Portland Trailblazers: Your 2011-12 NBA Champions

Stop crying L.A. fans, the Lakers have a better chance than any team to come back and win the title next year.

Despite embarrassing themselves to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, life isn’t over for the Los Angeles Kobe Bryant and Friends. L.A. is a year early anyway. Was Pau Gasol the missing piece that made them title contenders? For sure, but that puzzle also had a giant piece named Andrew Bynum, who happened to be missing for the entire end of the season. Gasol is a seasoned scorer and an incredible athlete in his own right, but he doesn’t bring the strength and mean streak that Bynum does (ask Shaq). Bynum is the cornerstone of that low-post defense, and Boston would have found the paint to be a far more unfriendly place if they had to run through two long, athletic 7-footers. When Bynum returns from surgery and joins Gasol on the frontline (assuming this roster stays together -- I'm looking at you, Kobe) and the Lakers move Lamar Odom for a player with a pair of rocks in his sack (rocks > talent), they will be competing for the championship for years.

But they will not be alone.

Another team also started making noise a year early. Last October, the Portland Trailblazers were expected to be one of if not the worst team in the league. They had just traded away Zach Randolph, their leading scorer and rebounder, and banked their entire future on #1 draft pick Greg Oden. They then watched Oden shut down for the entire season due to microfracture knee surgery. It didn’t leave them with much.

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