For the Blazers, a merry-go-round of mediocrity
The wheels started coming off the Portland Trail Blazers a while ago. The arrival of Chauncey Billups as the head coach was the beginning of the end, I think. Damian Lillard decided to take the year off and attend to a longstanding abdominal injury. C.J. McCollum went out with a scary lung issue, and what was left was pretty pathetic. Norman Powell, Robert Covington, Joe Nurkic and a bunch of G League guys. Not pretty, and not successful. The team is 10 games below .500.
Today they traded Powell and Covington to the Clippers for Eric Bledsoe, two guys I never heard of, a second round draft pick in three years, and a popcorn machine.
If you like G League basketball, it might be fun to watch, but for fans of a higher caliber of game, the new look will be as hard on the eyes as the old one has been all season.
Although I can't think of anything much more painful than paying to see Covington. What a bum. Nurkic is a great second-string NBA center, being paid like a starter. Billups doesn't know what he's doing. And every time I looked at Powell, I thought, "role player somewhere."
The real pain will come in a few years, when the Blazers are sold and moved to Seattle. In the meantime, there are college hoops and plenty of interesting NBA teams on the cable every day of the week. As for Rip City, it's the basketball equivalent of a homeless camp on the side of the road. Let's hope they spare us an appearance as somebody's punching bag in the playoffs. I would feel obligated to tune in and damage my soul.
I haven’t followed the team since the “Jail Blazers” era. I don’t know......it seems that it is hard for me to get excited about a bunch of over-paid and under performing athletes. The last player that got my admiration was Allen Iverson or maybe Tim Duncan, as he was all business without the attitude.
ReplyDeleteEven though I grew up on MLB and the NBA, I have found myself enjoying football so much more in the last few years. Which is odd because I used to totally discount the league as a bunch of knuckleheads and brutes. To me, the action has much more suspense and more intrigue than the other two sports leagues provide.
The good news is you will only have to tune in to see where they hit their lottery pick for the draft.
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