... recent developments do mark a sea change for the team of a kind not yet seen. Their direction had already shifted with the hiring of Rich Cho. Stating the obvious: his eyes are new and these guys aren't his guys the way they were Kevin Pritchard's. Everything had to go right in order for the course to remain the same. Everything is not going right.
Brandon Roy's knees are also a revelation. In isolation they're not a tragedy. If everything else on the team was clicking they'd be a middling worry. But this team is already waiting on one near-superstar in the making. It can't wait on two of its three best players. This is especially true since the team has been on the launching pad for a season and looks primed to spend a second without achieving escape velocity even if the fuse eventually gets lit. Throw in a possible year lost to lockout and all of a sudden you're looking at a 28-year-old Brandon Roy leading a squad facing the exact same questions it attempted to answer when Roy was a sophomore. The Blazers would be frittering away what are supposed to be the prime years of a definitive era. Not to mention the staleness factor. Leave a team not succeeding long enough and it's not going to succeed no matter what it looks like on paper. There's too much history of falling short, too many habits of failure that come out under pressure. Eventually that team falls to infighting and frustration with itself. Throw in the seemingly systemic injuries and you have even more pressure for change. At what point do the Blazers start to guess that the roster as constructed will not be healthy for long enough to sustain a run at greatness? If injuries inhibit this season, that time becomes now.
