The Oregonian’s Jason Quick interviewed Portland Trail Blazers President Steve Patterson about the franchise’s performance in the past few years. The two get into an interesting back-and-forth about Patterson’s decision to resign Darius Miles at a price that was perceived to be higher than market value.

JQ: Darius, nobody makes an offer for him.
SP: That is untrue and you guys have constantly, constantly said that and that’s not true.
JQ: Nobody filed a…
SP: Denver was ready to pay him.
JQ: They didn’t and it expired…the date expired
SP: No they were ready to pay him.
JQ: July 15th
SP: They would have done the deal…in a trade before or they would have done the deal straight up.
JQ: The amount for Darius…
SP: You guys constantly said that nobody…
JQ: No team filed an offer to the NBA office where you guys had to match. You guys did not have to match any offer filed to the NBA. That is fact. That’s why we reported it.
SP: That doesn’t mean someone wasn’t willing to do it.
JQ: Then tell us that. I mean…
SP: I’ve said it every time. If you talked to Kiki he would tell you the same thing.
JQ: The fact is that you didn’t have to because nobody made an offer to him.
SP: No, you can look at it and let it play out the one year and then you’re in the environment where the guys coming off a good year. Maggette’s young, 22-years-old. You know there’s somebody out there that’s willing to pay. You know they’ll have the cap room the following summer and you don’t know what the rules are the following summer. Whether you’ll have a right to match for whatever there is to match. And so, you have to look at it with the information you have at that point of time. You know you have a bidder. In this league you only need one bidder. The league golden rule. And generally it becomes more expensive letting guys go to full free agency.
JQ: The amount you paid. How did you come to that? I know in talking to Jeff all summer, they were looking at a something, six million dollars. Even Darius said at the time it was more money than he’d thought he could get. How’d you come to the average?
SP: That what the market was out there. And, you’re talking a difference of a million dollars a year. Doesn’t make a big difference.

This is a nice companion piece to my offseason blueprint for the Blazers.