

– The story floating around that Pritchard tried an “end run” around Larry Miller as a franchise takeover — probably masterminded by Tom Penn, who would have become the GM underneath Pritchard as the president — has been confirmed by several Blazer insiders. You fire people for that kind of stuff.

– Rumor has it Pritchard, whom Allen didn’t want to speak with, was reporting directly to Hat Guy. Just sayin’.

– The Blazers messed with Warren LeGarie, which is not a smart thing to do. He turned the tables on them Thursday night and made a martyr out of Pritchard. Messy situation.

– Let’s really relax a little on the “tragedy” of all this. Pritchard will survive and so will the Trail Blazers.

– Incredible how far the value of Martell Webster and Rudy Fernandez have fallen. All you can get is a No. 16 pick? Wow. I think the Webster trade is crazy — a guy who has proved he can defend the small forward in the NBA is a commodity. Whether he’s inconsistent on offense or not. Not sure if Luke Babbitt can defend anyone.

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Several sources within the league confirmed that this morning.

It’s considered dead, though, as New Orleans continues to shop him around, trying to see what his value might be. Apparently the Hornets are the ones who backed away from the Portland trade.

No surprise. I think it would be ridiculous for New Orleans to deal Paul, by the way. Talk about devaluing a franchise that’s already in a bit of trouble… without Paul it may as well move to Seattle.

If New Orleans was just looking to save money, Portland would be a great trade partner — it has Joel Przybilla and Andre Miller’s expiring contracts to barter, as well as a few young players that could fill roles.

If that trade gets made, would it save Kevin Pritchard’s job? Not sure. I would doubt it — if they’ve come to a decision to fire you, I think you’re going to get fired. And I mean, it’s not as if — at this point or maybe ever — he’s operating in a vacuum. The owner would be deeply involved from the start on a trade of this magnitude and everyone in the league knows Paul is being shopped — if just to assess his value. It’s not as if Pritchard would have unearthed a treasure that no one else knew was available.

All that said, getting Paul into a Blazer uniform would be a huge move. Putting him with Brandon Roy (assuming Roy could learn to function alongside him), LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden would mean an outstanding core of a championship future.

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That’s basically what this column says. The biggest problem I have with it is the whole idea that nobody of quality would ever take this job:

The Blazers aren’t going to lure any general manager who currently has a good situation. They won’t be able to entice anyone who could wait around for, say, a year or two and find a better situation. They also won’t be able to easily draw from the vast pool of talent that is managed by LeGarie. So what we have here is an old-fashioned search for miscasts, retreads and the desperate.

I’ve got news for you… it’s a good young roster, an owner willing to spend money to win and a job that will pay big bucks. There will be people out there — good people — who would take the job.

And certainly around the league, Kevin Pritchard isn’t seen as the tragic hero he’s being painted as in Portland. There was plenty of resentment about Pritchard’s attitude — where he was seen by many as arrogant or as taking credit for deals that were done only because he had Allen’s wealth to work with.

I’ve said this before. I like Pritchard. I’d like to see him come back. But to think he’s done nothing at all to bring about his own precarious situation is so patently naive I don’t even know what to say about it. And to think he’s the only person in the world capable of leading this team to the next level is really narrow minded.

In fact, there is a lot of evidence that the frustrating thing about the last few years in Portland is a reluctance to make that one big deal, that one big three-for-one or two-for-one that would bring the final piece to a championship team. You could make a case that he’s held on to pieces too long — how about Rudy Fernandez, for example? — and that they’ve been devalued because of it.

Look, I’m not a fan of a management style where people are left to hang without a clue about their future. But at the same time, when they continue to get paid and they’re earning several hundred thousand dollars a year for it, I make it a practice not to pity them.

And I certainly think it’s possible to find a replacement for just about anyone with this franchise — other than the owner. THAT would worry me much more than finding another general manager.

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It started out as an attempt to research the emergence of “developmental” coaches in the NBA. You know those specialists who are charged with working tirelessly, one-on-one with players on their skills. I’ve been around the NBA since the early 1980s and don’t remember exactly when those guys started to appear.

To make a long story short, I’ve been kicking this idea around for months and started asking about a guy in a backward baseball cap I saw working Sonics players out in Seattle years ago. They called him “Hat Guy” and you can read a profile of him here, written in the Seattle Times in 1995. Gordon actually started his career in the NBA helping Paul Westphal rehab from an injury in the early 1980s.

It was a little bit difficult to get his phone number but eventually I did. And I finally spoke with him Monday afternoon. Turns out that I’ve suddenly got a story I didn’t expect, that of “Hat Guy” — Steve Gordon — and what he’s up to these days. Well, guess what?

