Archive for July, 2010

From the twitter of Newsday‘s New York Knicks beat writer Alan Hahn: Source tells Newsday the Knicks have nothing Blazers want to make trade for Rudy Fernandez. POR wants 1st rnder. NY can’t offer until 2014. More on Rudy Fernandez/Knicks scenario: NYK doesn’t want to give up Chandler, even to get a 3rd team involved to include pick. Anthony Randolph works in 1-for-1 deal for Fernandez, but POR has abundance of wings as it is. Move Rudy for pick gets them under tax. Continuing with the Rudy speculation on this Wednesday was this news from New York. On paper, Fernandez [...]

From CelticsBlog.com‘s Tom Halzack: The Boston Celtics are currently in the ‘lead position’ in negotiations with the Portland Trailblazers for Rudy Fernandez, according to a source. They have been in serious discussions since yesterday. Other teams interested including New York and Chicago, but the Celtics are apparently getting the first shot, thus allowing one to assume they are a preferred destination, either in terms of desirability for Rudy or trading pieces for the Blazers. Now this may be good news for Celtics fans and bad news for Rudy fans. This news however makes my eyebrows rise up. Taking a look [...]

What you’re reading now was, for weeks, a blank page staring at me. But deadlines tend to weigh those stiff fingers down on to the keys, and today was the day when I had to stop. Stop here, that is, at The Rip City Project, and there is seemingly no way to do it while escaping hints of self-importance. Thanks to a grandiose smile from Lady Fortune, I am going to work for the Miami Heat, a position taken before, and made quite interesting by, the choices of a few others. I’ll be doing in Miami, not South Beach, many [...]

From Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, in a longer piece about Chris Paul falling in with LeBron James’ management team: Worldwide Wes was responsible for Oklahoma City Thunder executive Rich Cho getting hired as the Portland Trail Blazers’ GM. Now, Portland is one more franchise under the impression that Wes can broker a trade for Paul.

From ESPN’s Chris Broussard, who aced the Miami coup a couple weeks ago, says this about Chris Paul: Orlando, where he could team with superstar center Dwight Howard, is the second team on Paul’s list, which includes Dallas and then Portland, according to sources. If they are not presented with realistic scenarios that convince Paul that New Orleans can build a contender very quickly, he’ll ask the club to begin speaking to the Knicks, Magic, Mavericks and Trail Blazers about possible trades. Not that it really matters where CP3 wants to go, since he’s not an impending free agent, but [...]

From The Oregonian’s Jason Quick, Nate McMillan has filled out his gutted staff: Trail Blazers legend Buck Williams will be one of three assistants to join coach Nate McMillan’s staff for the 2010-11 season, McMillan said Wednesday. Williams will join Bernie Bickerstaff and Bob Ociepka as new additions, with an official announcement coming early next week. I’m going to reserve judgement on the latter two, particularly because I haven’t heard or read many strong opinions on either recently — that could be both good and bad — but I see no problems with Williams essentially being the big-man replacement for [...]

From BlazersEdge comes HoopsHype’s translation of Rudy Fernandez’ interview in El Mundo Deportivo: Rudy Fernandez: “If I could reach an agreement with Portland, so that they would not trade me to another NBA team and they would accept my return to Europe, I’d be pleased.” “My agents are looking for the best trade for me, but at the end of the day only Portland can decide.” Well, Blazer fans, it seems as if everything is back to normal. Summer League is over, a General Manager is in place, and there’s a rumor from a Spanish newspaper about how badly Rudy [...]

Rich Cho is coming to the Portland Trail Blazers by way of Oklahoma City and Seattle, and I’m not sure the Blazers could have possibly done any better among the league’s available personnel. There could be some hidden mastermind out there that will someday put together another monster, but for the relatively known quantities in NBA front offices, Portland found as perfect a fit as possible. And we do not throw out the word “perfect” all willy nilly. First off, Cho is a Northwest guy. Public relations will spin that every which way to rebuild the community bridge that was [...]

From Ben Golliver of Blazersedge on Twitter: Rich Cho will be announced today as Portland’s next General Manager. That’s what you call damage control. Cho was easily the best candidate of the bunch, coming out of Sam Presti’s system in Oklahoma City, and probably the most similar to Kevin Pritchard. That said, in being similar to KP, we’ll see now whether he can appease Paul Allen with that “one big move” people in the organization seem to be clamoring for. But today, finally, the Blazers made the smart choice. ESPN’s John Hollinger has this to say: Took ‘em long enough, [...]

This news coming from the Salt Lake Tribune’s Ross Siler‘s twitter page: Jazz have notified Wesley Matthews reps they won’t match offer and will sign other guard. That’s Raja Bell contingent on physical. This makes it official that Wesley Matthews will join the Blazers. Interestingly enough, the Jazz look to re-load immediately with Raja Bell which means we may have overpaid Matthews without hurting the Jazz. Welcome to Rip City Mr. Matthews.