Posted by Knixkik:

Also, can anyone post todays insider?

Burning down the Blazers

It was New Year's Day, the Blazers were on a four-game losing streak and had just flown into town to take on the Clippers. In years past, the Clippers were a good bet to be the cure for just about anything that ailed a losing team. This year is different, but the Clippers themselves aren't without their woes.

The Clippers are a team filled with immature kids. The Blazers? A team full of immature veterans. That night the Clippers shellacked the Blazers, 112-97. Immature kids make rookie mistakes and blow games because of inexperience. Immature veterans blow games because they just don't care. Which team would you rather coach?

The Blazers lost to Toronto Wednesday night and are in the midst of a six-game losing streak -- something immature veterans never seem to handle too well. After the game veteran Scottie Pippen was tired of keeping a stiff upper lip.

"Go ahead, we didn't put this team together," Pippen told the Oregonian in a veiled shot at GM Bob Whitsitt. "So take your best shot. . .There's too many different personalities, too much yapping at the coaches, too much complaining. Where you start to win is in the locker room."

Rookie coach Maurice Cheeks is trying to bail out the ship and Trader Bob surely is burning up the phone lines, but you get the distinct impression that the team is close to blazing a trail straight to NBA purgatory.

Gives a whole new meaning to the nickname Trail Blazers, doesn't it?

Can Trader Bob fix what ails the Blazers? Sources disagree on whether he's even trying . . .

Are we overestimating the talent the Blazers really have?

Rasheed Wallace? He has the potential to be great, but it's taken him two months to get into shape and start helping this team.

Pippen? Scottie can still play when he's healthy, but his body just doesn't seem to be able to keep going.

Derek Anderson? DA was great with a veteran team last year, but this year it seems like he's cashing it in.

Damon Stoudamire? Damon tries hard but at his size, he's never going to be a real impact player on a good team.

Shawn Kemp? He can't play anymore. His whole game centered around his athleticism. He's a liability whenever he's on the court.

And Bonzi Wells? He could be great, but he's the poster child of what's wrong with the team. He's never played anywhere else in the NBA and is a byproduct of the Blazers culture.

So much for the deepest team in the NBA. Sure, Trader Bob failed chemistry in college, but how, in the name of all that is good and decent, did he put together this crew? You can almost hear Obi Wan Kenobi seethe, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy . . ."

Several league sources asked the same question. "It really makes you wonder. The Shawn Kemp thing will never cease to amaze me, but each of these deals from giving Stoudamire the max to trading away Jermaine O'Neal for Dale Davis or Steve Smith for Derek Anderson registers a certain amount of disbelief. It's as if he's actively out there collecting the renegades."

Maybe we should call him Darth Whitsitt. He even makes the Bulls' Jerry Krause sound less nefarious. If nothing else, Whitsitt is predictable. He worked hard to get malcontent Gary Payton this summer, traded for Isaiah Rider way back when and even his first-round draft pick this year, Zach Randolph, had a rap sheet that scared off many teams.

Is he learning from the ghosts of Blazers past? League sources close to the Blazers say that, for the first time, he has opened the door to shipping off Wallace before the deadline in an effort to shake up this team and make it more enticing to Jeff Van Gundy when the Blazers pursue the coach next summer. (Memo to Jeff: You think you had it bad in New York?) Of course Stoudamire, Wells and Davis will be shopped too. Kemp and Pippen, because of their age and huge contracts, are virtually untradeable.

Wallace has more value than anyone else on the Blazers despite all of his woes. The team brought in Cheeks to help calm Wallace down. The plan may have worked too well. Wallace has only eight technicals this year and no ejections, but seems passive on both ends of the court, settling for jumpers on the offensive end and not rejecting shots on the defensive end.

Said one league source, "He just needs someone to show him how to win. If he was the number two guy behind a veteran, someone like Michael Jordan, he'd be phenomenal. The problem is he just doesn't want to be the man. I'm not sure he even knows how. The Blazers are counting on him, as their best player, to lead them to the next level, but that's now what he's about. But on the right team, he could be great."

Two sources told Insider that the team with the most interest in Wallace is the Knicks. Who are they offering in return? Latrell Sprewell. Makes sense, doesn't it? Maybe, if the Blazers are luring Van Gundy and have a plan to thin out their swingman corps. But that's not how Whitsitt thinks. Trader Bob must have a hell of a fantasy basketball team.

"He's never around, so he just doesn't get it," one source said. "Between running the Seahawks and the fact that he's never in Portland, he just doesn't get the bad dynamics that go on here. From afar, a lot of his deals look great. But on the court? He jokes about flunking chemistry, but it isn't very funny. Talent alone won't win it in the NBA. You've got to have chemistry."

If Trader Bob does get it, he's got an enormous task ahead of him. The Blazers are paying millions in luxury tax fees, attendance is dwindling and they have a roster full of guys with bad deals who won't be easy to move. Making things worse, if he does want to start dealing away his players, he'll have to disassemble the team one player at a time. . . very few teams would take more than one of these bad seeds on at a time.

Could a savior, like Jerry West, be coming to the rescue? Don't count on it. Whitsitt is considered one of the most secure GM's in the NBA. If anyone is going to put out the five-alarm blaze in Portland it's the guy who started the whole mess. Maybe it's time for him to give the Clippers a call and ask for some advice.