Larry Miller is leaving the Blazers to go back to the Jordan brand. Credit: Craig Mitchelldyer-US PRESSWIRE

The Portland Trail Blazers have announced today that their President Larry Miller has stepped down, effective immediately.

Here’s the press release in its entirety:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Larry Miller has resigned as President of the Portland Trail Blazers to take a job with a Portland-area company, the team announced on Saturday.

“I greatly enjoyed my time with the Portland Trail Blazers,” said Larry Miller. “It was an incredible experience and I’ll be forever grateful to Paul Allen for giving me the opportunity and honor to lead what I believe to be one of the best teams in all of sports.”

Under Miller’s leadership, the Trail Blazers recorded three consecutive trips to the postseason from 2009-11 for the first time since 2001-03. The Trail Blazers won 54 games and shared the Northwest Division crown in 2008-09, the team’s first division title since 1998-99.

“The timing is right,” said Miller. “We have an excellent general manager in place in Neil Olshey, so I feel the team is on solid ground and headed in the right direction. Off the court, business is great. The Rose Garden is packed every night and the passion of Trail Blazers fans has never been better.”

Also since Miller’s arrival, the Trail Blazers are riding a streak of 192 consecutive sellouts, dating back to Dec. 21, 2007. Portland has led the Western Conference in average home attendance for each of the past four seasons.

“It is sad to see Larry leaving the Blazers and I want to thank him for his leadership and contributions to the franchise,” said Owner Paul Allen . “Larry helped manage a period of significant growth and I wish him all the best as he takes on this opportunity.”

Also during his tenure, the Trail Blazers made significant strides in becoming a leader in sustainability among professional sports franchises. The Rose Garden became the first existing arena in the world to attain LEED Gold Certification.

With Miller’s departure, basketball operations will report through General Manager Neil Olshey and business operations will report through Chief Operating Officer Sarah Mensah. A search for a replacement for Miller will begin immediately.

Prior to joining the Trail Blazers, Miller served as President of the Jordan Brand from 1999-2006. He’s also held executive management positions with Jantzen, Kraft, Philadelphia Newspapers, Campbell’s Soup, Converse and Nike.

Miller was hired in 2007 to replace out-going President and General Manager Steve Patterson, who was at the helm during one of the Blazers’ least successful runs as a franchise. Miller’s tenure will be most likely remembered for things like injuries to Greg Oden and Brandon Roy, the unexpected and earth-shattering firings of Tom Penn and Kevin Pritchard, and the short-lived Rich Cho era. Miller will also be remembered for not saying a whole lot in press conferences.

An incident such as this will serve to remind Blazer fans that everything is always a little in flux in the NBA in general and Portland’s front office specifically. It will give us a chance to grouse both about Larry Miller’s ineffectualness as the mouthpiece of the franchise, and the franchise’s inability to stay out of the “team that’s falling apart” section of the sports Twitter-sphere.

In this scenario it seems that we can have it both ways; it makes perfect sense that we can be justified in saying Portland did wrong in their choice for Team President and also made a poor showing in not providing a culture in which said loser President could effectively thrive.

A pretty good sense of what Twitter is saying about Larry Miller can be had by looking at Ben Golliver’s feed (side note, Ben hit Twitter pay-dirt down in Las Vegas the other day while watching and Tweeting about Team U.S.A.’s pre-Olympic training camp). Here, here, and here are good examples.

Personally, I was never really sure what Larry Miller did. That doesn’t mean I thought he didn’t do anything. I doubt that his absence will be jarring or even noticeable, but I do tend to agree that it doesn’t look too good on the whole that this franchise can’t seem to stay out of “ZOMG LOOK AT HOW THIS TEAM CONTINUES TO IMPLODE” territory.

Here’s my favorite Larry Miller video:

email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

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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Larry Miller addressed the media in his official capacity for the first time since the start of the lockout. Verdict? It's all good. Photo courtesy of the Oregonian.

If you thought there was going to be any grace period between the tentative announcement that we might actually get a season and the re-birth of the Blazer media machine I hate to have to be the one to break this news to you. You were wrong.

Not directly on the heels of Monday’s spat of Brandon Roy related speculation, and also not a direct response to said speculation, the Blazers hosted their first official press conference Wednesday afternoon. Undoubtedly teams across the land were jumping at their first opportunity to address the press officially, but it’s unlikely many teams will come into the upcoming weeks with quite as much hanging over them as Portland.

The team is still without a General Manager, Paul Allen is suddenly a super villain in the eyes of NBA fans, Greg Oden’s rehabilitation continues to limp along, and of course Brandon”Amnesty” Roy. Team President Larry Miller addressed these issues in true Blazer fashion, meaning he danced around some of the harder questions and expertly put on the positive face.

Ben at Blazersedge has a full word-for-word transcript, but here’s a brief re-cap. Brandon will be in training camp, and interim GM Chad Buchanan committed the cardinal sin of calling a person at six in the morning. Greg Oden will not be ready to play by Christmas. The Blazers still don’t have a GM, and won’t have one for awhile. Portland will play a TBD home-and-home preseason against the Utah Jazz. And Paul Allen was unfairly victimized and we should all feel sorry for him. That, and a healthy Blazer roster can contend with any team in the league.

We’ve heard the positive spin before, and I wasn’t present at the presser so I can’t speak to whether or not Larry’s palms were sweating or he kept glancing at the ceiling when he positively spun his yarn. But this time I think I’m just going to go with it. I agree Larry, a healthy Greg and a healthy Brandon will be a really good thing. And I trust PA that whatever schnook he finds to replace Rich Cho will be the best guy for the job.

Let’s be honest guys, we have all season to complain about Larry Miller dodging questions and playing babe in the woods, and about Paul Allen just in general, and about how the Trail Blazers lack for convincing managerial leadership. Right now I’m happy enough that the league is back, and that at some point in the next 30 days there will be games, and that for now it looks like Brandon Roy is still a Blazer.

Isn’t it nice to be back?

email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject