The Portland Trail Blazers, 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 against 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 ran into two long, athletic 7-footers there.

When Bynum returns from surgery next year and joins Gasol on the front line (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, the center of the future.

Then they watched Oden shut down for the entire season following micro fracture knee surgery. It didn’t leave them with much. Their players were, on average, the youngest team in the league by far at 24.06 years, 1.29 years younger than 29th youngest Seattle (0.55 years separates #29 from #22).

The players also had the least amount of experience at 2.87 years, 0.60 years less than 29th least experienced Chicago (0.46 years separates #29 from #20). This was a team that didn't have a front court player who cracked double-digits in scoring the year before. Their one lone bright spot for the season was Brandon Roy, a promising, but hardly explosive sophomore combo guard who missed 25 games his rookie season to injuries. Well, at least if they’re terrible, they’ll get another high draft pick, right?

BlazerNation: "Thanks for holding down the fort, guy

A 13-game win streak, a run at the playoffs in the most competitive conference in NBA history, a 41-41 final record, and one All-Star later, the lesson to be learned is to never doubt head coach Nate McMillan.

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