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David Aldridge
Sunday, April 2
Top West teams are rolling, but not the Blazers



What's up with the Trail Blazers?

For three months, they run roughshod over the league, tantalizing opponents with their rugged defense and unselfish offense. They impress with their basketball IQ, veteran savvy and chemistry. Scottie Pippen was free and loose; Damon Stoudamire understood the difference between his on-the-edge group last season and Camp Harmony this season.

Rasheed Wallace
Without Brian Grant, Rasheed Wallace has had to raise his game.

Then they play the Lakers -- with whom they share the league's best record -- at home Feb. 29, for first place in the Pacific Division. The winner, Phil Jackson says, will win out.

He was right.

And the Blazers have gone south ever since.

A sub-.500 record. Four straight home losses entering play on Friday. More urgently, they now resemble a team not sure of itself, not certain what to do in crunch time. Bad fouls, bad decisions with the ball, poor execution. Could one loss discombobulate a team that badly?

"There was a little bit (of a letdown) after you lose a game like that," Mike Dunleavy told me the other day. "But a Laker hangover is only gonna last a game or two. The coinciding event with that was the loss of Brian Grant."

Indeed, Grant may be the team's most important player. When he was healthy and more than holding his own against Karl Malone in the playoffs last spring, the Blazers were a tough team to beat. He is Portland's best low-post defender, great against the pick and roll.

More importantly, when Grant was starting, Rasheed Wallace was coming off the bench. And Wallace was the glue that held the second unit together -- both with his play and his sacrifice of minutes to help the team. With Wallace starting, come the whispers out of the Rose City, there are three to five teams that might have a superior second unit.

Grant has been hobbling most of the season. He missed the start of the season after knee surgery. Then, just when he was rounding himself back into shape, he missed 11 more after the Lakers loss with plantar fascitis in his right foot. That injury robs you of the ability to push off and jump, which brings the hyperactive Grant down to earth.

And now that Grant's back, Arvydas Sabonis is out indefinitely after badly spraining his ankle last week. While it's better than it first appeared -- "I thought he'd blown out his knee for sure," Dunleavy said -- the Blazers don't know if he'll be ready for the start of the playoffs. In the 15 games before his injury, he'd been shooting 57 percent from the floor, almost 90 from the foul line, and averaging 15 points and 9 boards in just 27 minutes of play.

"He was playing the best basketball he's played since he's been here," Dunleavy said.

Now, Dunleavy is shorter up front. And he has to worry about keeping playing time down down the stretch. Keep in mind that Steve Smith and Detlef Schrempf have appeared to suffer the last couple of years with big minutes. Smith's chronically bad knees seemed to give out on him in the playoffs against the Knicks. It's one reason Dunleavy has used a 10-man rotation most of the season. With the playoffs coming, he'll have to shorten the run.

More troubling is Portland's mental meltdowns in key situations of late. Taking threes with plenty of time on the shot clock. Not finding the open man. Fouling when there was no need to. Dunleavy will only acknowledge some "miscommunications for no reason," but won't go further.

Aldridge's Rankings
THE TOP 10
1. L.A. Lakers
2. Utah
3. San Antonio
4. Portland
5. Indiana
6. Philadelphia
7. Minnesota
8. Phoenix
9. Miami
10. New York

THE BOTTOM FIVE
25. Denver
26. Vancouver
27. Golden State
28. Chicago
29. L.A. Clippers

But is there time to fix things? The Spurs came into Portland last Tuesday and, for the first time this season, resembled the squad that ran the table to the title last year. They shut the Blazers down over the last four minutes. Tim Duncan looked as if his stomach was healed. In short, it was a carbon copy of last year's Western Conference Finals.

The Lakers are rolling. The Jazz are, too. And San Antonio's gotten a lift from the return of Sean Elliott. What looked like a cakewalk two months ago has suddenly gotten dicey. For his part, Dunleavy is still confident.

