Do you think the Portland Trailblazers would like a do-over of the 2005 draft after this incident?
Portland Trail Blazers guard Sebastian Telfair was suspended for two games by the NBA for violating the league’s firearms policy.
The suspension stems from the discovery of a loaded firearm during a preflight inspection on the team’s private plane following a game in Boston earlier this month.
Telfair claims that the gun was his girlfriend’s and that he grabbed her bag by mistake. It just so happens that his girlfriend was leaving on a trip the same day and that she was traveling with a gun.
Believe that? I can give you one hell of a price on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Blazers originally held the #3 overall pick and considered taking this year’s Rookie of the Year frontrunner Chris Paul with the pick, but ultimately decided that Telfair was their point guard of the future. Maybe he still is, but I have to think that bringing a gun onto the team’s private plane has to make them wonder – why didn’t we take Paul?
The two hardest positions to fill are point guard and center. Look around the league. It’s filled with capable and talented shooting guards and forwards. So I don’t blame the Bucks for taking Andrew Bogut with the first pick. Skilled seven footers are hard to come by and they already had T.J. Ford on the roster. And I’ve already talked about Atlanta’s decision to pass on CP3 with the second overall pick.
But what about Portland? What exactly were they thinking?
ESPN’s Chad Ford writes:
They eventually traded the pick to the Jazz for the No. 6 and No. 27 picks in the draft. They used the No. 6 pick on high school phenom Martell Webster. GM John Nash said after the draft that had the Blazers kept the pick, they still would’ve drafted Webster at No. 3.
Like Knight in Atlanta, Nash has blundered in Portland and might lose his job by summer over errors like passing on Paul. Nash said in an interview after the draft that he believed Telfair was “ahead of the curve” in comparing him to Paul. That clearly hasn’t been the case. There isn’t an NBA scout I’ve talked to who thinks Telfair is in the same league as Paul as a point guard or as a prospect. The Blazers missed badly on this one. Their love affair with high school stars, Telfair and Webster included, has left them in the NBA cellar.
Why would you pass on a proven floor leader like Paul for another high school phenom who plays small forward, the same position as Darius Miles and Ruben Patterson?
