Relax Blazer Fans

"Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement, and failure. Patience breeds confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success." - Brian Adams (I'm not sure if this is a quote from the late '80s/early '90s pop sensation, but I sure hope it is)

Everybody's pissed. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody knows what the next move should be. The one thing that binds us all together? Everybody wants to win a championship.

When I say everybody, that includes young and old fans, fans that stubbornly stuck through the Jail Blazers era, the players themselves, the management staff, the world's only flying cat...everybody that loves Blazers basketball. We all want what the Lakers have. I simply ask you to listen to the mantra that I've preached before: be patient.

Paul Allen provides Kevin Pritchard with financial comfort that 99.9 percent of people reading this sentence could never dream about. Have you ever thought about why? It's because he's really good at his job.

Consider that there are only 30 people in the entire world that hold his position. Thirty! He got to where he is because he's smarter than all of us when it comes to managing a professional basketball team, no matter how great our Trade Machine efforts might be.

As I was growing up, my Mom told me several times, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." In KP's case, Mom couldn't be more wrong. KP got to where he is because he knows what he's doing. He's just had a difficult summer based on the fact that he's at a great disadvantage because of the city he works in.

Don't get me wrong. I love Portland. I was born and raised in Portland, live here now, and never plan on leaving. Without question, Portland is my favorite place in the world. But I'm not naive enough think that we're on the same level as teams in bigger markets.

I listen to the radio and read the blogs, comments, and message boards as much as the next guy. Some people make sense, some seem as if they've never seen an NBA game before.

Regardless, what people are not seeming to understand lately is that we're not the Lakers. We're not even the Knicks, Pistons, or Bulls. Portland does not have the necessary tools to entice big-name players.

With the exception of the Blazers, Portland is a minor major-league city. We're on the second tier of the big market cities. That doesn't mean we can't win big, it just means we have to work big and know who we are. We are handicapped in several ways.

First and foremost, Portland is super white, which doesn't necessarily appeal to an overwhelmingly black league. Portland doesn't have glamorous beaches, although some might argue that Lincoln City is the cat's meow.

Our nightclubs just don't cut it by NBA standards. Cars have bumper stickers urging the populace to "Keep Portland Weird" and as much as former fan favorite Channing Frye embraced this motto, the average NBA player is more in tune with making it rain than boosting the weirdos' self-esteem.

Lastly, like it or not, the fanaticism that gives the Rose Garden home team an enormous advantage can be an equally enormous deterrent when we see our guys off the court.

I'm simply saying that acquiring an unrestricted (or restricted, for that matter) free agent in Portland without ridiculously overpaying is extremely difficult to do. Free agency is asking a guy to come here.

Drafting and trading forces players to come here. In the drafting/trading circumstance that forces players to come to a mostly undesireable location, we as a whole team (fans, players, and management) get an opportunity to win them over with that sweet Blazermania charm.

When the right players actually get here, they end up understanding what makes this franchise and this town so special. Trader Bob was great at getting players. He just didn't know the right players to get. KP knows who to get and he's working on getting and keeping them here.

Free agency hasn't worked out so far and it most likely won't work out for the rest of the summer. It's time to sit back, relax (repeat: RELAX), and wait for the Blazers brass to do what they're paid very well to do. The right players will get here. It'll happen. Just wait.