Out of Ammo

Adam Morrison was once the greatest college basketball player I had ever seen.

He was also a disappointment, a bust, a heartbreaker and a joke. All in just six years' time.

To really understand, you have to go back to the fall of 2005. The Gonzaga Bulldogs were beginning a new season with high expectations. The team's hopes were pinned to Morrison, the moptopped, sweet-shooting swingman.

As a freshman that year at Gonzaga, I had heard this story before. Like Matt Santangelo, Richie Frahm, Blake Stepp and Dan Dickau before him, Morrison was the latest Great White Zags Hope. Besides, anyone looks good playing against the weak West Coast Conference competition. What was going to be so different?

And then I saw Morrison play.




The buzzer-beater may have hooked me, but it was his sheer ability that kept me around.

I saw him play on TV, and he was incredible. I saw him play live at the McCarthey Athletic Center, and he was phenomenal. I stood in the stands with my jaw hitting the floor, amazed by the absolute ability of this guy.

I didn't think it was possible, but Morrison worked so hard in every game, while simultaneously making it look easy. He could hit shots from 30 feet out. He could go off the dribble and pull up, or power to the basket. He could curl off screens. He could run the fast break.

I had never seen a player like him before, and I have never seen a player like him since.

He could do it all.





That season, Morrison averaged 28 points per game, shot 43 percent on 3-pointers, grabbed five rebounds per contest, and was named co-player of the year.

He had five 40-point games and 13 30-point games, all the while hitting shot after shot from every conceivable angle. He carried the Zags through the WCC season and on to the 2006 NCAA Tournament.

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Fast forward six years. Morrison is now playing basketball in Serbia, getting more press for his ejection that his play. Just six years after that incredible campaign at Gonzaga, during which he was named the best player in the country, he's not even in the country anymore.

Six years ago, it would be hard to fathom that this would be the arc of Morrison's career. Because as the Zags rolled through the NCAA Tournament in 2006, it seemed "Ammo" was destined for greatness.

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The downfall started, like many do, with teardrops.

In the 2006 Sweet Sixteen, the Bulldogs were up by 17 points against UCLA, and cruising. A curiously shirtsleeved Morrison was leading the Zags in scoring, and the team was looking to move on to the Elite Eight.

Then things fell apart.

The Bruins locked down Morrison in the second half, swarming him and keeping him away from the ball. The rest of the Zags looked lost, and UCLA started to chip away at the lead. Everything was coming unraveled. 

With 14 seconds left and the Zags leading by one, Morrison was swarmed in the backcourt by Bruin defenders. Morrison passed to power forward JP Batista. And in doing so, passed away his career.

Despite point guard Derek Raivio, a 90 percent free throw shooter, being open six feet away, Batista held the ball, which was stolen by UCLA. They got the ball inside for an easy layup, and with two seconds still on the clock, still time, possibly, Morrison collapsed on the court in tears. It was done.

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Despite the setback, Morrison's talent was never in doubt. I'll admit, I was a member of the Blazers' "Draft the Stache" campaign. I believed in the talent and work ethic I saw at Gonzaga. But his tears during the Sweet Sixteen earned him equal amounts of criticism and praise. He was still considered a good prospect, but now he was becoming equally known as "the guy who cried."

Morrison was taken number 3 overall by the Charlotte Bobcats in the 2006 NBA draft. His rookie season was solid if unspectacular, averaging 11 points per game. For a time, he was briefly in consideration for Rookie of the Year before fading near the end of the season. You could think that, given time and conditioning, he could play at the NBA level.

The next season, the wheels fell off.

A torn ACL ended Morrison's season in 2007, and by the time he returned the next year, he couldn't find a spot in the rotation. His defense was invisible, and he couldn't hit any of the shots he took. His bread-and-butter at Gonzaga was his ability to create his own shot. Now, he lacked that ability. A game that used to come so easy for him now seemed like the most difficult task in the world.

In the 2008-2009 season, he was traded to a contender, the Los Angeles Lakers.

And that's when a former College Player of the Year became a complete joke.

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Adam Morrison is a two time NBA champion.

He won titles in 2009 and 2010 with the Lakers, coached by Phil Jackson and featuring one of the greatest players ever to pick up a ball, Kobe Bryant. For most players, this would be a crowning achievement for a career. But Adam Morrison didn't receive that luxury.

Yes, Morrison won two championships. No, he didn't play. Morrison was more often inactive, wearing street clothes and sitting on the bench. He didn't play a single minute in either NBA finals.

Years earlier at Gonzaga, we predicted that Morrison could someday have a major impact on a championship contender.

What we didn't expect was that he would have no impact at all.

