Don't call it a comeback. It has been reported recently that Brandon Roy is ready to return to the league he retired from not even a year ago. After being amnestied by the Blazers last season, he is a free agent and has his share of teams that are in the process of making him offers. But with all of Brandon's knee issues over the years and the lingering curse that is being a star player for the Blazers remain obstacles that Roy needs to overcome. It's well documented that he isn't the first big name former Trailblazer that's been held back by injuries. In the words of Michelangelo (the Ninja Turtle, not the artist), "a moment to reflect."
Bill Walton was the first. He led the Blazers to an NBA title in 1977 after falling behind in the series against the 76ers 0-2 before winning four straight games and a championship (I wasn't even alive and it hurts to hear that). The Blazers started the following season winning 50 of their first 60 games before Walton was forced to sit out the rest of the season with a broken foot. This was supposed to be a dynasty and Walton was the centerpiece. However, any chance at a dynasty was ruined when Walton, one of the league's best players at that time, continued to suffer with chronic foot and ankle issues, eventually leaving Portland in an ugly divorce that involved Walton accusing the Blazers' staff of incompetent treatment of his injuries. Then it was Sam Bowie. The much maligned big man will forever be known as the bust who the Blazers drafted in 1984 when Michael Jordan was sitting there. Let's be real...Bowie could have been an All-Star multiple times and he would have still been considered a bust when MJ is the other option. Injuries kept his NBA career from ever getting off the ground and simultaneously making Bowie a household name for all the wrong reasons. Fast-forward 20 years and it's Greg Oden's turn. Oden was supposed to be the next great one. People were comparing him to Bill Russell. Yeah you heard that right, Russell, the 11 time world champion, was regularly being compared to Oden (because of his style of play not the fact that Oden looks the same age as Russell) and no one was batting an eye lash. Several missed seasons and knee surgeries later, Oden is out of basketball and Kevin Durant, the player taken with the next pick by Seattle, is one of the best players in the game. Then it was Brandon Roy's turn. Unlike Bowie and Oden, Roy had an all-star career, albeit a short one, but he atleast got his career started a bit. He was one of the best guards in the Western Conference and a budding superstar with a knack for clutch performances before his knee issues stole any chance of turning Portland into a championship contender. Such is the luck of the Portland Trailblazers.
The Blazers were coming out of an ugly era in the middle of this decade. The "Jailblazers" and their roster of goons had talent but never went anywhere. It was a collection of volatile personalities that were never able to put it all together. A few years prior, they were on the precipice of an NBA Finals berth in Los Angeles before they blew a 17 point 4th quarter lead in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and things never seemed the same after that. Zach Randolph, Damon Stoudemire, Rasheed Wallace eventually were all gone and Portland was in full rebuilding mode, desperate for a fresh face to bring in a new era in Portland.
Enter Brandon Roy. He wasted no time making a name for himself in the NBA, winning Rookie of the Year in 2006-07, and paired with LaMarcus Aldridge and the promise of Greg Oden, the Blazers were poised to build something special. Knee injuries deprived Portland of that opportunity like they had to the aforementioned Blazers legends of yesteryear. Roy started having irritation during the 2008-09 season when he underwent a minor procedure to remove cartilage from his knee. The following year, after having signed a max contract to stay in Portland, he discovered he had a bone contusion and an MRI showed a slight meniscus tear. Unfortunately for Roy his knees continued to deteriorate to the point where he had to have arthroscopic knee surgery on BOTH of his knees the following season. His condition got worse in the offseason when it was discovered that he lacked cartilage between the bones in his knees, forcing him to retire from the NBA.
You have to admire the fight in Brandon Roy. With the ghosts of Walton, Bowie and Oden staring him dead in the face early on in his retirement, he decided to have radical knee surgery in an apparent Hail Mary effort to return next season. PRP, platelet rich plasma, surgery was performed (the same surgery Kobe flew to Germany for last off-season) and Roy apparently feels better than ever. The state of the art surgery, common with athletes in the hopes of speeding up recovery of an injury by using the body's own blood and tissue to tighten the cartilage between bones (or something like that), has Roy feeling good and itching to get back on the court. He is preparing for a comeback for the 2012-13 season and being a free agent, has the luxury of picking his next destination.
It has been reported in recent days that Roy has narrowed down his options to a handful of suitors in Chicago, Indiana, Minnesota, Golden State and Dallas. If I were Brandon, right off the bat, I'd eliminate Golden State and Minnesota. Regardless of Roy's ties to the Pacific Northwest, the Warriors are perennially cellar-dwellers and they would have to climb too far in the Western Conference to make any significant noise. Same goes for the Timberwolves, who constantly load up with young talent but cannot seem to put it all together. Indiana is a team on the rise, but with Roy Hibbert possibly fleeing to Portland and Paul George/George Hill cementing themselves in the back-court, minutes may be hard to come by. This leaves the Bulls and the Mavericks. You really can't go wrong with either, but if Deron Williams ends up signing with Dallas, that seems like the best situation. Williams will dominate the ball and allow Roy to play off him and pick his spots. The combination of Williams, Roy and Dirk would be deadly and allow the team to have three clutch shooters in the games' final minutes. The situation in Chicago would be a good one as well, especially once Derrick Rose comes back from his ACL recovery. Rose and Roy in the back-court could be a force in the Eastern Conference and he could be the missing piece to the Bulls championship pursuit, a scorer on the wing and someone else who can create his own shot. Of course, there are so many moving pieces in these situations and all of these projections are contingent on Roy coming back to his old self, which is far from certain.
You can't help but root for a guy like Brandon Roy. Regardless of where he signs (although I'm secretly hoping for Chicago), it will be great to see #7 back on the court where he belongs in 2012. He just needs to make sure the injured "Ghosts of Trailblazers Past" don't follow him to his new team.
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