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Dwight Jaynes Just watching the world float by…
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I don’t know. Honestly. But I hope this story gives some of us hope that one day soon we can watch Trail Blazer games and, especially, “Talkin’ Ball” on our dishes.
(Thanks, Clueless Vince!)
Tags: Comcast Sportsnet, Directv, Dwight Jaynes, Talkin' Ball, Trail Blazers
Here’s your link to the website. The plan also includes “a bright future for Memorial Coliseum.” That promise right there might be enough to make the project difficult to pull off.
Tags: Dwight Jaynes, JumpTown, Portland, Rose Quarter, Trail Blazers
The kids over at Bust a Bucket are bored. There’s no more games to watch and so far, not a lot of off-season news of substance.
So the guys got together with friends, drafted full rosters of former Blazers and are playing out a season using computer simulation. It’s a new take on fantasy basketball and a fascinating idea that certainly helps you realize how much talent has gone through this franchise over the years.
They asked me to take a look at their rosters and rate them, which I’ve done. It’s the kind of thing you get asked when you’re one of the few people on the planet aside from Bill Schonely who has actually seen all those guys play in person. But I’m going to be watching to see how it turns out and I invite you to do the same.
And, by the way, if Walton’s team doesn’t win, the whole thing is a farce, guys.
Tags: Bust a Bucket, computer simulation, Dwight Jaynes, Trail Blazers
Just because it’s the off-season doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot going on with the Trail Blazers. Over at Blazers Edge Ben and Dave are beginning their usual off-season project of evaluating each Blazer player and you ought to swing by and take a look. Sean at Oregonlive’s Blazer Blog is back with his popular “You be the GM” feature and you can find Ben’s assessment of Steve Blake and Wendell’s look at Channing Frye up there already.
Sean asked me to chip in with a look at Rudy Fernandez and I think it will appear Thursday. I’ll get the link when it’s available but I think you’ll like it — and maybe even be surprised by some of my conclusions.
Tonight, it’s the first summer edition of “Talkin’ Ball” on Comcast Sportsnet at 6 o’clock. We’ll still be at The Agency and joining us tonight, I understand, is one of our most popular guest panelists, Laura Green, fresh off covering a first-round series for TNT.
Tags: Blazers Edge, Comcast Sportsnet, Dwight Jaynes, Laura Green, Oregonlive Blazer Blog, Rudy Fernandez, Talkin' Ball, The Agency, Trail Blazers
This is another topic I meant to get to a while back (I think inclement weather fouled us all up for a while). There was some suggestion somewhere that Portland’s front office was dictating to Coach Nate McMillan that he should play or not play certain players.
I recall thinking at the time, of course there is that pressure. Not that anyone would admit it. But my experience in professional sports is that very often the front office DOES suggest playing time or role changes for various reasons to coaches — and that even though coaches sometimes resist the suggestions, the best-run franchises survive and flourish through these situations. And most of the good coaches figure out a way to placate the front office while still doing their best to win games.
Obviously, good communication is a key here. Each side must respect the other.
Here’s what you need to understand: Unless a coach has complete job security, he’s usually going to resist having to develop too many young players on his watch. Why? Because it’s normally going to cost him games. And if it costs him too many games, it’s going to cost him his job. Yet, for the good of the franchise, it’s often beneficial to give playing time to young players — either to develop them or to find out their talent level in order to assess the possibility of trades or just letting them go.
Neither side is necessarily wrong, it’s just that each side can have different motivations. But in the case of an insecure or inadequate front office, for example, it can merely be forcing playing time on players who don’t deserve it, just to justify their selection in a draft or acquisition in a trade. In the case of a lousy coach, resisting using a young player can be a sign that the coach just doesn’t want to spend time actually working with that player and improving him. Lazy coaching staffs (often the ones who have been around too long) hate spending time with young players. It takes too much work.
But way back when I covered the team many years ago, I remember a very good Trail Blazer head coach laughing about the prospect of playing one of his younger bench players with the possibility of winning a championship at hand. “Why should I develop some player for the next coach?” he said. “I have to win games or I’m out of here. Besides, he just wants the guy to play so he can justify drafting him in the first place.”
He was quite possibly correct, in that case. But while that philosophy is understandable, it may not be entirely in concert with the best interests of the franchise. For a coach to risk losing games to develop young players, he has to know the front office is going to understand the possible ramifications and not penalize him for them.
