Oden, inexperienced Blazers will need time to develop

	Top pick Greg Oden is part of a Blazers team that is shaping up to be one of the youngest in the NBA. AP

Also in this column:
• New Sonics coach now a real pro
• Wild ride for a second-round pick

Before their fans start measuring for a second championship banner in Portland, they need to be reminded: The Trail Blazers are on a three-to-five-year plan to build a contender.

It took Bill Walton three years to make the playoffs when he arrived in Portland, and as a 22-year-old senior and three-time college player of the year, he was much more the finished product than 19-year-old freshman Greg Oden will be. Oden still must be taught everything that Walton already had learned from John Wooden.

Patience will be essential because Oden has no elder teammates capable of dominating the game during his apprenticeship. The roster is extraordinarily young. Other than secondary big men Raef LaFrentz and Joel Przybilla, no Blazer under contract has more than two years of NBA experience.

The Blazers insist next year's roster is still under construction, and that a few older players may be added over the summer. But for the sake of their long-term plan, the bulk of the minutes must go to youngsters like Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Martell Webster and Sergio Rodriguez, all of whom will be playing for Portland's summer-league team that makes its debut Friday night in Las Vegas. To their credit, the Blazers must be protective of the cap space they earned by moving Zach Randolph to New York: In the summer of 2009, they could have upwards of $25 million to spend on free agents to help push Oden over the threshold.

The other issue I have with the Blazers' roster is that they have too many nice guys. Steve Nash is proof that toughness and civility aren't mutually exclusive. But the Blazers need to be careful about taking their new "culture'' to a place that doesn't make room for the kinds of players who fight for wins in the crunch.

But they have the right coach in Nate McMillan, who will instill that toughness if he doesn't go out of his mind teaching so many youngsters the NBA fundamentals. As much as McMillan wants some older players in his locker room, he is wary of bringing in the wrong type of character too.

The bottom line is promising: a potential franchise star in Oden, a horde of young talent to grow with him, cap space in two years and an owner who won't be afraid to spend it. It's a creative plan that should eventually remake Portland as one of the league's top destinations. But first the Blazers will have to endure another season in the ballpark of the 50 losses they suffered last season -- an investment in Oden's future.

Carlesimo is now a real pro

When it comes to teams with zero hope of contending, no coach will be scrutinized as minutely as new Sonics hire P.J. Carlesimo. It has been 10 years since he was throttled by Latrell Sprewell, yet that incident continues to define him.

I remember talking to Carlesimo a few months after Sprewell was suspended for the worst kind of mutiny. Understood at the time was that Carlesimo had provoked the insurrection, and I asked him whether it was asking too much of a college-trained coach like himself to deal with NBA players. There was no good answer: The Sprewell incident was proof that the NCAA authoritarian style is doomed in the NBA, where coaches must form partnerships with their richer, more secure players.

When I talked to Carlesimo a decade ago, I saw him as a college coach who had spent his entire career at Fordham, New Hampshire College, Wagner and Seton Hall before becoming head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers just three years before he was attacked by Sprewell. So here's the crucial difference today: Carlesimo isn't a college coach any longer. No longer do I feel like I'm talking with an alien to the pro game. He's a fully naturalized citizen of the NBA. He has lost his NCAA accent.

Five seasons as an assistant to Spurs coach Gregg Popovich have endowed Carlesimo with the credibility he lacked when he tried to jump straight from college to a No. 1 seat in the NBA. People will be watching closely to see if he can get along with his players, but if that is Carlesimo's goal, then he'll be making a big mistake. Instead, he must explore common ground with his players that will enable him to exact discipline while maintaining their cooperation. Let's give him credit for growing wiser and learning how to talk to players without inciting them to violence.

And recognize too that there isn't a coach in the league who doesn't have issues with his players. Carlesimo needs to clash with them occasionally -- he won't be earning his money otherwise -- and he can't let the Sprewell incident weaken his standards of right and wrong. People are going to bring up his past no matter what he does. I would imagine he'll invest a lot of time building relationships with his key players that will withstand the scrutiny.