Chris Haynes Offers His Expertise

July 17, 2012, 1:20 pm

With the Blazers' free agency frenzy, the search for a new head coach and the start of the NBA summer league, there has been a lot of news coming out of Rip City over the past couple days.  Chris Haynes from Comcast Sportsnet joined Chad on The Morning Sports Page Tuesday to fill us in on it all.

Haynes began with an analysis of the whole Nicolas Batum situation.  He suggests that if things went Batum’s way he would probably be playing basketball for the Minnesota Timberwolves, but all signs are pointing to the Blazers matching the lucrative offer put forth by the Timberwolves. 

Haynes doesn’t seem too optimistic that Batum will be able to perform to the level of someone who will be commanding more than $11 million.  In his mind, someone making that kind of cheddar should probably be scoring at least 17 points per game and should be pulling down about seven rebounds.  If Batum averaged either 17 points or seven rebounds, it would be the highest average he’s had thus far in his career.

Haynes also made sure to address the comments made by Peter Vecsey on Monday’s MSP.  He insists that there is truth to the chatter regarding Phil Jackson wanting to be a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.  However, he suggests that a marriage between the two sides is unlikely because Phil Jackson’s and Neil Olshey’s personalities’ would probably not mesh well together.

Lastly, Haynes took some time to address the head coaching situation.  All along, he had expected Brian Shaw to come away with the Trail Blazers' head coaching gig.  But since being down in Vegas, he’s heard whispers that Shaw has not been interviewing well with teams.  So right now the coaching search still looks very wide open.

Take a listen as Haynes breaks down the Blazers pursuit of Phil Jackson and listen in as he comments on the nice first game from Blazer first round pick, Damian Lillard.