The Backup PF Quandary

Today I want to look at one of the Blazers greatest perceived needs from last year, and how they’ve succeeded in addressing it this offseason through the draft, trades, and free agency.  Or, in this case, I should say how they have failed in addressing the need, because that’s exactly what’s happened so far.  Let’s look at the power forward (PF) position, and specifically assess what the team has behind LaMarcus Aldridge.  How do those players complement or supplement what Aldridge brings?

Last year the Blazers had a problem at the PF position.  Aldridge is a great young PF, but he plays a specific brand of ball.  Namely, he scores the rock and shoots the lights out, especially for a guy so young.  He’s (and I know this label pisses off Aldridge) primarily a “finesse player”.  He’s taken some strides in adding grit to his game, and I think he can go even further with that this year, but he’s always going to be a smooth, scoring power forward.  When you can shoot the ball like Aldridge, it’s not like you’re going to stop taking open jump shots.  For this kid, it’s about developing the other aspects of his game so he’s not out of his element when good defenses take away his strengths.

Okay, so I started out by saying Portland had a problem, but then ended up extolling on how good Aldridge is – what’s the problem then?  The problem is the other players that Portland had behind Aldridge (and in some cases, alongside him).  They were redundant to what Aldridge brings to the court.  Channing Frye was a less-talented version of Aldridge, and there’s very little to disagree on there.  Frye came in the game and immediately started launching jumpers, in some cases from beyond 18 feet.  This is not the sort of complement you want to a scoring, pick & roll forward like Aldridge at all.  Much like running backs in football, you want a “change of pace” from your backup.  Frye was just a degraded version of the starter he would replace.  This, of course, is the big reason the Blazers let him walk this off-season and join the Suns.

Let’s take it a step further; the top of the list of “needs” for the Blazers after losing the Houston series, and you can quote Brandon Roy on this, was to get “grittier”.  Roy voiced it perfectly.  The Blazers needed a guy who could come in the game and get mean.  They needed a forceful rebounder that would be willing to come in and do the dirty work: knock opponents around in the paint and get the ball for Portland; an enforcer, someone who would make an immediate impact in games, training camp, practices, and at all levels.  Championship teams all have players like this, and they don’t always have to be big men.  Leon Powe killed the Lakers two years ago.  Last year, Lamar Odom dominated off the bench for the Lakers.  James Posey, a defensive-minded small forward, is another great example.  The Blazers needed a gritty role player like this, and the Houston series could not have better exposed the gap.  How did they fill the need?

The first chance that they had to fill this need was in pre-draft trades.  There were a lot of trade rumors surrounding the Blazers, and you could tell that they were on the phone a lot.  In fact, you almost got the sense that they were on the phone too much.  Was Pritchard like that annoying guy in your fantasy sports league (if you’ve done fantasy sports, you’ll appreciate this analogy more) who constantly offers you horrible trades?  Eventually, this turns off potential trade partners from dealing with you.  If you followed the Blazers much prior to this year’s draft, you definitely got the sense that Portland might have profited from picking their shots a little more with prospective trades.  In the end, nothing materialized.

The second chance Portland had at filling this need, and the place where I think they ultimately dropped the ball, was in the 2009 draft itself.  If you were to pick out two players in the draft that best fit the needs of “intensity, defense, rebounding, etc.”, you would have had a short list with DeJaun Blair and Tyler Hansbrough at the head.  From what I’ve read post-draft, the Blazers really wanted Hansbrough.  Indiana stole their thunder there, but what about Blair?  Yes, we all know about his infamous MRI at the pre-draft combine that revealed issues with his ACL’s, but the guy flat out dominated on those knees in the NCAA and powered his team to contention for the collegiate basketball title.  Surely, he’s shown enough to warrant a relatively low-risk second round pick, right?  This is a player that meets all of the criteria for the role player that Portland desperately needs.  Has there been a rebounder to come into the draft, available in the late-first or second round, that better fits Portland’s needs?  Okay, perhaps Paul Millsap (more on him in a second), but how great would it be to get a Paul Millsap for Portland?  For relatively pennies on the dollar, they could have filled one of their biggest holes, but they passed on Blair three times and ended up taking a Travis Outlaw clone (Cunningham) and a guy (Jeff Pendergraph) with perhaps 1/16th the resume of Blair.  As an educated Portland fan, I’m already dumbfounded in June, well before Pendergraph undergoes hip surgery that will sideline him for most of the season (groan).

