Portland Trail Blazers

Are you aware that the kerfuffle with Lillard and his supposed "entourage" has hit the front page of NBA.com? The longer you and Lillard sit on the sidelines without commenting, the more people will assume that, because it's not refuted, the statements of the two men who were assaulted were true. I am actually pretty surprised that there was no immediate response, but now that it's been stewing, isn't there anyone there who understands that getting in front of a story like this is better than hoping that it won't spread? Because, if you haven't noticed, it's spreading, and it's making you look bad. Just my two cents. I would love to hear Damian's side of this, or at least a response saying that you can't talk about it due to pending legal action, but that there is another story to tell. But to not say anything? The silence is hurting my ears and the ears of millions of others. This story was not (and, with that photo, couldn't possibly be) contained. Time to deal with it. Publicly. Now. Are you aware that the kerfuffle with Lillard and his supposed "entourage" has hit the front page of NBA.com? The longer you and Lillard sit on the sidelines without commenting, the more people will assume that, because it's not refuted, the statements of the two men who were assaulted were true. I am actually pretty surprised that there was no immediate response, but now that it's been stewing, isn't there anyone there who understands that getting in front of a story like this is better than hoping that it won't spread? Because, if you haven't noticed, it's spreading, and it's making you look bad. Just my two cents. I would love to hear Damian's side of this, or at least a response saying that you can't talk about it due to pending legal action, but that there is another story to tell. But to not say anything? The silence is hurting my ears and the ears of millions of others. This story was not (and, with that photo, couldn't possibly be) contained. Time to deal with it. Publicly. Now.

This (second!) Mailbag today addresses the reaction to the incident with Damian Lillard's entourage and a possible bar altercation detailed here. If that's not your cup of tea (and it's not mine either but we might as well get the questions over and done with instead of dragging it out for weeks) then you can find the Draft Lottery Drawing Day version of the Mailbag here. Dave, Damian Lillard, entourage, bar fight, AAAAAAAHHHH!!! My stomach just turned a loop. How serious is this? Innocent, dumb mistake, or sign of bad things to come? Help! I want my innocence back! Thomas Two clashing waves of reaction come from situations like this. Half the people accuse while the other half excuse. "He shouldn't have been out there thugging it up at 2:30 a.m. and why does he have an 'entourage' anyway?!?" "Those guys who got beat up must have been looking for trouble, probably to get rich off of suing an NBA millionaire!" We don't have enough knowledge about the actual incident to go down either of those paths. Nobody knows except the people involved and they likely have wildly different interpretations of the events in question. We're not ever going to know exactly what went down or why. There's nothing to accuse anybody of at this point, nothing to excuse either. Confrontations like this happen all the time. Usually they go by the boards as everybody gets on with life. One of the onlookers (perhaps an interested party) in this event will get on with a life of NBA stardom. That's the only odd factor in this whole story and it's not indicative of anything much. If such incidents become commonplace for Lillard then we have a problem. But you can't deal with that unless it happens. Until it does--and hopefully it never will--take a couple antacids, calm your stomach, and get back to rooting for the kid. If folks aren't satisfied with that, I can add some generalities: 1. If the JailBlazer era, yellow hummers, drag races with loaded guns through downtown streets, and police reports about hotel assaults had never happened, how big would the reaction to this story be? The stomach turning comes more from old scars than new fears. Damian Lillard should be aware of those things but he's not responsible for them. We're responsible for factoring in the source of our reactions before we lay stuff on him. That's true whether this incident ends up as nothing at all or a major deal. 2. People are entitled to be young. If there were mistakes here (and we don't know that there were) then people are entitled to a few of those too. That includes NBA people and people taking pictures of NBA people. 3. As we grow older we start to realize that we can't have everything. Having access to every relatively uninhibited public environment in town, partying among a social-media generation, and retaining complete control over photo images may be mutually exclusive goals. Working that out may be a learning process. All of us have those learning processes. Most of us don't go through them under media scrutiny. 4. Risk assessment is also part of life. In my opinion nobody should get sanctimonious about bar hopping at 2:00 a.m. Almost everybody has done it. Mostly it's fine. But personal confrontations in this day and age seem to carry more risk than they used to. Get into enough of them and you're going to run into somebody who considers himself a legit gangster or tough guy. Sometimes those guys pack more than fists. Neither you nor your friends want to be handling those situations. It's a bad idea from personal safety and media relations standpoints and neither one of those go away. The risk-reward of random clubbing versus finding a place where the owner can give you your own space and vet the people coming into contact with you (including handling the "no picture" thing) may be something to examine. Summing up: Damian Lillard was somewhere near a situation which proved volatile both immediately and in its ripp

