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The NBA is a professional sports league built on rituals. There is the ritual of the NBA Draft, the ritual of the capital "P" Playoffs and the capital "F" Finals, the ritual of the offseason and the preseason.
Each ritual has its own working parts: the Playoffs are built for TV ratings and the Finals are constructed to close season-long narratives and continue career-long legacies (akin in a way to the season finale of a cable-television drama). The Draft is about celebrating potential, the offseason is about the best basketball players on the planet working to get better, and the preseason is about warming up to an 82-game regular season that can, and usually does, turn into something of a slog.
Media Day, the NBA's first annual ritual, commenced on Monday in Portland. It may not have the pomp and circumstance of the Finals, but Media Day is important in its own right, primarily because it signals the official end of one season and the beginning of the next.
Coming off a rather busy summer, the Blazers, as a collective and individually, had a lot to talk about in their first media sessions. An exasperated Neil Olshey practically pleaded with the local press to stop asking questions about LaMarcus Aldridge wanting a trade. Terry Stotts disarmed the media horde by asking if anybody wanted to talk about LaMarcus Aldridge being traded. And the man himself said, in a tone that felt definitive to those in attendance, that he never asked for a trade, doesn't want a trade, and would not be talking about the possibility of being traded any more, thank you very much.
Topics other than LaMarcus Aldridge and his desires to continue to be a Trail Blazer were also brought up, though without much of the tension evident in discussing Portland's possibly unhappy All-Star.
Defense was a buzzword, which makes sense since the Blazers struggled to keep their opponents from scoring in 2012-13 and jettisoned a productive, albeit limited, starter to address that problem. The playoffs were brought up as a possible goal by some and as a desired destination for everybody. New medical personnel, an issue many Blazer fans think should have been addressed years ago, and a complete bench overhaul were welcome changes for a few of the Blazer vets. And to a man, everybody anticipated that training camp is shaping up to be a battle for minutes with every rotation spot outside of the core four (Aldridge, Damian Lillard, Wesley Matthews, and Nicolas Batum) up for grabs.
Individual media sessions, apart from the ones dealing with the LaMarcus Aldridge issue, were both lively and informative. Robin Lopez, the Blazers' newly acquired and more traditional center, rattled off a list of potentials that he could use if the Blazers went with nicknames on the backs of their jerseys. He guessed the city of Portland would take to "Sideshow Rob," although "Boy Wonder" is, in the opinion of this writer, not a bad choice.
Nicolas Batum flashed his brand new EuroBasket gold medal and talked about how it feels to be a veteran at 24. Not to be outdone, Meyers Leonard showed up for his podium session with a handful of red licorice and warned the media that in 2013-14 he's going to be shooting a lot of threes.
Joel Freeland, one of last season's bench players who could be on the outside looking in this season what with all the new faces, fielded questions about his playing weight (he's down from where he was last season), why he decided to skip out on national team duties this summer (he wanted to work on himself and his game without having to transition back to the European style of play), and what he wants from his second season in the NBA (he wants to play).
New acquisitions Thomas Robinson, Dorrell Wright, and Mo Williams were asked about their first impressions of their new digs and their new teammates. Wright and Williams, veterans of various professional situations, where very clear about what they can offer the Blazers: Wright is a long and rangy pure shooter; in Mo's own words, he's "going to be a problem," presumably for opposing defenders. Robinson, with his third team since being drafted fifth overall (one spot before Damian Lillard) in the 2012 Draft has a bit more to play for, having been now picked up and dropped by two teams. He's confident, though, that given a chance in Portland, he'll prove out on his potential.
As for the Blazers' newest star and its newest draft pick, Damian Lillard spoke highly of the time he spent with Team USA this summer, and CJ McCollum (selected 10th overall in the 2013 Draft) spoke highly of his head-to-head match-ups with Lillard in the scrimmages held at the Blazers' practice facility over the course of the last month. McCollum also enlightened the local media that this season he would be living in the suburbs by himself. He decided not to hand over his home address.
For what its worth, Media Day always has a bit of a circus atmosphere. The media sessions are only part of proceedings. Players spend the day filming sequences for in-game entertainment and pre-game introductions, taking publicity photos, and attaching their signatures to various pieces of memorabilia.
Underneath the flimflam of answering whether they prefer boxers or briefs and underneath the forced "on message" rhetoric (nobody slipped up and called it the Rose Garden even if the outdoor signage has yet to be changed), there is a kernel of truth to what the players tell the gathered media in their first official duties of the season.
Last season, Damian Lillard, an untested rookie from Weber State, said he wanted to be Rookie of the Year. That prediction came true in remarkable fashion.
The takeaway from Media Day 2013: If the team plays defense and works together to incorporate its new bench pieces they could contend for the postseason.
That, and LaMarcus Aldridge is a Blazer for now and the foreseeable future, don't even think about discussing it further.
WWeek 2015