The Portland Trail Blazers waived Gred Oden in 2012. Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

We’re halfway through December, meaning that there are only a few weeks left in 2012. The last year has been one of ups and downs for the Blazers. As fans, we’re in probably the best position we could ask to be in: we started 2012 watching a team self-destruct and we’ll finish the year watching a young team starting to come into its own way ahead of schedule.

To prepare you for the end of the calendar year, here are my top stories of 2012.

The Sell Off

The day: March 15^th 2012. The night before the Blazers fell in shameful fashion 121-79 to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Back home, the Rose Garden was hosting the second and third rounds of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. On the East Coast, the Blazers were struggling through a seven-game roadie and sitting on a 20-23 record. A 7-2 start, a top seed in the Western Conference, and the promise of a bright future long in the rear view, it was time to make a change.

The first shoe to drop was head coach Nate McMillan. Many speculated the Blazers would wait for 2011-12 to end before brass decided to make a move in the head-coaching department. They speculated wrong.

Marcus Camby followed McMillan out the door. The veteran center, brought to the Rose City to try and make people forget that Greg Oden was a bust and Joel Przybilla was well Joel Przybilla, was a fan favorite, but wasn’t they type of player a bad team should be carrying if they are serious about rebuilding. Camby’s parting was amicable. His time in Portland was not great but memorable enough. Camby’s replacements, Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn, were also not guys to build around, but they were also not guys anybody would blame for losses or miss when the season ended and they moved on to other locations.

The Blazers’ March 15^th fire sale continued, though, and the next trade was the one that mattered. Portland flipped Gerald Wallace the then New Jersey now Brooklyn Nets for Memhet Okur, Shawne Williams, and a top-three protected first round pick. The Blazers waived Okur to make room for J.J. Hickson (who they pulled off the waiver wire), and Willams was bought out after the season (as a side note, Williams has found himself in hot water recently following his inability to find a job as a professional basketball player). The pick mattered.

What also mattered was how Gerald Wallace left town. Crash came in more as a savior than a Band-Aid. As an established young star looking for a long-term home, Wallace brought with him the hope of making the jump from first round playoff doormat to second round playoff contender. The name Gerald Wallace was tailor-made to ring out through the upper reaches of the Rose Garden. By the time the door slammed on the Wallace Era, though, there was rampant speculation that he had been the voice of dissent poisoning the Blazers’ locker room (or at least he play a role in locker room poisoning). Beyond that too, Portland fans complained of Wallace phoning it in during 2011-12, and then quitting on his team when the going got rough.

Whatever the case may be, whether he dogged it and quit or simply wasn’t as good as advertised, not very many people were sad to see Crash exit, a real shock considering the relative fanfare around Wallace’s long-term Blazer potential following the 2010-11 trade that brought him over.

As almost an afterthought, Portland parted ways with first overall pick Greg Oden on March 15^th. The time had come to waive good-bye to one of the most disappointing players in Blazer history. NBA fans will remember Greg Oden as being the guy drafted before the best player of his generation; Blazer fans like me will choose to remember GO for the stretch of 2008-09 when he was healthy and looked like an important element of a dominate young team on the upswing.

Front Office Hiring and Firing

The Portland Trail Blazers unceremoniously fired General Manager Rich Cho in the spring of 2011. The team would go without an official GM for the entire debacle that was the 2011-2012 season.

Just as the player dump started slow, so too did the rebuilding of Portland’s front office. Neil Olshey, hired as GM in early June 2012, was the first brick in the new wall. Olshey came to Portland by way of the Los Angeles Clippers. His first press conference as a Blazer employee was peppered with buzzwords like “deal flow,” “no quick fixes,” and “cross mojination” (OK not that one). He very obviously meant business.

But just like no good burn-off consists of one player leaving, no rebuild worth its salt is limited to just one guy. Terry Stotts came next. Not a marquee head coach, but also not Kaleb Canales, a young guy with lots of guts and gusto but no track record of any kind. Stotts’ staid and professional manner engendered confidence that even if Portland hadn’t found the name guy that would spark the interest of the national media, they had at least gone out and found a guy who looked every inch the part of NBA head coach.

All was not well at One Center Court, though. The hiring of Olshey maybe ruffled a feather or two, or maybe usurped another executive’s authority. Hard to know exactly what happened, but early in the 2012-13 season, President Larry Miller resigned. A stalwart Paul Allen confidant, Miller had seen the team through it’s rebirth and re-demise (if such a thing exists).

Larry Miller was one of Portland’s executives to finish his term in the Rose City in 2012. Credit: Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Sports

The sudden need for a President took most in Portland by surprise, but Paul Allen and his team of Vulcans made quick work of reaching back to Los Angeles once again and bringing Chris McGowan into the fold. Fresh off overseeing a Stanley Cup win with the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, McGowan brought with him AEG bona fides. More importantly, he vowed to leave the basketball to Olshey and Stotts, and spend his day-to-day developing the business side of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Just as Olshey coming to town might have chased Larry Miller, McGowan’s hiring was followed closely by the resignation of Chief Operations Officer Sarah Mensah. Mensah had served the Blazers for 19 years, reaching the highest office held by a woman in the NBA. Rumor was, she wanted McGowan’s job and didn’t get it.