Instead, he became a joke. Without significant playing time in years (and without significant production when he did play), no one remembered the greatness on the hardwood at Gonzaga, they only remembered the crying during the Sweet Sixteen. The awkwardness on the Laker bench. He became fodder for late night TV shows.

What should have been the two happiest moments of Adam Morrison's career became nothing but a reminder of how far he had fallen.

Morrison has not played a game in the NBA since.

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Adam Morrison now starts at small forward for KK Crvena zvezda in Serbia. Judging by highlights and my inability to understand Serbian, it seems like he's playing well, with a recent 30-point game.

It's not the worst way to make a living, but it's nothing like what was expected so many years ago.

How did Morrison end up at this point? Was it the level of competition? His defense? His desire? We may not know. The question now is: what's next?

It's easy to laugh at the legions of die-hard Zag fans who still say Adam Morrison got a raw deal. To them it was always the coach's fault, or the injury's fault. Many of them are probably watching Ammo's Euro highlights and thinking "See? He can still do it!"

And deep down, I desperately want them to be right.

Deep down, I want to feel what my freshman self felt in the bleachers six years ago. I want to feel that excitement, that wonder about how a young man can play basketball so well.

We didn't appreciate the phenomenon we were seeing at Gonzaga. It came and went like a gunshot. Too fast. We weren't prepared for it to be so finite. Deep down, we just want to see it one last time.

But the heartbreaking idea no one wants to admit, is that maybe there's no bullets left in the chamber.

Five columns I won't be writing in October

• The genius of Terry Francona 

Muhammad Ali had the rope-a-dope. Terry Francona just makes the rest of Major League Baseball look like dopes.

At first, it wasn't an easy sell to Red Sox management. When team officials and coaches met in the now-legendary closed door meeting on September 4th, the topic was how to gain the most momentum heading into the playoffs. Theo Epstein suggested the starting pitching staff be rested, and Jonathan Papelbon get a few days off to be ready.

At one point, Francona stood up and bellowed to Epstien: "That's what everyone expects us to do."

Francona suggested that, instead of trying to gain momentum, the Red Sox just lull the rest of the American League into a false sense of security, then strike when no one expected it. What he proposed is that the Red Sox would look like they are collapsing - letting a 9-game lead disintegrate, letting pitchers drink beer in the clubhouse, and somehow keeping JD Drew on the roster. When other teams finally let their guards down, the Sox would turn it on and cruise past them.

The result of that clandestine meeting? An American League title.

•  Mayweather vs Merchant: A bout for the ages

Is it possible to be surprised and not surprised at the same time?

After his knockout of Victor Ortiz, Floyd Mayweather had been biding his time before naming his next opponent. Rumors began swirling, as they always do, that he would finally accept a bout against the only boxer left worth fighting: Manny Pacquiao.

 But no surprise, Mayweather ducked him again. But to everyone's surprise, his next opponent will be 80-year-old boxing analyst Larry Merchant.

"Larry doesn't know (expletive) about boxing," Mayweather said at a press conference. "I plan on showing him that firsthand in this fight. By the time it's over, he's going to be eating out of a tube."

"The joke's on him," Merchant cackled in reply. "I already eat out of a tube."

•  Ivy not so green for Fitzpatrick 

He wasn't just Ryan Fitzpatrick, he was "Harvard Graduate Ryan Fitzpatrick." And what a success story it was: a kid who went to one of the best schools in the nation somehow finds success. The odds against him seemed insurmountable.

But there was one thing his Ivy League pedigree couldn't overcome: the fact that it didn't exist.

Turns out, Fitzpatrick had been living a lie. An investigation by Yahoo! Sports revealed that Fitzpatrick had actually created a fake transcript. Not only did he not go to Harvard, he didn't even play football. The closest he came was playing Madden on XBOX live while drunkenly clicking through online classes at the University of Phoenix.

• 'Musical Chairs' declared in College Football

Conferences expanding and contracting. Teams switching sides one week and going back the next. Occasionally a football game breaks out. Finally, the NCAA is embracing it.

Starting in October, the NCAA will play Rock and Roll Part 2 by Gary Glitter on a week-long loop, while schools travel in a circle across the country. When the music stops, each team needs to rush toward a conference. If you don't have a chair, you're out. And that's how things will be decided on a week-by-week basis.

One week could have Oregon in the SEC, Florida in the Pac-12, and poor little Texas left out, forced to play pickup football in the parking lot.

•  Cubs on a collision course with World Series

Sure, they may have lost 91 games, but somehow I think they've still got a shot.

Bracing for a year without Blazers

For the past two years I have been living in Medford, and it's become harder to follow my beloved Blazers.

