The Basketball Jones comes to Portland today. Be there.

There’s now an offer on the table, and it looks like the players aren’t even willing to entertain it. So that’s pretty depressing.

But have no fear, basketball fans of Portland, there are some things happening this very day that might make you feel a little less depressed. I’m going to qualify that might, because there’s some people–and I count myself as one of these people–that might actually be more depressed by seeing fake professional basketball instead of real professional basketball. But whatever. Moving on.

Today the world-famous Basketball Jones will be taping a live podcast at On Deck in the Pearl. According to Wikipedia:

The Basketball Jones is a video podcast, blog, and television program that analyzes, and often satirizes the National Basketball Association.

Sounds like a lot of fun. TBJ’s guests in Portland will be Ben Golliver from Blazersedge et al. and Dwight Jaynes from Comcast Sports Northwest. Blazersedge has more information on the proceedings, and there is a Facebook event page if you are a person so inclined to do that type of thing.

Following directly on the heels of the podcast extravaganza is the thing we’ve been anxiously waiting for since LaMarcus Aldridge sent the Blazer twittersphere into a buzz not too many months ago.  The Rip City Basketball Classic (which is in no way affiliated with this blog although feel free to tell people that it is) will commence at 7:30 PM at the University of Portland’s Chiles Center.

As of this moment, the rosters for this game are as follows:

Home Team: LaMarcus Aldridge, Raymond Felton, Jamal Crawford, Wesley Matthews, Josh Howard, Steve Blake, and some guy named Craig Winder.

Away Team: TJ Ford, Brandon Roy, Terrance Williams, Chris Johnson, Isiah Thomas (from UW not IU), Nate Robinson, Jeff Pendergraph, and a dude named Kevin Durant.

This should be an interesting little game. Of course there won’t be much defense, and any resemblance to an NBA game will be circumstantial and completely unintentional. What will be interesting though will be to see how well Ray Felton dishes to his new teammates Wesley Matthews and LaMarcus Aldridge. Also, Jamal Crawford and TJ Ford have been two names thrown around in the past as guys that might not look so bad in a Blazer jersey. And of course, there’s always Brandon Roy.

If there is an NBA season–and I’m not saying there will be–and the new CBA has an amnesty clause, there’s a good chance (and by good I mean in the 80 to 90 percent range) that Portland will amnesty Brandon. That issue is a topic for a different blog post on a different day, especially since it’s pure speculation at this point as to there being either a season or an amnesty clause in the fictitious new CBA and this post is supposed to be about things that aren’t depressing, but if Brandon’s days as a Blazer are numbered, there’s no time better than the present to prepare for his departure.

I’m glad I could end this on such a happy note. Oh well, at least for today maybe we’ll be distracted by basketball related stuff to forget that we may not get basketball back for quite a while.

email me: mike@ripcityproject.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject