Brandon Roy in Portland: Why Keeping Him Is the Right Move for the Blazers

I was all ready to get started on my latest article, which was going to be a tribute of sorts to Brandon Roy, after the Blazers publicly confirmed that they were going to use their amnesty clause to remove his contract from their salary cap figure.

Several prominent sports writers, such as ESPN's Marc Stein and Chad Ford, had said that it was all but done.

Apparently, there is more to Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen than just deep pockets.

According to several sources, including a story that ran on Monday in The Oregonian, Brandon Roy will be a member of the Trail Blazers for at least the rest of this season, barring a major setback in training camp. 

As with a lot of Blazer fans, I was very excited to hear this because of what Roy means to the team and the community. It will be good for him to have a chance to get his career back on track. 

It also is a lesson to players, owners, fans and media members all over, that sometimes loyalty is a greater motivation than the cold, calculated logic that had almost everyone assuming Roy was as good as gone as soon as the new CBA was agreed upon.

Almost everyone can agree that, given the current state of his knees, it won't be possible for Roy to live up to his contract in the way that he would have previously been able to do.  However, what he means to the team and the fans of Portland isn't measured simply by statistical impact.

First, there was his successful Rookie of the Year campaign, helping distance the team even further from the "Jail Blazers" era in the early part of the decade. Then came The Shot, which was recently followed up by the amazing comeback against the Dallas Mavericks in last season's playoffs.

In searching for those videos, I came across several other occasions where Brandon has come up with similar plays to help win the game for his team. Although he isn't considered a superstar anymore, he has that type of bond with the team because of how his career started out.

He has never expressed a desire to play anywhere else, which is incredibly refreshing in an era where most of the big names are gravitating towards the bigger markets.

It may be good for basketball as a whole, but it's not good for the fans in Charlotte or Milwaukee or Salt Lake City.  Brandon Roy has shown complete loyalty to Portland, and now the team is repaying him by returning the favor.

I was afraid it would be all business from management's end, but it appears that things are not always as cut and dry as we outsiders would like to believe they are.