As President, McGowan trimmed some staff, leading some in the local media to question whether or not he was aware that his own demise was probably eminent considering the history of the Blazers and their owner. However, he did at a VP, proving that he can be a job creator and destroyer at the same time.

If you’re keeping score at home, the Blazers added a GM, a President, a head coach, and a couple of VPs in 2012, and lost a President, a chief executive, a couple of VPs, and a couple other high-level functionaries.

The Draft Lottery and the Draft

The NBA Draft Lottery was held at the end of May 2012. The story of the day was which team would claim the number one overall pick, and thus the right to draft University of Kentucky big man Anthony Davis to lead the re-building of their franchise. That honor fell to the New Orleans Hornets.

But The Brow Sweepstakes wasn’t why Blazer fans tuned in to watch David Stern get heckled and booed and then casually read the name of an NBA team.

When Portland blew up its roster, they brought back a top-three protected pick from the New Jersey Nets. If the Nets name came up in one of the top three spots, they retained their pick; otherwise it went to the Blazers. Brooklyn, as they were officially known by May, ended up with the sixth pick overall. That pick was Portland’s, meaning that the Blazers owned not one (they landed at 11^th overall all by themselves) but two very nice lottery picks.

Holding two high picks lead to all kinds of various scenarios. Should Portland trade both picks for a veteran All-Star? Should they trade one pick and keep one? And then of course if they keep the picks, who should they be used to pick? All those questions would be answered on Draft Night.

June 28, 2012; Newark, NJ, USA; Meyers Leonard (Illinois), right, is introduced as the number eleven overall pick to the Portland Trail Blazers by NBA commissioner David Stern during the 2012 NBA Draft at the Prudential Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

The 2012 NBA Draft was held on June 28^th 2012. As expected, Anthony Davis went first. Second through fifth went Michael Kidd-Gilchrist of Kentucky to the Charlotte Bobcats, Bradley Beal from Florida to the Washington Wizards, Dion Waiters from Syracuse to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Thomas Robinson from Kansas to the Sacramento Kings.

With their sixth pick, the Blazers selected a red-shirt junior from Weber State University. Although nobody knew too much about Damian Lillard or where exactly Weber State was, he led the nation in scoring for part of his final college season, was Big Sky Player of the year, and in three seasons of play finished as the number two scoring in Wildcats history. Lillard was projected to land in the lottery, but a string of outstanding workouts, including one in Portland, elevated his draft stock. The Blazers might have gambled on draft night, leaving Harrison Barnes, Andre Drummond, and Austin Rivers on the board, but at this point in the 2012-13 season every team short of the Hornets that drafted before Portland probably wishes they’d taken Lillard instead of the guy they chose.

The Blazers used their second lottery pick on a seven-foot sophomore from the University of Illinois. Meyers Leonard has proven to be a bit of a project, but if a legit seven-footer with a high ceiling is around at the 11^th pick, you take him.

Drama with Minnesota

This is a story in a few parts. It started long before the 2011-12 season ended and the 2012-13 off-season began. The Blazers failed to reach a deal with Nicolas Batum in the final year of his rookie contract, and when they extended him a qualifying offer at the end of 2011-12 he officially became a restricted free agent. The Minnesota Timberwolves were the first team to make an offer at the French wing. Nicolas signed Minnesota’s offer sheet on July 15^th 2012.

Batum’s free agent period was fraught with stories about his desire to play for the Timberwolves and then counter-stories retracting the initial stories saying the Nicolas wanted to be in Portland long-term. Most if not all of the news was based on conjecture. Almost everything to come out of Batum’s camp was likely done in an effort to get the absolute most money out of the Blazers.

Portland had no choice in the end. They’d lost Roy Hibbert, their big free agent target, and they couldn’t let Batum go for nothing. In the end, the Blazers locked up Batum for four years to the tune of $46 million on July 18^th, bumping Nic up to number two on Portland’s payroll.

Nic wouldn’t end up in Minnesota, but that wouldn’t be the end of the Twin Cities vs. Rose City off-season showdown.

Brandon Roy announced his retirement from the NBA just after the lockout ended and just before the 2011-12 season began. He waited a whole season, showing up at the Rose Garden one time to blindside the few Portlanders who made it out in the middle of the week to watch a bad Blazer team lose by a lot to the Milwaukee Bucks, and then in June 2012 he announced his un-retirement.

The best and most recognizable Blazer of the last decade entered the free agent market on July 1^st 2012. Only one thing was certain at the time. Regardless of how well or how long Brandon Roy’s second act was, it would be for any team in the league but the Portland Trail Blazers. It was the worst fear of some Blazer fans realized. Brandon Roy playing in the NBA wearing some other team’s colors.

That other team turned out to be once again the Minnesota Timberwolves. On July 31^st 2012, two weeks after the T-Wolves failed to land Nicolas Batum, Brandon Roy signed a two-year deal to play in Minneapolis.