The first part of today's Blazer's Edge Mailbag deals with the lottery drawing. The festivities will commence at 5:30 Pacific this evening. Here are the answers to your lottery-based questions. Dave, Can you give us the lottery odds for the Blazers finishing with each pick, 1st through 14th? Bryan That's easier than you think. The Blazers have 11 combinations out of the 1000 possible combos distributed to the 14 lottery teams. NBA officials will draw three combinations total. Teams in possession of those three combinations will move to the 1, 2, and 3 spots in the order. Everyone else will line up behind them by record, worst record towards the front of the line and best at the back. Only three teams are determined randomly. Everyone else will stay in the same order relative to each other. Starting from the 10th spot by record before the drawing, the Blazers can only finish in spots 1-3 (if one of their combinations is drawn) or in spots 10-13 (if none of their combinations hit). You either go right near the head of the class with a lucky hit or you stay where you are. The Blazers could move down as far as 13 because teams currently behind them in line could get the lucky draw and leap ahead, pushing Portland back. If that last part is confusing, just line up 14 pennies and turn all but the 10th to tails. The 10th one (heads) represents Portland. Pick any three pennies besides Portland to shift to the 1, 2, and 3 spots (in that order). If all the pennies you picked were already ahead of the "heads" penny then that penny will remain 10th in line. For each penny you moved up from behind the heads penny it will move back one spot. Now you see the possible range of motion. 1-3 or 10-13. 4th-9th and 14th just aren't possible. During the lottery reveal you'll want to watch the 13th-10th envelopes. If the Blazers are revealed in one of those slots then you know Portland's pick. If not, they're guaranteed a Top 3 position. Here are the percentage chances of the Blazers ending up with each pick: 1st--1.1% 2nd--1.3% 3rd--1.5% 10th--87% 11th--8.8% 12th--0.2% 13th 0.1% Dave, Since the beginning people have accused the NBA of rigging the lottery. Patrick Ewing went to the Knicks. LeBron went to his home state with Cleveland. New Orleans won last year just after they were purchased. Who's that team this year? Is it time to rig again? Brendan It's got to be Sacramento, right? So if the Kings get the lucky draw you know the league is rigged. If they don't then you know the NBA is trying to throw us off the trail by not doing the obvious thing this year, which is further proof that it's rigged. Dave, We keep hearing that this is a weak draft. I've also heard people say that nobody should want the #1 overall pick this year. Two part question. Do the Blazers even want a top 3 pick and if they got it what would they do? Heather You always want to secure the most options possible. If I told you that you had to travel to Topeka as quickly as you could by commercial bus, would you feel more able to complete your task if I gave you the phone number for one bus company or the whole phone book? Would you be more successful if I handed you $50 to purchase your ticket or $500? More options equal more power. In the draft, options are defined by pick order. The team at #1 can pick anyone they want. Each team after loses one possible candidate for each space they're behind in line. 9 players will be off the board by the time Pick #10 comes along. Fewer options equals less value. The Blazers would be foolish to prefer #10 to a Top 3 pick. But that doesn't mean they'd use that Top 3 pick to draft a player. In common parlance "weak draft" translates to "no immediately evident superstars". That's probably true of this draft. Several draftees could be good, though. When the playing field levels out like that, the players selected 6th or 9th might turn out just as good as the guys going

Chad Ford of ESPN.com (Insider) takes a look at who the Portland Trail Blazers would select if they jump up from the No. 10 slot into one of the top-three spots when the 2013 NBA Draft Lottery drawing is conducted on Tuesday. First choice: Ben McLemore (1.1 percent) Second choice: Victor Oladipo (1.3 percent) Third choice: Nerlens Noel (1.6 percent) Analysis: The Blazers are still recovering from the last time they had the No. 1 pick in 2007. They selected Greg Oden over Kevin Durant (and, by the way, so would have all 30 GMs in the league), and the rest is history. Durant became the second-best player in the NBA behind James and Oden has played a total of 82 games since the 2007-08 season. If they're fortunate enough to get the pick again, would they really gamble on a guy who is coming off ACL surgery? I'm told yes ... but I'm not sure Neil Olshey could really do that to Blazers fans. The team could still also use more help in the backcourt. McLemore has one of the best strokes in college basketball. Oladipo could provide some lockdown defense next to Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard. Ford wrote earlier this year that he expected the Blazers to take McLemore No. 1 overall if given the opportunity. The Blazers were linked to rumored interest in Oladipo last week. -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter

