(This post has been updated on Saturday afternoon).

I’ve been trying not to blog on weekends so much, a part of trying to rest up after all the long hours of work during the week. But some things absolutely drive me to the keyboard. Today, for instance, when I read Henry Abbott’s True Hoop overview of the Tom Penn and Kevin Pritchard stuff, I just couldn’t resist.

It included this quote from Warren LeGarie, the agent for Penn and Pritchard:

I’ve been a Blazer fan from early on. I’ve been involved in some way with the team for many many years. I want them to be successful.

Sorry, but I almost lost my breakfast over that one. See, I go back a ways with LeGarie. I co-wrote Rick Adelman’s chronicle of the 1990 Trail Blazer season called, “The Long Hot Winter.” In that book, Adelman — and I can remember how emotional he was about this part when we talked about it at the time — scorched LeGarie for his role in helping push Drazen Petrovic out of Portland.

Early in November of 1990, the Blazers were off to a 6-0 start and all was well. It was obvious they would have one of the best teams in the league. Petrovic, still early in his career, wasn’t going to play much behind Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Danny Ainge and Danny Young, but the Blazers loved him and knew he’d someday be a very good player. But Petro, one of my all-time favorite Blazers, was going to have to be patient and wait his turn.

But LeGarie was his agent and just couldn’t wait. He wanted minutes for his client and he wanted them immediately. So he had Drazen tell the press that if he didn’t play more he wanted a trade or he’d go back to Europe. The team knew it wasn’t coming from Petrovic — it was his agent, stirring up stuff on a winning team.

“The one thing I resented more than anything was that his agent, Warren LeGarie, told Drazen to make that statement, thinking he could force us to trade him or play him,” Adelman said in the book. “He was saying things about our team and about me, saying I was lying. He said I didn’t like Drazen and it was totally untrue. And this was a guy, this agent, whom I hadn’t talked to in two years about Drazen.

“He never once talked to me about his client — which was OK, because I probably wouldn’t have talked to him anyway. I don’t make a habit of talking to agents about playing time for their players. I will talk to them if the players are upset and they just want to know where he’s at. But LeGarie never had the courage to even ask me about it. He went through other people, and to the papers and the talk shows. He said a lot of things that were totally unfounded, and all he did in the long run was hurt Drazen. That’s all he did. Drazen had always been everybody’s favorite and he put him in a bad situation. And I think he did him a disservice.”

Yeah, Warren LeGarie — Blazer fan.

Look, I understand the role of an agent. His one and only responsibility is to do what’s best for HIS CLIENT. Not any team or any fan base. I totally understand that and it shouldn’t be any other way. If I’m paying an agent, I want him to do the same thing. But please, folks, when you’re listening to this character rant and rave and talk about “drive-bys” and all the rest, remember where he’s coming from. He’d like to get the attention yanked away from Penn and he’d like to get Pritchard a contract extension. That’s his job.

A lot of the “facts” we’re getting about the Pritchard-Penn situation are coming from people with a real axe to grind — and I’m not talking about Henry Abbott, who did a great job, as he always does, of compiling an awful lot of information here. But just keep that in mind that a lot of people who are involved in this story, locally and nationally, have a stake in it in some way.

And also understand that when Larry Miller is asked why Penn was fired and he says he cannot say, understand that HE CANNOT SAY. Some things like that happen in business — and when asked about specifics, they have no choice to but deny anything that could lead to an interpretation of what really happened. Often, when it comes to sudden dismissals like that one, there are serious legal repercussions if word gets out. Rather than to try to assign reasons to it, it might be better to just accept it and move on.

And really? Riots if Kevin Pritchard is fired? Really? Look, if it’s true that Pritchard and Penn were somehow trying to steal power from THE OWNER, man, that’s about as crazy a thing to do as I’ve ever heard. I mean, it’s Paul Allen’s team. And he wants to have a hand in operating it — he always has.

And I think it’s unwise of Pritchard to challenge that in any way. I even thought it was a little over the edge during training camp to go so public with the Patty Mills situation. You know what I’m talking about — he just about threw the owner under the bus when he made it known that Mills was Allen’s choice to make the roster rather than Ime Udoka. That’s getting into an area a lot of GMs wouldn’t go.

Is Pritchard having a little trouble getting a contract extension? I’m sure he is. So did Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. It seems to be the way this team operates. If you’re KP, you better just accept that or move on.

To try and mess with Allen’s control of the team is so dumb a man would deserve to be fired. And I just don’t think KP is that sort of guy. Or that dumb. And I’d be real careful about giving too much credence to listening to someone who has something to gain by Pritchard’s demise here. I’d listen to their gossip just about as intently as I’d listen to Warren LeGarie, Blazermaniac.

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You can believe the disgraced former NBA referee if you like. But know you’re on shaky ground if you think he hit 80 percent of his bets just by knowing inside things about referees and their relationship with the league or its players.

Henry Abbott, at ESPN’s True Hoop, who cleans up pretty well for TV, takes Donaghy’s main points and shreds them one by one before his blinking eyes in this piece. The statistics just don’t back up the guy’s claims.

And I’ll say it one more time — if you don’t think Donaghy manipulated the outcome of games, you’re just not paying attention.