With the Batum and Roy stories filling up the NBA news cycles, many people began calling the Timberwolves the Blazers of the Mid-West. The fact that Minny was also home to Pacific Northwesterners Kevin Love and Luke Ridnour, and had a coaching staff littered with former Blazer player/coaches Rick Adelman, Terry Porter, and Bill Bayno didn’t help.

Sadly for Timberwolves fans, being the Mid-West Blazers comes with some baggage. Brandon Roy went down on the 10^th of November with a sore knee that needed surgery and has yet to return, Chase Budinger (an off-season acquisition) tore his left meniscus the next day and has been out every since, and second-year player Malcolm Lee was sidelined indefinitely on the 14^th of December with cartilage damage in his right knee. Trail Blazers is synonymous with knee injuries.

Brandon Roy joined the Timberwolves in 2012, making headlines in Portland. Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

The Rise of Damian Lillard

Damian Lillard’s emergence is 2012’s most recent, and possibly biggest story. I’ll spare you all the details. Here’s what I wrote about where Damian stands in Portland’s sometimes storied sometimes sordid history of the point guard position

Here’s video evidence of Lillard’s latest feat:

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

LaMarcus Aldridge talks with Blazer play-by-play man Mike Barrett prior to the beginning of Fan Fest.

Last night the Blazers held their obligatory Fan Fest celebration in an effort to both let the community know that basketball starts pretty sure, like this coming Monday, and to introduce some of the team’s newest additions.

Along with getting a first look at Raymond Felton and Kurt Thomas in Blazer jerseys–some people saw Felton at the Rip City Basketball Classic but that wasn’t a team-sanctioned event–Blazer fans had a chance to watch Cornell seven-footer Jeff Foote get some burn and cheer for Portland native Seth Tarver one more time. They also were made privy to Craig “Rhino” Smith’s million-dollar grin and Elliot Williams’ hops, and if they looked closely they could see LaMarcus Aldridge and new Blazer sixth-man Jamal Crawford whispering like school kids. (I know all those tweets are mine, but I thought I’d run them back just in case you missed them last night.)

Something like Fan Fest is hard to quantify. As fans we see things that we like, and we are quick to make a value judgement on those things e.g. last night Raymond Felton did a good job of pushing the pace, finding open shooters and slashers in transition, and basically running the offense, and that means that the Blazers shouldn’t have to worry about the point guard position going forward. Now it’s true that Felton did a lot of those things, and will continue to do those things well. But beating up on Nolan Smith, and basically running a couple of rookies and sophomores off the court probably won’t translate when it comes to actual games against actual players.

The same is true when you flip it the other way. Everybody was sloppy, nobody could hit jumpers with any consistency, the Blazers are very limited at the center position offensively, and aren’t much better at the power forward when you take LaMarcus off the floor. READ: We’re screwed. Again, it’s just a scrimmage.

Yes Portland lacks for scorers inside, but Chris Johnson and Craig Smith are finishers (Smith didn’t play last night so there’s that), and yes Wesley Matthews and Nicolas Batum can be streaky with their Js, Eliott Williams is untested at the pro level, and Luke Babbit just plain can’t hit, but Jamal Crawford is a tested outside shooter, as is Raymond Felton. Will Portland rely on the jumper a lot? At this point is that even a valid question? Of course they will.

The hope is guys like Williams will get their sea legs early, and Wesley and Nic will learn when they’re hot and when they aren’t and will start attacking the basket to get lay-ups or free throws when the mid-range and threes aren’t falling, and that Babbitt only plays when the score is plus/minus 15. Just as we shouldn’t read too much into the good that comes out of an intra-squad scrimmage, so too should we not dwell on those things that looked bad at times and at others downright awful.

Here are my takeaways in brief:

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As interim GM, Chad Buchanan might become the guy to bring some sense to the Blazers' front office. Photo courtesy of Oregonlive.

Training camp starts Friday, preseason is two weeks away. You know what that means? More press conferences. This time it wasn’t just Larry Miller flying solo in the face of the Portland media who no doubt is already over Cliff Harris, isn’t nearly as stoked about the Rose Bowl as they were about the National Championship game, and have a lot of important questions.

OK, let me rephrase that. They’ve got ONE important questions, and a lot of other, not so important questions. Flanked by Interim General Manager Chad Buchanan and Head Coach Nate McMillan, Miller confirmed one more time that yes, Brandon Roy would be in camp on Friday, and that no they didn’t have any immediate plans to use the new CBA’s Amnesty Clause on the face of their franchise. And then Buchanan concurred, and then Nate concurred, and then Miller concurred again, and then Nate concurred on Larry’s concurrence, ad nauseaum.

Of course they did give themselves an out, saying that what needs to happen now is for Brandon to play, and they’ll make a decision depending on how that goes. But for those of you that remember a presser at the end of last season when Nate talked about the future of the team and Brandon’s name never came up, one of the overriding sentiments from Monday’s press conference was that Brandon is for now a major part of the team, and will be for the foreseeable future.

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