The man quietly joined the staff of the Portland Trail Blazers a few years ago. Very quietly. I’ve not found any mention of him in a press guide or any stories associated with the team.

But in a matter of minutes, after a few phone calls to people within the league, I heard all sorts of opinions on what Gordon does for the Portland Trail Blazers. And they are stories tinged with mystery and a lot of speculation.

This was after Gordon, without any prompting from me, admitted that he works for the Blazers now.

“I’ve been with them for four and a half years,” Gordon told me. “I’m a consultant.”

I asked him what he consults about and he was a little vague but mentioned “development, scouting …”

A couple of NBA sources, though, have told me that Gordon — who used to help a lot of Microsoft bigwigs with their conditioning — has the ear of Paul Allen and Bert Kolde. And that he’s not shy about giving them advice. Gordon goes way back with Portland coach Nate McMillan, who worked with “Hat Guy” back in McMillan’s playing days with the Sonics. This from that 1995 story:

“He’s the kind of basketball junkie you meet in the park who knows everybody and everything about the game,” McMillan says. “He’s a guy who should be in a higher position, with some team, but isn’t.”

Now, it seems possible that Gordon IS in a higher position. Reached Monday afternoon, McMillan referred questions about Gordon higher up the corporate ladder.

“Well, I would like for Kevin (Pritchard) to address that,” McMillan said. “(Gordon)’s been doing some scouting over the years. That’s basically it.”

I mentioned to McMillan that Gordon told me he was a consultant for the team and the coach said, “With so much going on right now, I think we should limit our comments to what Kevin says.”

Pritchard said Gordon has input “at all levels” of the Blazer organization. “I’ve known him probably since 1990,” Pritchard said. “He knows Paul, Bert, Nate and me and we all talk to him.

“At his core, he’s a workout guy. He loves to work guys out. He helps us with that and around the draft with scouting and working guys out. He’s one of those guys who loves being in the gym.

However, Gordon’s role appears, at least according to NBA insiders, to be significant.

“He’s got a lot of input,” one league source told me. “Maybe more input than some of the people in Portland who are pretty well known.’”

Another source told me, “The guys in Seattle listen to him. But nobody knows quite how much.” Which was similar to another NBA person, who told me, “I hear that’s who they listen to up there. He’s their guy.”

Henry Abbott, who created ESPN’s “True Hoop” blog, is considered an expert on the league and a man who has followed the Trail Blazers since his childhood in Portland. He has spent a lot of time researching the inner workings of the team.

Here is what Abbott said Monday:

“When Tom Penn was first fired, it was hard to understand why. The more I dug in, the more I started hearing stories about an unfolding struggle for power over basketball decisions between the basketball operations staff in Portland and those closest to Paul Allen in Seattle. Hat Man came up as a part of that — one of several different lines the Vulcans cast from Seattle to Portland in an attempt to keep grips on basketball decisions. I’m not one of those who thinks the only good owners are the ones who do nothing but sign checks, but Hat Man is the latest of many examples that Paul Allen is a guy who likes to have a pretty serious degree of control, even though he’s seldom physically present. Who knows, maybe we’d all be like that if we spent all that money running a team. But it certainly is getting tougher and tougher to make the case that Allen is a delegator who trusts and empowers his guys.”

A lot of speculation has been made about who it is in Seattle prompting Allen’s Trail Blazer moves. “Vulcans” is the name they’re usually given — mysterious, faceless people named for Allen’s umbrella company. Usually, they have been perceived as buttoned-down, corporate types completely out of their element. But it never made a whole lot of sense that Allen, who does know basketball, would be listening to people like that. But a guy like “Hat Guy,” well …

When I tried to probe Gordon for more information about his role with the Trail Blazers he became anxious to end the call. Look, I’m not saying the guy is running the team or anything. Don’t overstate this. But at the same time, with all the scrutiny the front office gets in this town, it’s amazing there’s someone else involved, heretofore unknown, who is doing this stuff behind the scenes, free of criticism.

Not sure why Gordon bailed so quickly on the conversation if has just another mundane job with the team. And why has he not been listed on the roster of team employees?

But maybe I’m wrong about his haste to cut the conversation short. Perhaps that was just some sort of Vulcan mind-bend.

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In the comments section of a recent post I heard a lot of people whining about Allen.

You can say what you want about how he’s run the team — and I’ve been critical of his management style — and you can even stay all paranoid about him moving the team to Seattle, which he isn’t going to do.

But I remain firmly convinced of one thing — without Allen as the team’s owner, the Trail Blazers would have moved out of Portland a long time ago.

Huh?