Okay, I’ve gotten that off my chest.  Obviously, I think they failed big time when it came to filling this need for a backup PF in the 2009 draft.  Free agency offers the last chance to get something – some sort of answer to Roy’s call for “grit” and to fill the hole left by Frye.  Following the failed courtship of Turkoglu, the Blazers made the well publicized “toxic” offer to Utah’s Paul Millsap for four years, $32 million.  This would have been overkill, paying starter’s money for a role player.  In a way, Portland got lucky when Utah decided to match this offer sheet.  They did not need to “go nuclear” in the attempt to kill this problem of having a tough player off the bench.  Still, it would have addressed the concern.  What’s the backup plan now that big names like Millsap, Gortat, Bass (okay, “big names” being relative to this year’s free agency…) are off the table?   How about a Joe Smith?  He’s gone, but he wouldn’t have been bad.  The Blazers let pass on several options here, probably wisely considering the price tags on most of these big men.  I think it just goes further to show how much they blew it not taking the cheap option of drafting DeJuan Blair in the 2nd round.  Worse, they gave that steal to the Spurs!

Where do things stand now?  The latest news is that Portland is auditioning the likes of Juwan Howard, Stromile Swift, Jarron Collins, and Greg Ostertag.  Yes, I said Greg Ostertag!!  This, my friends, is the absolute definition of scraping the bottom of the barrel.  In fact, looking at Ostertag probably equates to digging for worms underneath the rotting underside of the barrel.  Out of this list of candidates, Howard is probably the best bet at making an impact.  Sure, he’s ancient, but he did contribute 10 points and 6 rebounds in a meaningful role for the Rockets in 2007.  If his body still has something left, he might be an interesting add for Portland.  He’s smart, experienced, and will make a positive impact off the floor.  On a team loaded with young players, he can be the wise elder.  Still, he’s not going to be an enforcer like PJ Brown was at an advanced age.  Even in his prime, Howard was far from that type of player.  I still think the Blazers will be missing something.  Oh, and I’m not going to waste time talking about Swift or Collins.  Collins is simply a big body for Aldridge to humiliate in practices.  The guy is soft, and cannot be further from what Portland needs.  Swift was once a great athlete, but there’s a reason he’s one of the biggest busts in draft history.  He has a negative basketball IQ, and you never want to spend much time on a player like that.

I think Howard might stick with Portland, but they’ll still need something else.  Word is that Pendergraph might be able to play by December, but I wouldn’t count on it.  That’s quite the optimistic timeline for hip surgery, and he would have missed all of training camp and preseason.  Chances are he won’t contribute much this year at all.  Nope, it’s looking more and more like the Blazers will rely on Travis Outlaw to play heavy minutes at backup PF, which should scare Blazer fans.  Outlaw might bother some players with his length, but he’s not going to be able to bang with the tall trees and get the team rebounds when they need them.  Not only is it not his game, it’s not what he’s physically built to do.  The Blazers still need a big, athletic, rebound-minded forward.  Someone who can do what Brandon Bass would have done (if they had gone out and spent on him), or what DeJaun Blair will do for the Spurs this year (on the cheap too… what a friggin’ steal).  Who is going to do that?  Nobody on their current roster.  My prediction is that Portland’s need will again be exposed in the first half of the 2009-2010 season, and that they’ll be active in the pre-deadline trade market for this exact commodity.  Chances are that they’ll have to give up some pretty good talent to get the need filled.  This is a shame, considering they had three chances at the perfect role player in June, and passed him up.

Tags: Add new tag, Brandon Bass, Brandon Roy, Channing Frye, DeJuan Blair, Greg Ostertag, James Posey, Jarron Collins, Jeff Pendergraph, Joe Smith, Juwan Howard, Lamar Odom, LaMarcus Aldridge, Leon Powe, Marcin Gortat, Paul Millsap, Stromile Swift, Travis Outlaw, Tyler Hansbrough