On the plus side, at least they won't have to worry about another Game 7 meltdown.

	The Blazers looked more like team dissension this year than contenders.

The Moment for the Ages this time around would be the Portland Trail Blazers just getting to the Western Conference finals at all. Or, come to think of it, the second round. Do we hear ... Game 5 of the first round?

The only accurate thing about the Trail Blazers on the eve of the playoffs, when they were supposed to be mounting a campaign for a championship and redemption in the wake of the fourth-quarter implosion against the Lakers 11 months ago, is Rasheed Wallace's aim with a towel. Four teammates immediately went into a funk that they weren't getting enough touches with the towel, but team president Bob Whitsitt again deftly defused the situation, noting that he did not major in Fabric in college. Another crisis averted.

Still to be determined is who put the KICK ME sign on the back of Mike Dunleavy without him noticing. Of course, there's always the other possibility: that Dunleavy felt it happening and just couldn't do anything to get out of the way. Speaking of Trail Blazers who hope to reach June.

Wallace tossing cotton in the face of Arvydas Sabonis during a timeout, in frustration of Sabas falling backwards and inadvertently hitting him in the face moments earlier, only made it official that Portland had thrown in the towel. But even the most optimistic of Blazermaniacs had come to that same conclusion long before, perhaps because they had heard enough supporting evidence from players themselves. Or maybe just because they had been paying attention on their own.

Compounding matters, Wallace did not attend a required pre-series news conference Friday, drawing a cool $10,000 fine from the NBA. The league also dinged the Blazers $25,000 for not assuring all their players would be available to the media.

The end of last season was not a fluke and never should have been portrayed as such. That specific flameout -- a fourth quarter at Staples Center that included 13 consecutive missed shots, a blown 15-point lead with 10:28 remaining and a trip to the Finals on the line, and going scoreless for 7 1/2 minutes -- might have been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but the mistake would have been to dismiss it as a bad coincidence, because the planets were improperly aligned or something. Try because they were the Trail Blazers, lacking emotional stability or leadership despite the standing as a veteran-filled team.

	Sabonis

	Wallace

Nothing about loading up on big guys -- and some very big guys -- in the summer would change that. The response for a team that had every reason to have wanted to charge from the gates the day after losing to the Lakers, after, in the words of Scottie Pippen, they "sort of made cowards" of themselves in that final period, was a 6-5 start. Only the people who jumped on the bandwagon in the summer and picked Portland to win the championship in 2001, looking at how close the Blazers came to beating Los Angeles instead of why they didn't, had reason to feel worse.

	Kemp

	Strickland

These being the Trail Blazers, there was friction within, and also some success. The wins started arriving, rallying them back to contender status in the West. If only the playoffs could have began then. The rest of the season came instead, in a flurry of Wallace technicals, the controversial signing of Rod Strickland, Wallace technicals, Shawn Kemp going into drug rehab, Bonzi Wells being lost to a knee injury, Wallace technicals and frustration over a lack of playing time. Gee, no one would have ever imagined that development.

Immediately after they signed Strickland to be the backup to Damon Stoudamire, the Trail Blazers lost to the Grizzlies, got routed by the Spurs and lost to the Grizzlies again. Wallace, showing that the roster move would not become a distraction to him, stayed on his game and got kicked out twice. The blame for things starting to crumble didn't fall to newcomer Strickland, of course, apart from the possibility that teammates were going out of their way to show how much he could fit in. At least those nasty injuries from the final days with the Wizards had miraculously cleared.

"I think it's time for us to get a little concerned," Pippen said at the time. "We seem to be preparing ourselves for an early exit from the playoffs."

	“	We've beaten every team in the league. That's something in itself. We've got that ability and we have the experience in that regard. We've played a lot of tough series over the last couple years. When it comes time to go, I think we'll be ready to go. ”
		— Mike Dunleavy

It wasn't necessarily their play. It was their approach and attitude. That was the real problem.

"It's a major problem," Detlef Schrempf said.

Told you.

"It's a problem that should have been addressed a long time ago," Schrempf said, "but it hasn't, and now it is definitely too late."

By the time the Trail Blazers finally got around to dealing with the discipline issue, Wallace had become a crash-test dummy, getting ejected all over the place. By then, of course, it was too late. He couldn't dramatically change his behavior in just a few weeks before the playoffs, an unrealistic expectation if that's what Whitsitt was going for, which meant Portland couldn't count on having its best player around for the fourth quarter of any game against the Lakers.

That series starts Sunday, with the Trail Blazers fresh off seven losses in the final 10 games of the regular season, including to the same Los Angeles team, San Antonio, Sacramento and twice to Minnesota. The wins? Two over Golden State, one against Memphis in a neutral-site game in Vancouver.

Finals or bust!

Figure on bust.

"We've beaten every team in the league," Dunleavy said, finding optimism at the end of a season in which the Trail Blazers would be one of the few teams to be disappointed in 50-32. "That's something in itself. We've got that ability and we have the experience in that regard. We've played a lot of tough series over the last couple years. When it comes time to go, I think we'll be ready to go."

Yeah, but where?

The Trail Blazers are still dangerous and should not be dismissed lightly, because being one of the best shooting teams in the league, in the upper echelon of the rebounders and a solid defensive unit counts for plenty. But they're even more dangerous to themselves -- wear a face mask next time, Arvydas. A face mask, because they are so poorly constructed. (Whitsitt did not major in carpentry in college, so he could not be expected to know that.)

Meanwhile, the loss of Wells because of a blown knee will cost them more than a starting shooting guard, with Steve Smith, who lost the job in late-December, returning to the opening lineup. Wells was also one of the few Trail Blazers capable of consistently beating defenders off the dribble, an important consideration on a team that lacked athleticism even when he was in the lineup. On the other hand, the sudden absence of Wells and Kemp at least means that fewer Blazers will be complaining about a lack of minutes in the first-round loss. Encouraging news abounds.

Scott Howard-Cooper covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.