| 30 Teams, 30 Days: Portland Draft Preview Authored by Christopher Reina - May 24, 2007 - 7:26 pm
2006-2007 Finish: 32-50
Draft Picks: 1st, 37th, 52nd, 53rd
What they do well
Things were already moving in the right direction before the momentous 2007 Lottery day. The trade which jettisoned Sebastian Telfair to Portland for Brandon Roy was step one in atoning for the franchise’s poor decisions since they were minutes away from reaching the 2000 Finals.
Roy is already one of the most versatile perimeter players in the league and is coming off a Rookie of the Year campaign where he averaged 17, 4 and 4.
LaMarcus Aldridge, Travis Outlaw, Jarrett Jack and Martell Webster are all very young and very talented and have seen marked improvement under Nate McMillan.
Aldridge’s rookie season went overlooked due to the attention given to Roy, but he flourished as a center during the month of March. He averaged 14.7 points and 8 rebounds per game during the month and lines like 30 and 6, 24 and 17 with 4 blocks and 27 and 14 with 3 blocks.
Zach Randolph, meanwhile, is coming off a career season where he reestablished himself as one of the best power forwards in the game.
Where do they need improvement?
Portland already has nice talent at every position, so their need was to find a superstar and they now have two to choose from. Everyone knows that you needs superstars in order to contend and that it is very difficult to even make the playoffs in the Western Conference with fringe All-Stars.
Who they should target?
- Greg Oden, Ohio State:
If you every basketball player alive were thrown into a pool and I could select just one of them, I would select Oden without a second thought in my mind. This would include putting the likes of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, etc. into the pool.
Not only will he dominate games in which he excels, he will at the very least have a dominant influence on games in which he is average.
Shaquille O’Neal helped make Penny Hardaway, Kobe Wade and Wade into preeminent superstars while Tim Duncan has turned Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili into All-Stars. O’Neal has four rings, while Duncan is on the verge of his fourth and I will be shocked if Oden doesn’t have at least four by the end of his career.
- Kevin Durant, Texas:
The closer you look at the development of Aldridge, the more you realize that Portland actually does have a decision to make. Aldridge had an excellent second half of the season, so if you were to be fully comfortable with him as a top-five center, then taking a player who projects to be Michael Jordan with a better perimeter shot in the body of Kevin Garnett, then you must be very tempted.
Picks since 2000
The 2002 Draft was the pinnacle of the JailBlazers era when they drafted Qyntel Woods. They have since gone with heady players who avoid the law, with Telfair being the exception.
The 2006 Draft was one of the finest pieces of GM work in recent memory and offsets the mistake of passing on Deron Williams and Chris Paul in 2005 merely because they had drafted Telfair a year earlier. Fate cannot be messed with, so there’s no guaranteeing the pingpong balls would have behaved appropriately with a different record, but having either of those point guards beside Oden and Roy is a somewhat painful dream.
2006
LaMarcus Aldridge, 2nd
Brandon Roy, 6th
Sergio Rodriguez, 27th
Joel Freeland, 30th
2005
Martell Webster, 6th
Jarrett Jack, 22nd
Ricky Sanchez, 35th
2004
Sebastian Telfair, 13th
Viktor Khryapa, 22nd
Segei Monia, 23rd
Ha Seung-Jin, 46th
2003
Travis Outlaw, 23rd
Nedžad Sinanović ,54th
2002
Qyntel Woods, 21st
Jason Jennings, 43rd
Federico Kammerichs, 51st
2001
Zach Randolph, 19th
Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, 50th
2000
Erick Barkley, 28th |