"As long as we get healthy by playoff time, we'll be all right," he says.

For the money Paul Allen is shelling out, he'd better be right.

Around The League
  • There's a winner in the Vince Carter agent stakes. Sources indicate Carter, who indicated he wouldn't select a new agent until August, will soon sign with IMG. The papers aren't finalized yet, but a deal appears to be in place. Elsewhere in the agent biz, agent Dan Fegan (Shandon Anderson, Howard Eisley, et. al.) has the inside track to Cincinnati's duo of Kenyon Martin and DeMarr Johnson.

  • Expect Vernon Maxwell and Gary Payton to be on the same team in practice for the rest of the season after last week's scuffle. Sources indicate GM Wally Walker told the two in no uncertain terms that if their fight leads to splitting the team into cliques, he'll suspend both of them. Walker would only say he told Maxwell and Payton, "'you guys figure it out. You work it out between the two of you, because if you don't, the team is going to have to intervene. And you're not gonna like what happens.'"

    For his part, Maxwell says it was no big deal. "Me and G, we're just alike," Max told me on Tuesday. "We both knew it was gonna happen some part of the year. But me and G, we're the best of friends." Still, Payton threw a chair at Maxwell, and Maxwell threw a weight at Payton -- which hit Horace Grant, injuring his shoulder. "We had words," Maxwell said. "That's all that happened. That was basically it. It got a little heated like we was gonna fight, but it never did happen."

    Feedback for David
    So what are your thoughts on this column by David Aldridge? What about some other columns you read on ESPN.com? We want your feedback, good or bad. Click here to e-mail us your thoughts.

    Maxwell and Payton took the team out for dinner and a night of pool Tuesday, but coach Paul Westphal laid down the law at practice. He won't take any more griping about minutes and playing time.

  • George Karl denies published reports that he and Glenn Robinson had a physical altercation after the Bucks' win over Boston on Sunday. "Dog and I are cool," Karl said. "I took him out early in the fourth quarter, when we had an eight-point lead. And by the time I was going to put him back in it was 15 or 16. So maybe he was pissed because he didn't go back in, but nothing happened." Karl says his team may have bottomed out after a horrible mid-March stretch. "I don't think they've ever not listened," he says now, after ripping his players' defensive heart. "I think they're trying to learn some new habits. They haven't been disrespectful and at times the confidence has gone out the window because of our lack of passing."

  • Magic GM John Gabriel bristles at the notion fostered by Anfernee Hardaway that free agents won't come to the Magic this summer because of the way he and Shaquille O'Neal were supposedly treated. "I think it's a misunderstanding that the Orlando Magic can't either keep or acquire free agents," he said. "We've only lost one, and that guy wanted to go to the West coast ... we traded Penny Hardaway. We've had far more free agents sign here, people want to play here, under market value, just to be a part of our organization, than we've ever lost -- which is one."

  • People now expect 6-9 high schooler Eddie Griffin to honor his commitment to go to Seton Hall next season instead of opting for the NBA draft.

  • Among the early commitments for the Nike Desert Classic in Phoenix next month are Michigan State point guard Mateen Cleaves and forward Morris Peterson; North Carolina point Ed Cota; Auburn forward Chris Porter; Fresno State shooting guard Courtney Alexander; Oklahoma State forward Desmond Mason' Ohio State guard Scoonie Penn; Temple point Pepe Sanchez; Weber State guard Harold (The Show) Arceneaux; Duke swingman Chris Carrawell; Georgia Tech's Jason Collier; Indiana's A.J. Guyton; Syracuse's Jason Hart; Arizona State gunner Eddie House and forwards Etan Thomas (Syracuse), Mark Madsen (Stanford), Eduardo Najera (Oklahoma), Matt Santangelo (Gonzaga), Pete Mickeal (Cincinnati), Jamal Magliore (Kentucky) and Mamadou N'Diaye (Auburn).

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