Sports Column

Patterson had his hits and misses

Fair Game

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 6, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (8 Reader comments)

Steve Patterson was neither hero nor villain during his nearly four years as president of the Trail Blazers.

He did some good things and made some mistakes. He was an emissary of a higher power – Paul Allen specifically, and Allen’s Vulcan Inc., in general – who never quite had a grip on what he was supposed to do with the elephant in the kitchen.

Patterson was hatchet man for many dozens of layoffs during the time he was in power, employees with a combined annual salary that might equal about what Allen spends on his yacht crew. We’ll never know whose idea that was, nor the ill-conceived notion to flutter the Rose Garden into bankruptcy. I’ll guarantee you, though, that Patterson was not acting unilaterally.

You think he wouldn’t rather have had 100-some more employees to try to keep the waning fan base from deserting?

When he arrived in 2003, Patterson inherited a public-relations disaster from the much-despised Bob Whitsitt. Patterson and General Manager John Nash had little choice but to light a torch to a “Jail Blazer” roster that included Rasheed Wallace, Bonzi Wells, Jeff McInnis and Ruben Patterson.

By the time the clear-cutting was done, the Blazers had gone from competitive to the worst team in the NBA. But the character issue had been addressed, and after what appears to be a remarkable 2006 draft – the combined effort of all those in the Portland front office, not just player personnel director Kevin Pritchard – the team appears headed in the right direction.

Darius Miles’ bloated contract was Allen’s idea, not Patterson’s. Patterson never nixed the idea of drafting Chris Paul. It was a group decision to trade the third selection in the 2005 draft to Utah for the sixth pick (Martell Webster) and an additional first-round pick that wound up landing the Blazers’ Jarrett Jack.

When the document negotiating a kickback of Miles’ $150,000 fine for insubordination surfaced in the media, it made Patterson look bad. And he compounded the problem with a woefully scripted halftime news conference. But the document was only a draft of a proposal from Miles’ agent, Jeff Wechsler, that hadn’t been signed.

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