These are interesting times for coach Nate McMillan and the Portland Trail Blazers.
Really, who would have believed they’d be better than .500 when April 1 rolled around? Particularly after 7-foot, No. 1 overall draft choice Greg Oden had microfracture knee surgery before training camp that wiped out his rookie season.
Perhaps only McMillan and general manager Kevin Pritchard, who began overhauling this team together in the summer of 2005.
McMillan thinks they should be even better. “Why not five or 10 games over .500; why only three or four?” he chuckled half-seriously. “You look at this year and we’ve done some good things. We could have done even better. Right now we have a winning record and that is the goal, to finish with a winning record. It’s going to be difficult to do it, but we’ve got to show improvement. We’ve got to keep getting better because the goal is one day soon to win the championship.”
But this past week (eight days, really) is a perfect microcosm of his erratic young team's season. They entered the final stretch with a 36-33 mark and then ...
* They went 2-3, shooting just 40 percent for the week and dropping to 38-36. But they played ferociously on the boards, with center Joel Przybilla grabbing a franchise record-tying 26 rebounds in one of those games.
* Both of his second-year stars -- Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge -- missed games with injuries.
* Oden got cleared from microfracture knee surgery to practice lightly with the team, only to be caught playing pickup ball at a local gym late one night. Nothing happened, but everyone went haywire at Blazerland over what could have gone wrong.
* And although still in a state of disbelief, McMillan may have just coached his last game in Seattle, where his jersey hangs in the rafters after 20 years as a player and coach.
McMillan is focused right now on the team playing out the season hard. They're doing that, but they are also tired. He was pressed by a reporter about resting Roy on Monday, the night Aldridge sprained his ankle and essentially missed a game-and-a-half. Three nights later, Roy strained a groin muscle and now is out indefinitely.
“For us, this year is still about conditioning (mentally and physically) for us,” McMillan said. “Condition our guys to play (it out). We’ve challenged them in a sense. We’re playing teams this week with below .500 records. But then in April, we’re playing some teams … we’ve got Dallas, we’ve got Houston, we’ve got Phoenix, we have the Lakers; I want to see where we are against these teams in April. We’re not talking about shutting it down. If anything, the focus is how you mentally and physically get stronger and keep yourself ready to go. You’re battling a situation where teams are out of the playoffs, people do start to think about the summer. We’re trying to definitely not go that way.”
They had to do it because Roy and Aldridge aren’t used to this. Last year they finished at 21-61 -- second worst in franchise history -- with the youngest team in the NBA. Then in the off-season they got rid of troublesome but gifted Zach Randolph, then lost Oden, and started the season 5-11.
That wasn’t a surprise. What followed was -- 13 wins in a row and 17 in 18 games -- allowing them to leapfrog right into an erratic Northwest Division race. They stayed there until early February, and then went into a slump, Roy was named to the West All-Star team -- he actually played in both the freshman/sophomore game and the All-Star game -- and came out the other end, excited, humbled and exhausted. Here was a 6-6 guard who just overwhelmed everybody with his maturity during his Rookie of the Year campaign ... and then somehow managed to build on that.
“Nobody was surprised we started slow,” Roy said. “There were a lot of other guys getting acclimated to their new roles because Zach did a lot to make this team go. So we took out his 20 and 10, and we had to make that up. Eventually we learned. We got better. LaMarcus has grown into that role. I improved. I just think we just did a better job of coming together as a team. Losing Greg definitely was tough. A lot of guys did their part of stepping up and we gained confidence.
“But then we got tired after the All-Star break (lost 9 of 11) and it started to hit us that the season may be over when it came to making the playoffs. But Nate came in and said we’re going to condition ourselves to prepare for 82 games. We’re doing a good job of that so far. We’re staying focused and we’re coming out to win every game. We want to finish over .500.”
Meanwhile, Aldridge was getting accustomed to being the guy in the post. He had raised his numbers to almost 18.0 points and 7.4 rebounds on the strength of nine consecutive games of 20 or more points before the ankle injury. The former Texas star was blocking some shots in the process, but more importantly figuring out what it means to have the team run the ball through him in the post on every key possession.
“Trying to be a go-to player every night is tough,” Aldridge said. “You might go off one or two nights in a row, and then a team will double-team you in different ways. You have to learn how to read what’s coming and how to pass out of it. That’s a big part of what I’m going through right now.
It was tough at the start of the year when Greg went down. But coach told us that it wasn’t an excuse to have a bad season. There was no reason for us to stay down because the players that we have in the room are good enough to win games, so we should go out and play with confidence. And that’s what we did. A lot of guys stepped up this year and we have a good record. We’ve done better than anybody thought we would, but we also have to finish strong.”
It won’t be easy, but it will set a tone for next season when Oden immediately becomes the top rookie-of-the-year candidate. Plus they’re hoping to coax the best shooter in Europe, 6-6 Rudy Fernandez, acquired in a 2007 draft day trade from Phoenix, to the roster next season. That’s not to mention whatever lottery pick they have as well. The search is on to find the point guard to run this young team filled with talent as they’ve dickered with Roy (a natural shooting guard), Steve Blake, Jarrett Jack and Fernandez’s buddy -- supremely talented but inconsistent Sergio Rodriguez.
There also is the matter of small forward, currently manned by Martell Webster, another Seattleite anda high lottery pick from the old regime out of high school. He still has to develop into more than just a streak shooter at small forward, but he isn’t even 22 yet. On the other hand, Travis Outlaw, only 23, has become one of the best sixth men in the league. They’re hoping to keep hot-shooting free agent James Jones, while Przybilla’s gained experience and stature will only benefit Oden in the long run.
These days it’s about the gut check. In a conference where a team will win 48-50 games this season and not make the playoffs, it doesn’t figure to get any easier very soon. His objective is to get his guys to play through the tough times, so if they are in that 50-win vicinity next season – they’ll better be able to handle it. The learning curve is still there, but it has shrunk rapidly. For a storied organization that had sellouts every night for generations before falling off the map five years ago, the Rose Garden is filled with fans and energy again. It seems to be only a matter of time until they’re competing to win the West again.
“If somebody had told me before the season we’d have this record right now, I’d think we’d be in great position to make the playoffs,” Roy said. “But hey, the West is tough this year. We can’t point any fingers at anyone but ourselves. It’s all about winning more games next year. We have to continue to build. There are a lot of guys getting more experience. LaMarcus is continuing to blossom as the scorer, we’ll have Greg. These games are just as important as any of them so next year when we come in, we’ll be even stronger as a team.”
