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http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/13099397/signs-point-to-end-of-road-for-blazers-gm-pritchard
Signs point to end of road for Blazers GM Pritchard
When the Trail Blazers fired vice president of basketball operations Tom Penn last week, it barely made a ripple outside the Pacific Northwest. The average basketball fan read the wire story, said, "Tom Who?" and went back to juggling his fantasy lineup.
But this was not about Penn, a good man and one of the top salary cap experts in the NBA. That much became obvious Monday, when the real target of this coup d'état was surrounded by more than two dozen media members at the Blazers' practice facility.
Despite recent on-court success, GM Kevin Pritchard's days in Portland could be numbered. (Getty Images)
Penn's firing over "philosophical differences" has turned up the heat on general manager Kevin Pritchard, whose confidence and swagger were stripped away just as surely as his right-hand man was last week. Alone to face the music, Pritchard clearly has run out of dancing partners. And so it was in that context that team president Larry Miller blew the following kiss of death Pritchard's way Monday, when he uttered the six words no executive or coach wants to hear: Pritchard will be evaluated "at the end of the season," Miller said.
"He's done a great job getting this franchise where it is," Miller said. "At the end of the season, that'll be evaluated - and it's not just Kevin. It's all major decisions."
But for some reason, another major decision - to fire Penn only 10 months after promoting him, extending his contract, and giving him a raise - couldn't wait. This was a nuance that Miller didn't get around to explaining Monday, but the end result was all too obvious. With the typically cocksure Pritchard squirming his way through an uncomfortable 15-minute news briefing, the desired effect was achieved.
"My friend," a rival team executive said Monday night of Pritchard, "he's done."
In retaliation for the firing of his cap expert and close friend, Pritchard could've followed the lead of his agent, Warren LeGarie, who also represents Penn. He could've resigned, or he could've put on a combative, defiant show for the media. He did none of the above.
"I want to be here," Pritchard said. "If you take anything away from here, it's that I enjoy being here and I've enjoyed being in the trenches."
In the trenches with him was Penn, and no one can deny the renaissance they orchestrated - from the Jail Blazers to one of the NBA's indisputable success stories. The rumors circulating about what Penn must have done to get canned get more ridiculous by the day - arguments, shouting matches, simmering disagreements about basketball decisions. None of them was the real story, according to a person with direct knowledge of the organization's dynamics.
Exhibit A: Someone in the organization got his feelings hurt because he became convinced that the offer Penn had last summer to become the Minnesota Timberwolves' general manager wasn't as impressive or ironclad as Penn and LeGarie made it out to be. This was a fine time to draw that conclusion, 10 months after the fact. One rival GM, puzzled by this conspiracy theory, put it this way: What team gives a coach or executive a raise for no reason, over fake leverage? If the Blazers are that bad at reading the job market for their own employees, they have more problems than we knew.
Even if the extent of Penn's offer from Minnesota was in dispute, the Blazers fired the wrong person. They should've fired the guy who gave Penn the raise. Instead, they fired Penn and didn't consult Pritchard about it; Miller went around his back and did the dirty work himself, which tells you everything you need to know about where Pritchard stands.
A lot of people in the NBA don't like Pritchard. They bristle at his swagger and smugness, and seethe with envy over the supposed advantages he has working for Paul Allen, a billionaire many times over. As if other NBA teams aren't owned by billionaires. As if the Blazers sell out game after game after game because people want to come see the suits from Allen's Seattle-based Vulcan Inc. sit courtside and eat popcorn.
They come to see the team Pritchard, Penn, Nate McMillan and the basketball support staff have built, a team that is on pace to win 50 games this season with an effective payroll of $49 million if you strip away Darius Miles - whose sham of a cameo in Memphis last season dumped $18 million back on Portland's cap. Despite injuries to 2007 first-round pick Greg Oden, his backup, Joel Przybilla, and half the roster, the Blazers will be in the playoffs. However that works out, they'll be poised to continue that run of success with tradable assets like Przybilla and Andre Miller entering the last year of their contracts. (The third year of Miller's three-year, $21 million deal is non-guaranteed, a useful technique executed by - guess who? - Penn.)
The question of who will be making those trades is very much an open one. By firing Penn for no good reason, the Portland brass rigged the trapdoor beneath Pritchard's feet with a remote control. Now, though, the secret is out. Working for the Blazers isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Who will be the next to learn that lesson? Two people familiar with the situation said one strong possibility to replace Pritchard is Denver GM Mark Warkentien, the reigning NBA Executive of the Year with ties to Miller through their Nike connections. Warkentien has a home in Portland, and is on the last year of his contract with rumblings of a serious front-office shakeup afoot in Denver. He also had a hand in the creation of the Jail Blazers, something that will be difficult - if not impossible - to sell to a community that will never forget that damnable era.
Also, much like Pritchard - who watched his colleague, Penn, get promoted and paid - Warkentien did not have his contract extended along with coach George Karl's this season. There are rumblings that owner Stan Kroenke is ready to move on without Warkentien and VP of player personnel Rex Chapman, with advisor Bret Bearup orchestrating the coup and Kroenke's son, Josh, on a fast track to a bigger role.
Meanwhile, Pritchard's adversaries are delighting in his imminent downfall, the end of the road for a rival who did an unassailable job in a "just ask him" sort of way. If arrogance were a fireable offense, Pritchard would've been gone a long time ago. So would some of the people having a field day with him now.
Bill Parcells used to say of the NFL, "This is not a game for the well adjusted." For some reason, that quote came to mind when I listened to the audio of Miller's news conference Monday - the part where he said Pritchard would be evaluated after the season - and found myself thinking, "On what?"