I’d be very surprised if most good franchises don’t often have to put subtle pressure on their coaches to use certain players in a different role or more frequently. It’s just the way it works — sort of a checks-and-balances way that good franchises function. Coaches can get all huffy about it, but if they understand that butting heads with their own front office isn’t a healthy situation for a coach, anyway, they’ll figure out a way to be accomodating. And good front offices respect their coach’s point of view and listen to him.
But it’s always been part of the way franchises function. Or disfunction.
Tags: coach, Dwight Jaynes, front office, NBA, Trail Blazers
That’s the name of a new show on Comcast Sports Net that will come on tonight after the Blazers’ post-game show. Sort of a post, post-game show. It will be done live from The Agency, the new sports bar near PGE Park.
I mention the show because I’m going to be on it.
It’s a later game tonight, at 7:30, which means we should be talkin’ ball around 10:30. If you have as much fun watching as we’re going to have doing it, you’ll not regret tuning in. Besides, what else is there to watch at 10:30?
Tags: Comcast Sports Net, Dwight Jaynes, The Agency, Trail Blazers
Tonight is another one of those Trail Blazer games unavailable to me on my home television because it’s shown on Comcast Sports Net. Now let’s make this clear right away: I would love to have CSN. I’m going to be doing a very fun post, post-game show after some Blazer games this season on that network. Plus, I hear they carry Roller Derby — the old stuff with the Bay Area Bombers, Charlie O’Connell, Joanie Weston and hey, I grew up watching that stuff.
But I don’t have Comcast Sports Net available to me. At all. Where I live, I don’t have cable available to me. Period. And like some of those people in Seattle Ryan White wrote about today, I don’t have any options.
The entire area where I live is made up of satellite customers — either Directv or Dish. It’s our only option. And like those fans in Seattle who are blacked out on Portland games simply because they are now considered the Blazers’ “territory,” I think it’s unfair we are prohibited from watching Portland games.
It’s one thing if you’re just stubbornly refusing to get cable. I mean, come on — what’s the point of having television if you don’t have at least some of the many programming options out there? But in this case — and in the situation so many people around the state of Oregon are in — there is no cable option of being able to watch Blazer games.
See, what really pecks me off is that I pay for the NBA League Pass service, too. I’ve purchased it every season since its inception. Yet, Blazer games are STILL blacked out, because the games are being “telecast” locally. And this is where the frustrating part comes in — Nobody seems to understand that even though the games are shown in Portland, a great many of us have NO CHANCE to see them. But when you pay the extra dough for the League Pass, they should be. And as near as I can tell, that’s not Comcast’s fault. It’s not the Blazers’ fault. It’s the fault of a league blackout policy that’s outdated.
That’s why I believe that the league needs to revamp that blackout policy. What harm would it do to tweak it a little so that people who can prove they are not serviced by a cable company that carries CSN, can receive the games by NBA League Pass? All they would have to do is provide proof from a cable company in the manner of a form letter saying, “We don’t provide service in that area.” The league is getting a significant amount of money from me each season for the package of games, yet the games I want to see the most aren’t available.
Isn’t it the goal of the league and its teams to allow as many people as possible to receive the games? Isn’t that what their advertisers want? And in this specific instance, by allowing fans to see these games, it doesn’t hurt the cable companies or the satellite companies.
Please, NBA — could someone take the time to look at this situation? If you cannot receive the games any other way but League Pass, and pay for League Pass, what’s the harm in allowing you to receive the games?
Tags: blackout policy, Comcast, Dwight Jaynes, NBA League Pass, Trail Blazers
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some of the things that contributed to the Trail Blazers’ awful performance at Los Angeles Tuesday night. But a much bigger loss looms — Greg Oden didn’t play in the second half because of an injured right foot. X-rays, they say, were inconclusive and he’ll get an MRI when the team returns to Portland.
Folks, that doesn’t sound good to me. There are a lot of very small bones in your feet, some of them easily breakable and they take quite a while to heal, in many cases. TNT finally showed a good slo-mo replay of the play where the injury happened and man, it looked pretty nasty. I would guess we’d know something by Wednesday afternoon.
This city will be holding its collective breath…
Tags: foot injury, Greg Oden, Lakers, Trail Blazers
The latest Vegas number I’ve seen on tonight’s game in Los Angeles has the Trail Blazers as the night’s biggest underdogs — the Lakers are favored by 7.5 points. The over/under is 195.5 points.
UPDATE: By the time fans from Blazers Edge who participated in this poll get done placing their wagers, the spread will be down to pick ‘em.
Tags: Lakers, point spread, Trail Blazers
