Clyde Drexler Isn't Walking Through That Door

Blazer Analysis
Owen Smith

The firing of Maurice Cheeks was inevitable, and really the only question for Blazer management was when to do it. John Nash decided that sooner was better than later and now Mo is looking for another job and the Blazers are looking for someone (other than interim coach Kevin Pritchard) to replace him.

In a way, it makes a lot of sense for Cheeks to go now and not at the end of the season. For all intents and purposes Mo was going to be a lame duck coach for the rest of the year, though it’s very arguable he already was—especially after the Darius Miles debacle.

It didn’t make any sense to make the team and Cheeks suffer through what is most likely going to be a miserable end to the season and another trip to the draft lottery. As John Nash put it at the Blazers’ Wednesday press conference, “We made the internal decision that we were not going to exercise the option to extend Maurice's contract beyond this year… [and] did not want to make Maurice a 'lame duck coach' and remain for the balance of the season.”

Now Cheeks has more time to find a new job, if that’s what he wants to do. He expressed several times Wednesday that he was to close to the game of basketball to give it up, so expect him on the bench of an NBA team very soon. It is clear that almost any franchise he walks into will be a more hospitable situation than the one he faced in Portland for three-and-a-half years.

As for the Blazers, don’t expect either Phil Jackson or Flip Saunders to come to Portland next season. Though they are both big names and Paul Allen has the money to pay them, the personnel situation is not ideal. This is especially true for Jackson, who is getting older and probably doesn’t have the energy or patience to deal with a rebuilding situation.

A rebuilding situation is on hand no matter who takes over coaching duties next year. To paraphrase the famous Rick Pitino quote, Clyde Drexler is not walking through that door, meaning that now GM John Nash has made his move and has to pick up the pieces from here.

The pieces are somewhat troublesome. The Blazers have an overpaid ($86 million contract), kind of wacky power forward in Zach Randolph and an overpaid ($36 million), verbally abusive and definitely wacky small forward in Darius Miles. They also have three veterans who are all overpaid now and who will be free agents at the end of the year in Damon Stoudamire, Nick Van Exel and Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

Nash has a lot of decisions to make in the coming months, and given the success of the team in recent years Nash could find himself in trouble soon if things don’t turn around. Paul Allen has already fired his longtime associate Bob Whitsitt, better known as Trader Bob to Portlanders, from the general manager position of the Seattle Seahawks, the other franchise Allen owns.

There doesn’t seem to be an end all be all solution on the horizon for this franchise. However, indicators seem to point to a youth movement, at least if Nash is still around to make it happen.

“Moving forward we need to really evaluate what we have, and what better way to do that than for the Player Personnel Director to get under the hood and take a look,” Nash said Wednesday. “We have some exciting pieces, especially when you talk about adding Monia next year, Sebastian [Telfair], [Viktor] Khryapa, Ha, Joel [Przybilla]; we've got some pieces, we really need to find out how good those pieces are.”

And this summer, Portland fans will get to find out how good of a GM John Nash is as well.