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My bad. All along, I was thinking in terms of a point guard being the answer to Portland’s problem of getting the ball more frequently into the low post. But as David Thorpe points out on True Hoop today, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.

The side pick-and-roll is the most devastating play in basketball and Portland didn’t have a lot of success running it last season. Mostly, that was because nobody looked (or had the ability) to dish the ball to the guy rolling to the basket. Greg Oden got so tired of not seeing the ball on the pick-and-roll that his frustration was apparent. And face it, Joel Przybilla used to thrive on this play when Damon Stoudamire was still a Blazer. Damon used to tell me later what an underutilized offensive player Joel was in Portland once he left — Joel really was a pretty good finisher on this play. But he had nobody to run it with here the last few seasons — only Sergio Rodriguez was skilled at making the pass on the end of that play.

Hedo Turkoglu can run it, though, and run it just about as well as any big player in the league:

Thorpe says that if the Portland rumors are true, Nate McMillan should already be watching the Magic and planning to add a side pick-and-roll to the playbook with Turkoglu and Greg Oden.

“Dwight Howard was amazing at diving to the hoop on the play, running straight down the lane to make himself a threat to catch the ball at the hoop. Greg Oden will have to do that, and then if I were LaMarcus Aldridge, I’d spend the summer mastering the NBA 3, like Rashard Lewis — because when the small forward and the center are running this play , the help usually comes from the power forward who can be wide open in the corner.

But Thorpe sounds a warning, too, and it’s one that would concern me if Turkoglu becomes a Trail Blazer. The guy needs the ball, needs to be “engaged” to get the best out of him. I’m not sure how that works with all those touches Brandon Roy gets:

Thorpe cautions, however, that he does not believe Turkoglu would thrive in any system. “He’s a little bit like Lamar Odom. The game comes so easy to him, and he’s so talented, that sometimes he loses focus. Stan Van Gundy handled that really well. He was very smart. He ran a ton of side pick and rolls for Turkoglu, which forced him to lock in. People criticized Van Gundy for that, saying he should have gotten the ball to Dwight Howard more … but a lot of those side pick and rolls ended in dunks for Dwight Howard. If you just stuck him on a team as complimentary player, and expect him to hit some open shots, then I don’t think he would be nearly as productive. But when you keep Turkoglu engaged, he’s a very special small forward.

“Turkoglu may have been the third or fourth best player on the Magic this season. But he played better than that, because of how the team forced him to be playmaker, which is what he does best. Now, his sense of urgency still wavered some. But in the playoffs, his focus was just about always there, and that’s a huge part of the reason the Magic made it so far.”

I appreciate the knowledge. I’ve gone from being anti-Turkoglu to now being a little more accepting. But you must remember, a lot has to change for Portland to have success with “The Michael Jordan of Turkey.” Brandon Roy is not only going to have to give up the ball some, he’s going to probably have to expect to score fewer points. Not only will Turkoglu score, he’ll get Oden points, too. Aldridge must learn to hit that corner three-pointer. And the point guard must be a pretty good spot-up shooter, too.

It would make for a fascinating new approach.

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That’s what Henry at True Hoop says.

So, last night was no time for Nate McMillan to prove a point. Instead, Portland did something new. They ran. They shot early in the clock. They deliberately pushed the pace.

And it was like they had been a plane on a runway their whole lives. They got up enough speed, and then … flew. 

But I was at the game and it didn’t feel that way. Yes, I know Portland had 24 shots in the first quarter and appeared to be trying to force its fast break, but I remember thinking several times during the first half how difficult it truly is to run on the San Antonio Spurs. They get their five players back on defense about as quickly as anyone in the league.

I think it was more that San Antonio didn’t defend well in the half court. Portland was presented with tempting shots early in the shot clock, took them and made them. The Blazers have done that in other games and it’s been disastrous — because they missed a lot of those shots. But Sunday night, they made them and the disaster was all San Antonio’s. At least that’s the way I figured it and nobody wants to see Portland run any more than I do – I’ve been screaming about how the Blazers have been missing out on all those cheap baskets now for months.

So I went back to the official box score and checked it out. Last night the Trail Blazers had a grand total of four fast-break points (to seven by the Spurs). The entire game. Four. I just don’t think you can say they were trying very hard to push the pace if the whole night yielded just two fast-break buckets.

Incidentally, it really was a strange game. The Blazers had only 26 points in the paint, too (to the Spurs’ 32). This was a night when Portland made outside shots early in the shot clock. A lot of them. But any further conclusions are dangerous.

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When a noted personal coach and fitness expert who has experience with many NBA players speaks about a player, it’s a good idea to listen up. This isn’t going to be pleasant for Blazer fans to read, as Henry Abbott points out, but the most interesting part of this is that David Thorpe believes Oden needs to lose at least 50 pounds. I’ve heard others, too, speak about him carrying too much weight, which is kind of interesting.

He isn’t Kevin Duckworth. He doesn’t look THAT overweight. But perhaps he is — nobody outside of the Blazer family knows his real weight. Today, when meeting the media, Oden did make reference to “eating healthy.”

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You’ll enjoy this, and thanks to True Hoop for finding it. If you’ve ever played hoops on a playground, come on and be honest with yourself — this is your dream, isn’t it? It’s the story of a little white dude in a V-neck sweater briefly abusing Devin Harris.

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