The Blazers’ Plot Thickens

Dwight Jaynes had a great piece of reporting last week that might provide some insight to the Blazers’ inner workings. Or it might not, but it’s interesting.

But in a matter of minutes, after a few phone calls to people within the league, I heard all sorts of opinions on what Gordon does for the Portland Trail Blazers. And they are stories tinged with mystery and a lot of speculation.

This was after Gordon, without any prompting from me, admitted that he works for the Blazers now.

“I’ve been with them for four and a half years,” Gordon told me. “I’m a consultant.”
I asked him what he consults about and he was a little vague but mentioned “development, scouting …”

A couple of NBA sources, though, have told me that Gordon — who used to help a lot of Microsoft bigwigs with their conditioning — has the ear of Paul Allen and Bert Kolde. And that he’s not shy about giving them advice.

Don’t know whether this means anything, but it points out the shortcomings of the Blazers’ organization and the incredible way in which they have botched the Kevin Pritchard situation. If you’re going to keep Pritchard, come out and give him a public vote of confidence; if you’re not going to keep him, don’t have him conduct your draft.

And the way in which Portland has bungled this leads to speculation about what Paul Allen is thinking and who in the world he is listening to. Jaynes might have stumbled upon the answer.