Well, here’s the thing — Allen’s most lasting contribution to Portland sports isn’t just his ownership of the team, it’s that he built the Rose Garden. And I will maintain forever that he’s the only one who would have done it.

I mean, seriously — you think the city of Portland would have done it? There is NO WAY. In the 90s, this team would have still been trying to make it playing in Memorial Coliseum and our city would have slipped into its usual “if you want an arena, you better build it yourself” mode and any other rational owner in sports would have looked elsewhere.

I mean, plenty of other cities would have been willing to build an NBA owner a new arena. The Trail Blazers would have moved to Kansas City or Las Vegas a decade ago without Paul Allen deciding just to build his own venue, which ended up costing him a lot of money and heartache.

The fact is, the price you pay for major-league teams these days — which most progressive cities believe is important — is building the venue.

Portland doesn’t do sports venues. We re-do them. Which is a bit of a joke in most cases.

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This whole saga is pretty amazing.

Larry Miller comes out with some form of support for Pritchard while a search firm is looking for his replacement and nobody in the NBA or Rose Quarter that I can find believes there’s a chance he will return next season. Meanwhile, he’s preparing to run this team’s draft day?

Really, Paul Allen? It’s getting about time, I’m afraid, to go ahead and pull the trigger on this whole thing. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t let make full plans for letting the guy go and at the same time get 100 percent out of him on draft day. I just don’t think people are made that way.

You think Pritchard doesn’t know he’s history? You think his agent isn’t already working to find him his next job? You think he’s also not already trying to figure out which of his staff he’ll take with him?

Now you can try to hold him here, try to sign his aides to contracts — whatever — but the fact is, there is something kind of slimy about this whole thing.

I mean, if you have good reasons for firing Pritchard, hey — it’s your toy. Do what you have to do — I’ve never had a problem with that. You’ve lost a lot of money at this. I think you want to win. But it’s time to move on this. I don’t think it’s really workable to think you’re going to be able to pull this off.

You want to operate without Pritchard? You better do it. Starting now. Find someone to oversee the draft room and take charge of things yourself. You can do it. To keep Pritchard here any longer is bad karma — for both sides. It’s just not the right thing to do, in my opinion.

Time to move on. Pay the man his money and send him on his way — and let him take who he wants to take. You want a new front office? Go get one. There are qualified people out there, even if you might have to wait a couple of months to convince them to come here.

The draft? Seriously, what are you planning to do with that, anyway? Add yet another untried and unproven youngster to a team screaming for veterans? Package up a bunch of reserves with your pick and get a solid veteran? You can do that without Pritchard.

And if you can’t do it without him, you’re sort of getting what you deserve, I guess. It’s time to move forward and be honest with your fans, your staff and everyone else. There is something very distasteful about this whole mess.

And it will continue to get worse until the inevitable resolution.

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OK, I’m certainly not in favor of firing Kevin Pritchard. Seems to me he’s done a pretty good job as general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers. But at the same time, I have to tell you I’m not as indignant about it as so many others.

Why? I’m not entirely sure. But having been around the Trail Blazers and the NBA for a long time, let me share a few reasons.

For one, I don’t know when I’ve seen an NBA general manager who has been the beneficiary so much hero worship. I mean, that whole “In KP we trust” and “KP doesn’t drive to work, he walks across the Willamette” stuff astounded me. I mean, universally through the NBA I have heard so many other front-office types make fun of all the positive strokes the guy gets. People think it’s kind of funny.

And I have been consistent in saying something you don’t really hear anywhere else: We really don’t know how good Pritchard is in that draft room. All we know is the team meets in that room and emerges united in whatever choice it makes. We really don’t know whose idea anything was.

Do we know for a fact that Greg Oden was Pritchard’s choice? Do we know if Paul Allen liked the pick? Do we know whose idea it was to select Nic Batum or Martell Webster? Really? How do we know this — because Pritchard leaked it to a media friend? The hardest part of evaluating the whole draft process with the Blazer organization is never knowing — for SURE — who made what picks. Come on, Paul Allen is so involved on draft day I’m not so sure he doesn’t make some of those picks himself.

Consequently, it’s very difficult to evaluate the general manager unless you’re right there in the middle of the chaos on draft day or whenever a major deal is going down. Unless you are, you’re a slave to someone else’s version of the truth about what went down. And when that person is involved, can you trust his version?

I’ll say one other thing: I’ve been around this organization for a long time. I covered the Blazers when they said goodbye to Jack Ramsay and Stu Inman — the men who made the Trail Blazers’ only championship possible. I saw Rick Adelman fired and Geoff Petrie resign in frustration.

And you think, with that in mind, I’m going to get all hot and bothered about Kevin Pritchard being dumped?

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