Greg Oden or Kevin Durant!! ONE TIME!!

I was never a big fan of watching the NBA Draft "Ping-Pong" Order Selection until today's edition of "Chinese Tennis." The main reason of course was that my beloved Blazers had a 5% chance (or in poker lingo, a 2 outer) of landing the # 1 selection. I was doing my Antonio Esfandiari impersonations (aka "ONE TIME" as I've seen him shout this out hundreds of hundreds of times usually resulting in a loss) before today's NBA Ping-pong ball draft order in hope of the Blazers landing the top three, let alone the number one pick. We had a little better than a 5% chance of landing the pick (We had a 25% chance of landing the # 1 last year and got 4th... go figure)... As the number 6 pick came, I was expecting the words, "The 6th pick of the 2007 draft goes to the Portland Trail... wait a tic, "Milwaukee Bucks"!! WOOOOOOO!!! Boyah!!! That meant that the Blazers were guaranteed a number 3 pick (because the lottery determines the top 3 picks and then the rest via worst record)!! Antonio... are you warming up??!!



They get down to three and then they do the "Reality TV" thing and delay and cut to commercial to build the suspense... We'll, it worked as I got onto the cpu and started typing on the Portland Trail Blazer facebook page...



Back from commercial, they have the 3 representatives for each team standing together (Lenny Wilkins for the Sonics, our beloved Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, and "The Human Highlight Reel" Dominique Wilkins) with the Hawks having an 18% chance of winning the draft before the final three and the Sonics with about a 13% chance vs. our 2 outer aka 5% chance. To my surprise, "The third pick of the 2007 NBA draft belongs to the Atlanta Hawks! Oh shit... Now it's a battle of 1 or 2 vs. our rival Sonics!! I had thoughts of how we screwed ourselves by beating the Sonics the 3rd to last game of this year which would cost us ping-pongs balls, and as it turned out, we lost 8% of getting the #1 selection... But the basketball gods and a quote from Mike "The Mouth" says, "Vindication baybee"! As "With the #2 pick of the 2007 NBA draft goes to the Seattle Sonics!!! ONE TIME! ONE TIME!! ONE TIME!!! The 2 outer hits and the Trail Blazers are on a "happy trail" and as they say, are now on the clock!!


I really thought that when it was down to Seattle and us, I was thinking there was no chance in hell we'd be getting the #1 pick especially with that debacle win vs. Seattle late season but as in (online) poker, you can fold pocket kings preflop to Aces and only get killed by the gods with a King on the flop, we got rewarded for doing something stupid (winning that game cost us 8% in getting the #1), but in the end, we were rewarded w/this Portland Miracle...

It feels proud to be a born again (Fuck Terry Porter and the Detroit Pistons) once again though always a fan of the Blazers I was, but now, I must take a line from ex-Blazer Rasheed Wallace: "I (still) believe"!!