Youngsters are no burden for rebuilt Blazers

PORTLAND, ORE. - Like Ray Allen did exactly a decade before him, Brandon Roy briefly wore a Timberwolves hat on draft night two summers ago, a fact that some hometown-team supporters might recall when the Wolves play Roy and the NBA's youngest and hottest team tonight at the Rose Garden.

Those two distinctions don't often accompany each other. It happens so rarely that Golden State coach Don Nelson uses a singular word to describe the Blazers' transformation from three consecutive losing seasons into playoff contenders and current winners of a league-best 11 games in a row with a roster built around 10 players 24 years old or younger.

"Amazing," Nelson said.

Many NBA scouts correctly considered Roy -- the former Washington star -- a ready-made, 6-6 pro shooting guard and a potential Rookie of the Year candidate when the Wolves selected him sixth in 2006 and minutes later announced the deal that sent Roy to Portland for Villanova star Randy Foye, the seventh player selected, and a sizable sum of Blazers billionaire owner Paul Allen's cash.

Roy won that rookie honor last season. This month, he was named the Western Conference's best player in consecutive weeks while the Blazers have used a favorable schedule to win every game in December except for the first one, Dec. 2 at San Antonio.

"Eleven in a row, that's a feat," Wolves coach Randy Wittman said. "I don't care who you are."

A decade after the Wolves selected Allen and traded him to Milwaukee for the rights to Stephon Marbury, they drafted Roy and dealt him for Foye because they were looking for someone who could play more point guard and they preferred his athleticism, defense and toughness. Vice president of basketball operations Kevin McHale called it Foye's additional "juice."

While Foye heals an injured kneecap that has kept him sidelined all season, Roy has led a renaissance for a franchise much farther along in the process -- "building, not rebuilding," Portland coach Nate McMillan said -- than the 4-23 Wolves.

The Blazers have found notoriety in the NBA standings rather than the police blotter and shed the nickname "Jail Blazers" by accumulating 11 first-round draft picks taken with the ninth pick or higher -- four were chosen No. 3 or higher -- and trading away the talented but trouble-prone Zach Randolph. The Wolves possess three players selected among a draft's top nine, none in the first three selections.

Ohio State star Greg Oden was considered the franchise's certain savior when the Blazers won last spring's draft lottery and took him No. 1 overall. He hasn't played a minute, out all season following summer knee surgery that has left Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge (second overall pick in 2006), Martell Webster (sixth overall in 2005) playing free and producing victories and league-wide buzz "sooner than we probably thought," McMillan said.

"Who would have ever thought?" Nelson asked. "They're very well-coached. Everybody is playing at a really high level, and together. They play just the way you hope your team would play."

The Blazers' winning streak and their 16-12 record offers proof that a franchise can retool with youth and not get their brains battered forever. McMillan, though, maintains his team is not far removed from the Wolves.

"A lot of things have to go right and things are going right for us," said McMillan, whose team started the season 5-12. "We were there, just a month ago. But I don't think we're that far off [from the Wolves]. We're definitely not far from that."

Roy's presence, however, gives McMillan a player into whose hands he can put the ball during the fourth quarter. Roy has averaged 23 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.8 assists during the 11-game winning streak. He made a layup last week against Toronto -- switching the ball from his right hand to his left in mid-leap to avoid Raptors big man Chris Bosh -- that can be found on YouTube.com, was replayed on a TNT broadcast of a Denver-Houston game and that ESPN compared to Michael Jordan's unforgettable layup in the 1991 NBA Finals.

"The first couple weeks of training camp his first year, you just knew," said Blazers veteran center Joel Przybilla, the former Gopher. "Not only the way he carries himself, but the way he lets the game come to him. You look up and he's got 25 [points], eight [rebounds] and eight [assists] and he hasn't forced anything. It's a great skill he's got."

Apparently good enough that even Roy is realizing who he is and what he can be.

"At first I didn't want to jinx it," Roy said. "And then I thought, 'This isn't a jinx. I think I really am this good.' "