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Inside the NBA Posted: Wednesday December 11, 2002 9:59 AMScottie Pippen sees a grim season for the overpaid, disaffected Blazers By Ian Thomsen They have the highest payroll in NBA history, yet all too often the Portland Trail Blazers act like a CBA team going nowhere. After a 103-88 loss to the visiting Mavericks on Dec. 4, which dropped Portland to 7-9, co-captain Rasheed Wallace and two other Blazers were whooping it up in the locker room as they watched a game on TV, "acting like we had won," says co-captain Scottie Pippen, who, in a wordless expression of contempt, strode past the players, flipped off the set and shut the TV cabinet doors.
He blames the team's woes on owner Paul Allen and president Bob Whitsitt, arguing that they have assembled the deepest roster in the league with little regard for team chemistry. Of Portland's current 12-man roster, only rookie Qyntel Woods doesn't believe he should be getting at least 20 minutes per game. Though Pippen owns six championship rings, he bristles because management hasn't sought his advice on player acquisitions. "You're talking about the wealthiest guy in the world," says Pippen. "Why is he going to consult with me?" When it is suggested that Allen's wealth doesn't mean he understands the dynamics of winning basketball, Pippen answers: "I noticed." Whitsitt dismisses the complaints about roster turnover, pointing out that the top seven players returned from a team that closed out the regular season on a 36-15 run. The core of Wallace, Pippen, Bonzi Wells, Dale Davis, Damon Stoudamire and Arvydas Sabonis have played in Portland three to seven years. "Maybe it's wrong that they've been here that long, but that's pretty strong continuity," says Whitsitt, who is tired of being the whipping boy for the franchise's problems. "It's never [the fault of] the players. It's never the coaches. If the water's bad in the Willamette [River], it's because of Bob Whitsitt." Whitsitt's reputation has been damaged most by his association with Wallace, who has been the team's dominant figure since Brian Grant was dealt two years ago in the trade that brought Shawn Kemp to Portland. When Blazers fans accuse Whitsitt of having a blind spot to issues of character, they cite the fact that the team is built around the immense talents of Wallace -- even though at 28 he has exhibited neither the sense of responsibility nor the discipline of a player capable of leading Portland to the championship, which is embarrassingly obvious to the rest of the league. Whitsitt appears to be getting the message. Asked point-blank if his team is still built around Wallace, Whitsitt says -- albeit in a passive, roundabout way -- that Wallace is not a franchise player. "In a perfect world we all would love to have a superstar, or two superstars ... Michael Jordan, Shaquille [O'Neal], Tim Duncan," says Whitsitt, who has never had a lottery pick in his eight years with Portland. "Most of us don't have those guys, so you have to do it a different way. We are grinding and grinding and trying to get as many good players to fit together as much as possible." The Blazers are a franchise of excess. When the luxury tax makes its long-anticipated debut this summer, Allen will owe the league some $50 million for his $105 million payroll. That means he'll be paying $155 million -- a total rivaled only by George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees -- for a team that's touch-and-go just to make the playoffs. After losing more than $40 million last year, tops in the NBA, the Blazers could be $100 million in the red this season. But instead of getting any credit for spending freely in their quest to win a championship, says Whitsitt, "we're getting beat up for it." At the same time, Whitsitt empathizes with fans turned off by the so-called Jail Blazers. Last Friday, Wallace and Damon Stoudamire entered not guilty pleas to misdemeanor possession of marijuana, even though the police report states that both players admitted they had been smoking pot in a car on Nov. 22; each faces a minimum of 24 hours in jail if convicted. Charges of felony domestic assault against Ruben Patterson were dropped last week after his wife refused to cooperate with the prosecution, though she had told the 911 dispatcher that her husband "tried to f------ choke me." Whitsitt fined Patterson $100,000 and threatened additional fines of $10,000 for every day that he fails to receive "appropriate counseling" (penalties that the players' association is likely to appeal). For his part, Whitsitt has promised to stop taking risks on players like Patterson, a registered sex offender whom Portland signed as a free agent in the summer of 2001, just two months after Patterson had entered a modified plea to attempted rape for allegedly forcing his children's nanny to perform a sex act while his wife was in the hospital for surgery. But Pippen says Whitsitt has to go a step further and realize that the team's problems are multiplied by its abundance of talented players. The Blazers would show more discipline if they were focused on the common goal of winning; instead, teammates are competing against one another for minutes. "Good teams have a focus," says Pippen, who hasn't decided if he will retire after this season. "Winning on a basketball court is able to help you to overcome any type of incident, and to help people forgive and to forget. We're not winning. So ain't nobody forgiving us, ain't nobody forgetting about the incidents that have happened. We don't give them a reason to like us." While Whitsitt's primary goal is to bring down the payroll by letting Pippen's contract run out at a savings of $39.4 million in salary and luxury taxes next season, he says he might move Pippen for promising young players to try to take Portland in a new direction. But who would the Blazers turn to then for leadership -- Rasheed Wallace?
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