Yes, there’s me over in the upper right-hand corner of this page, contemplating the river, and now I’m also here — relaxing on the Internet with my two relentless pals, Bojack and Bean. Together, we’re just three Portland wise guys, as you may know already. I hope you’ll be a regular visitor… to the Internet home, not the real one on the river. Out there on the houseboat I’m going to be too busy fixing dinners for my Internet pals, to pay them back in a small way for all the technical expertise they constantly provide for me.

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My friend Bean blogs about soccer today – something he knows a lot about  – as well as Merritt Paulson and some of the things I wrote recently. Basically, he says that MLS is just a developmental league for Europe. It’s good stuff and the only thing I disagree with him about is that Paulson is going to let the soccer thing slide once he gets his new ballpark for the Beavers.

I can’t see that. Not if he spends $40 million for the franchise. What he might do, though, is get the franchise up and running and then pawn it off on some unsuspecting locals who buy into all that Soccer City bullspit.

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My good friend, Bean, the brains behind every single technical thing done to make this blog work correctly, is upset about this – a group of Blazer fans predicting when the team will win its next championship. And he makes some pretty good points about how silly that is, too:

 The Blazers definitely have a wide-open window coming up, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’re going to win a championship. I’d like to see Brandon Roy play an injury-free season first. I’d also like to see Greg Oden play period. Let’s maybe wait a little while before we go getting all giddy over the prospect of a Blazer championship. At least that’s how we did it back in the day.

I think I’ll just sit this one out and let them argue about it. But it does seem kind of funny for a group of fans of a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since Rasheed Wallace was throwing towels in people’s face, to assume the team has a championship within its reach. And when I read phrases like “primed for a decade of dominance” I have thoughts of some poor guy in bib overalls counting tiny chicks before they have hatched. Seriously, when is the last time any NBA team had a decade of dominance? Jordan’s Bulls didn’t even have that. The last coach to preside over a decade of dominance was lighting up victory cigars on the bench — and folks, there’s no smoking in NBA arenas these days.

But then again, this kind of chatter is what being a fan is all about, isn’t it?

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