There is a lot of banter going on about if the right deal comes along, do we part with one of these two. There have been other articles stating that these two players are somewhat redundant in that they both provide deft 3pt shooting (something key in Stotts's offense), good character, limited ballhandling and getting to the hoop skills, average to sometimes situationally above average defense, and disappear at key times throughout a game. So, I put it to you Rip City, if you have to choose either Matthews or Batum as part of a deal that lands a quality starting center or a top 3-4 pick, who do you trade? If I had to choose, it would easily be Matthews. He was brought here to be a bench player, not a starter. His current situation is a reflection of circumstance. I love his toughness, and his 3pt ability, but the rest of his game clearly has peaked. I cringe with him having the ball in the open court, he can't get to the hoop with any kind of tenacity, and struggles as a rebounder and passer for a starting shooting guard who plays as many minutes as he does. Whereas Batum is a prototypical starting small forward who can do a little bit of everything. He might not have the aggressiveness gene we all wish he had, but in his first year as a featured player, he showed flashes that he could be the ideal 4th option on a contending team. His game still has room to grow, and his talent could allow him to achieve it. On the flip side, what you see is what you get with Wes. Personally, I don't want to trade either of them. I think Batum is a perfect fit as the starting 3, and Wes is perfectly suited to be your sparkplug off the bench. It's just a matter of getting the missing pieces via trading/using our draft picks and shrewd free agency spending. Of all the potential scenario's I've seen proposed by BEdgers, I still funnel back to using picks and cash to attempt a trade for Gortat. And then going hard after Tyreke Evans as the FA splash, with OJ Mayo being the plan B. There is a lot of banter going on about if the right deal comes along, do we part with one of these two. There have been other articles stating that these two players are somewhat redundant in that they both provide deft 3pt shooting (something key in Stotts's offense), good character, limited ballhandling and getting to the hoop skills, average to sometimes situationally above average defense, and disappear at key times throughout a game. So, I put it to you Rip City, if you have to choose either Matthews or Batum as part of a deal that lands a quality starting center or a top 3-4 pick, who do you trade? If I had to choose, it would easily be Matthews. He was brought here to be a bench player, not a starter. His current situation is a reflection of circumstance. I love his toughness, and his 3pt ability, but the rest of his game clearly has peaked. I cringe with him having the ball in the open court, he can't get to the hoop with any kind of tenacity, and struggles as a rebounder and passer for a starting shooting guard who plays as many minutes as he does. Whereas Batum is a prototypical starting small forward who can do a little bit of everything. He might not have the aggressiveness gene we all wish he had, but in his first year as a featured player, he showed flashes that he could be the ideal 4th option on a contending team. His game still has room to grow, and his talent could allow him to achieve it. On the flip side, what you see is what you get with Wes. Personally, I don't want to trade either of them. I think Batum is a perfect fit as the starting 3, and Wes is perfectly suited to be your sparkplug off the bench. It's just a matter of getting the missing pieces via trading/using our draft picks and shrewd free agency spending. Of all the potential scenario's I've seen proposed by BEdgers, I still funnel back to using picks and cash to attempt a trade for Gortat. And then going hard after Tyreke Evans as the FA splash, with OJ Mayo being th

April 12, 2013; Portland, OR, USA; Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard (0) argues who the ball went off of during the fourth quarter of the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Rose Garden. The Thunder won the game 106-90. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports Brothers, Jermaine and Phil Ulinwa, accuse Damian Lillard of instigating a fight between themselves and Lillard’s entourage. The incident occurred at 2:30am on May 18th as Damian was heading toward a parking lot with several other people. Jermaine reportedly took Damian’s picture, which the brothers say provoked him and his crew. “Damian Lillard basically instigated it, because he actually looked like he was going to try to go up to my brother and start fighting him, and since he did that the rest of the guys started getting riled up to and they thought it was ok to just start fighting out of nowhere.” – Phil Ulinwa Jermaine and Phil both have facial contusions, but neither were hospitalized. The Portland Trail Blazers have been made aware of the incident, and Damian Lillard has been cleared as a suspect. Now, whether or not things happened exactly as the brothers say is up for debate. I will neither damn them for embellishment, nor let Lillard off the hypothetical hook. However; the alleged assault does raise an interesting dialogue about player/fan interaction. If the incident happened exactly as reported, with the normally mild mannered Lillard becoming irate due to the snap of a cell phone, then it is probably an overreaction on his part. Although a 24/7 spotlight can be trying at times, a certain level of composure is expected of NBA athletes. However; if the brothers neglected to mention any harassment, the story becomes quite different. Their behavior has not been publicly documented from Lillard’s perspective. It could be that Lillard requested not to be photographed, but instead was bombarded by their persistent fandom. We do not know what was said by whom, or have the full context of the situation. Regardless, assault is not an acceptable response. There appears to have been an abuse of public celebrity or an abuse of believed invulnerability; more likely still, a mixture of both. In a perfect world, fans would understand the players’ needs for boundaries and respect, and the players would understand the fans’ needs for appreciation and tolerance. A picture is worth a thousand words and this photo has some pointed ones flying. @davidmackaypdx | @ripcityproject | davidmackaypdx@gmail.com

Despite injury concerns, Nerlens Noel would be an ideal fit alongside LaMarcus Aldridge, Sporting News says.

Trail Blazers fans discuss what moves they would make right now to improve the team.

Some interesting speculation on the part of ESPN.com's Chad Ford on the eve of the NBA Draft Lottery. Ford goes through each lottery team and makes his best guesses as to who each team would take should they end up with the first, second or third pick in this year's draft. And when it comes to the Trail Blazers, Ford wonders if Portland's recent history with top picks, specifically big men with injury issues, would enter into the decision. According to Ford, it would ...

After more than three weeks of meticulously analyzing the Portland Trail Blazers roster, head coach, general manager and owner, the first leg of our You be the GM series has come to a close. As we get ready to shift the focus to 2013 NBA draft prospects, here's a recap of which Blazers players you want to stay, and which players you want to hit the road.