We're Flynnished

Nearly six years ago, I officially became a Blazers fan. As a long-time Seattleite and NBA fan, I rooted for the Sonics, but with them being a perennial lottery team and a move looking imminent, I didn't have one team in particular. On June 28, 2006, this all changed.

With Mr. Sonic himself, Nate McMillan in as coach, the Blazers were looking to turn around the team's Jailblazer image. The Blazers kicked things off by trading up to acquire arguably the top prospect in the draft in LaMarcus Aldridge (the pick they traded became enigmatic role player Tyrus Thomas). Then, we witnessed the unofficial first Pritch-Slap: draft bust Sebastian Telfair (and swapping Theo Ratliff's 2 year albatross for Raef LaFrentz's 3 year albatross) for the 7th overall pick, which was ultimately traded for the 6th pick: University of Washington's Brandon Roy.

I could go and write an essay about Brandon Roy's brief career and all the great moments I had, but that's for better writers with serious blogs to do.

Three months ago, I was filled with hope. Brandon Roy's corpse was retiring and his albatross salary was coming off the books. After a season in which Roy only hurt the team (save for a certain fourth quarter in the playoffs), the Blazers were able to reload and get some guys with knee cartilage.

Unfortunately, with the off-season trade of Andre Miler, Roy's departure cost the team its heart. After a good start that saw the team get hyped by Barkley and was backed up by an awesome point differential, Crawful's chucking, Felton missing every shot, Oden's broken knees, it didn't matter.

Then came the narrow losses "If a couple bounces went the other way, we'd be first, not fourth". But then they fell to fifth, then sixth, and the stupid losses kept piling up. Until the other night's game - Nate's last, I hoped that adding a better point guard who could take final shots (Nash!) could still get this team to a Cinderella conference finals berth, but when they lost by 42 to the sub-.500 New York Knicks, it was time to take off the Rose Garden Tinted Glasses and realize: it's over.

The next day, the Blazers did what had to be done. Instead of trading for Paul Pierce (who was apparently offered), they realized a rebuild was the way to go. Camby, gone. Crash, gone. Nate, gone. Oden, gone.

What did we get in return?

But Thabust was actually the best player (besides the top 3 protected Nets pick of course) we got, as Okur and Shawne Williams are out for the year, and Jonny Flynn, well...

When I went to google "Jonny Flynn basketball reference" to show you guys how bad he is, before I finished, it auto-completed "Jonny Flynn bust". Raymond Felton has the dubious distinction of having more shot attempts than points this season. Flynn has turned that into an art form, having scored 316 points on 337 shot attempts these last two seasons. His career offensive and defensive ratings are 94 and 114 respectively, so if we want a top 3 pick of our own, I'm thinking he should be playing 40 minutes per game.