The Portland Trail Blazers have been in “stockpile assets” mode for a couple of years now. They have managed to accumulate a lot of fine players, and haven’t really made a disastrous move. More importantly, they somehow managed to field a playoff team with two guys who should be their franchise players almost completely hobbled by knee injuries.
Still, the Blazers’ roster is a bit overstuffed and incomplete right now, and coach Nate McMillian wasn’t shy about sharing his feelings on the state of the roster to Mike Barrett, Mike Rice, and Brian Wheeler on Blazers Courtside earlier (hat tip to Ben Golliver of Blazer’s Edge):“I think there are a lot of questions that we have to answer,” McMillan said. “The first thing is to balance the roster. The combination of the twos that we have -- with Wesley [Matthews], Rudy [Fernandez] and Brandon [Roy] -- that combination is just... really... there’s no way we can play the three of those guys.
“Now that we’ve brought in Gerald Wallace, Nicolas [Batum]'s contract will be coming up pretty soon. What’s going to happen in that situation?
“Our backup point guard, our guard position. I played Brandon at that spot most of the second half of the season. We’ve got to look at the point guard position.
“And Brandon Roy. How did he come out of the season and what [is] his role going to be?
“There’s a number of things I think we have to address. Backup center. Is Greg [Oden]... when will he be ready to go next season?”
After listing off questions concering both guard positions, the center position and the small forward position, McMillan concluded: “All of those things we will have to look at here before the draft and, if possible, if it is possible to make some moves to improve the team, we’ve certainly got to do that.”Well, that’s certainly different from the “we’re one or two pieces away” talk you generally hear from teams during the off-season. McMillian appears to want some serious changes to the Blazer roster, and he appears to want them soon. Free agency won’t help much, either -- Andre Miller, Greg Oden, and Patty Mills are the only players on the roster without guaranteed deals for next season. The Blazers have been known for wheeling and dealing on draft night in previous years -- we’ll see if they start working the phones aggressively after tonight’s draft lottery goes down and every team knows what pick they’re holding.
