Schilly

And that would be....?

Dan

Adam Morrison is the next Larry Bird, duh?

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A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says "Make me one with everything".

when will the loss of life end?

The world respects the power of our example, not an example of our power.

I'd like to say I made this, but I didn't

sa1177

You cannot place blame on Nash or the Blazers organization here IMO. A player/employee is expected to act respectfully at work and towards his superiors regardless of his job status and unhapiness with it.

Sure you can blame the team for causing Ruben to be upset since they cleared out all his buddies and shipped them out, began to play the youngsters more and fired a coach he liked. You would expect him be upset, ask to be traded, complain to his agent and the media. You would not expect him to publicy berate and slander his coach. It's fine for Ruben to be upset and agree he had a right to be but to express his anger and displeasure in the manner he did is totally unacceptable and must be dealt with.

If my boss fires a bunch of friends that I work with, hires others to replace them and cuts my responsibilities surely I have right to be mad and upset but that doesn't mean I have a right to cuss my boss out in front of my co-workers and customers.

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tlong

I don't think you can apply the same standards of the normal workplace to pro sports. Acting like a jerk may be Ruben's most effective method to get traded. Shareef wanted to be traded for much of the time he was here and he acted totally professionally. Look where that got him.

kaydow

Acting like a jerk is only going to further delay RP's departure. NBA GM's look at guys like Ruben as career killers. Sure, he can do some nice things on the floor, but it's not worth it if he's going to blow up your locker room. You can't compare SAR to Rube. Shareef got hurt last year. Most people thougth if SAR was traded, it would be to a team who was willing to rent his services for the remainder of the year in order to make a playoff push. What good would it have done to trade for the guy when he's hurt and is a FA after the season? And, as it so happened, last year seemed like the first year that GM's really weren't as enamoured with clearing cap room. Why? I don't know. Maybe they learned that clearing cap room doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to attract the FA you want. The summer before, the Spurs were supposed to have all this room and sign some marquee guys and they got . . . Brent Barry. This theory is just MHO, but I still don't think SAR being a nice guy had anything to do with why he didn't get traded. Plus, his agent was making all kinds of noise for him anyways.

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ryanjend22

i agree with ruben on this.

hes not getting enough time, and he should be playing more. we are more productive when he is on the floor.

he hustles his *** off, period. the "youth movement" thing is fine, but coach mcmillan and nash need to realize we are trying to win games.

im mad, because just the other day i was thinking how happy i am that we still have ruben. now this happens and we are about to get mirked tonite @ memphis without him. as well as the rest of the roadtrip most likely

Schilly

So how does that explain the fact that he was cussing at Nate, because he himself didn't want to go back in the game?

Dan

actually, if you go by 82games.com, we're more productive with him off the court.

of which, Ruben's mistakes (and other "vets") are more detrimental than helpful.

Ruben wasn't (more than likely) going to be the difference maker. We'd be getting beat tonite with or without Ruben. Maybe for once, we'll not see a guy (cept for Darius or Zach) thinking they're skill set is MUCH higher than it is, and they won't be going 1 on 3.

__________________
A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says "Make me one with everything".

when will the loss of life end?

The world respects the power of our example, not an example of our power.

I'd like to say I made this, but I didn't

RedHot&Rolling

Let Ruben sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And sit.

Well, you get the idea.

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SheedSoNasty

And we'll let Outlaw and Khryapa play

And play

And play

And play...

Nice avatar by the way when you take into consideration the heat that avatars have been taking lately.

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PorterIn2004

Okay, here's maybe a newish spin. Let's say Ed's right that HQ should've seen this coming so let's presume they did. Unlike ryanjend22, I'm not convinced that winning games should be the focus right now and, perhaps HQ isn't convinced of that either. On one hand, Nate's made it clear that he's going to play whomever he thinks gives them the best chance to win, at least somewhat on a situational basis. On the other, they've got a lot of youth that other teams have expressed at least some interest in. Ruben is almost certainly not going to be a part of the Blazers' future, if only due to his age. Now the team has a fairly legitimate reason for sitting him, giving the staff a better look at guys like Monia, Khryapa, Outlaw, and Webster. And as RedHot&Rolling and SheedSoNasty are suggesting, Ruben might end up rotting on the pine for ages -- or better yet, not even on the pine but further away from the team. If that happens, what's Ruben likely to do? I'd bet that he's even more likely than he had been to opt out of his contract at the end of this year, something Nash and the rest of HQ would probably be thrilled about.

Myself, I've been something of a Ruben Patterson fan for awhile and, as Hap points out, there's some evidence the team's actually more productive without him on the floor. While that point could be argued (as not everything shows up statisically, for example), it seems clear, at least in hindsight, thatif Patterson's going to be playing at all, there's likely to be trouble if: the team is losing and; if he's not playing more minutes than Nate seems to want to play him. I'd argue that, for him to be a happy camper, the team would need to be playing something at least near .500 basketball and he'd have to be able to consider himself a main (25 or more minutes a game) contributor.

While I'm not going to go so far as to call this a brilliant move by management, I can see how it may well have been somewhat intentional and working more or less according to plan. And, there was always the chance that Patterson wouldn't take the bait and would, in fact, have been happy with his role -- I'm guessing they'd have been at least ballpark as happy with that possible outcome, too.

dkap

McMillan in the OLive blog:

Sure sounds to me like management went out of their way to make an example of Ruben, which is in line with their handling of him last year. No one should be surprised that he's a bit upset with the situation.

It's funny how the reports keep changing...

Ruben cursed out Nate with the "worst of swear words"...

No, Ruben dropped a few f-bombs that weren't directed at Nate...

The coaching staff is thrilled that management stood up for them instead of "cutting them off at the knees" like was done last year with Mo...

No, the coach was surprised at how stiff the penalty was...

Sometimes I think, the more information we get, the less we really know.

Dan

tlong