Yes, I realize that the tool I am using to write this post is also part of the largest information-gathering resource known to man, the sheer magnitude of which is capable of shrinking the world in which we live. But for a sports fan, somehow, it isn't enough. We can find highlights, game recaps, interviews, commentary, fan discussions and more online. We can subscribe to satellite TV packages to watch our games from hundreds of miles away.

But to me, there is nothing like being in the city of Portland during the Blazers' season.

Getting up in the morning, and hearing the thunk of the Oregonian hitting the kitchen table. Flipping through the oily newspaper to find the sports section and read that day's game preview. Driving near the waterfront and seeing the roof of the Rose Garden rise up over the horizon. Seeing people walk down the street and wear the jerseys of players who joined the team after 1999.

There's nothing like being there.

I'm just a few hundred miles south in Medford, and it's like being on another planet. To people here, a Blazer is something you wear to a dinner party, not something you cheer for (unless you're at a really bizarre dinner party).

Around this time two years ago, I stumbled across an AM radio station here that broadcast Blazer games. It was my lifeline.

As I worked night shifts, I would drive to stories across the Rogue Valley, catching snippets of the games during the trip. In April 2010, I alternated between covering a welcome party for the troops and welcoming back Brandon Roy against the Suns.

I would wrap up an interview, then run back to the car to get an update. I would scream as I approached Grants Pass and the reception turned to a loud buzz, but I would strain to decipher any details through the static. I would linger for an extra few minutes in the parking lot at the end of the night so I wouldn't miss any of the action.

Hearing the sounds of Bill Schonely's voice interrupt the national radio show to introduce the Blazer broadcast was like Christmas morning.

I wonder if I'll ever hear it again?

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The chances of NBA basketball this season are not good. As what would've been the start of the season approaches, I'm suddenly realizing how much I'm going to miss my Blazers.

A few months ago, I wrote about how I would prefer a lockout over a Blazer team that looked unimpressive on paper. I was wrong.

Any Blazer team is better than no Blazer team.

It doesn't matter if they win 50 games or lose 50 games. They're still our team. I once rooted for the Blazers even as they slogged their way to a 21-win season, and I couldn't have been happier. In the end I was still able to root for my team no matter what happened.

This lockout takes that all away.

It could be an entire season without the Blazers. A whole year with no reason to pick up that newspaper. Nothing to keep be lingering in the parking lot. Nothing but static on the AM radio.

It's going to be a long, dark year.

It's still ten feet

I love Hoosiers. I love TV news. Combine the two, and that's something after my heart.

One of my favorite new blogs is TV News Grapevine. It's written by a veteran in the news business who offers a new piece of advice/wisdom each day. As someone now entering his second year in the bid'ness (thank you, Dan Garrity), it has been wonderful to get some perspective about what we go through in this industry.

Today, he takes one of Hoosiers' most iconic scenes and applies it to the TV news industry.

It's still ten feet.

I could not agree more.

It's a strange thing about being in a small, beginner market. The news may seem different than what you will find in a larger city, and certainly it can seem like there's less of it. But TV stations in small markets are sometimes caught in this strange space - they either want to accept the small town aspect and say nothing important ever happens in that city, or go the exact opposite and push back against the small town image, trying to make every story the most important story ever. One week you will do the cat fashion show story, the next week you will be told a school fundraiser isn't "hard news" enough.

The trouble is that you cannot get stuck on one end of the spectrum or the other. It's a delicate balancing act. The end result, however, should be to believe in everything you cover. Have a reason to cover it, then treat it with the respect it deserves.

In the smaller markets, not everything is going to be hard news. But being in a smaller market shouldn't prevent you from taking a serious approach to hard news. The rules for good reporting are the same everywhere.

It's still ten feet.

A few years ago when I wrote for my college newspaper, I spoke to our newspaper staff, and gave a fairly scathing critique of the way the paper covered a more serious University story. Basically, the layout treated it as a joke, practically making it into a cartoon on the front page. I said if we didn't take the story seriously, our readers wouldn't take it seriously.

The editor who designed the layout shot back with "We aren't the New York Times."

"Yes," a fellow editor and I said back. "But that doesn't mean we can't strive to be."

In the years since, as I've watched "small-market" TV news from across the country and read news stories online, I've sensed a feeling from some people working at news outlets - some of their employees think they cannot be the New York Times, simply because of where they are geographically. Not everyone subscribes to that line of thinking, but an attitude like that from just a few people can make a big difference on the whole. I've met people who have shared the thought of "there are six people watching, what does it matter?"

Then let's have some great coverage for those six viewers.

If a small-time mentality takes hold, whether it's a college newspaper or a professional TV station, it can be hard to get out of. But it's still ten feet, no matter where the newsroom is located.

Throw away the key

The NBA is officially locked out.

Look around on NBA.com, and you won't find evidence that the players even exist. Every image has been scrubbed from the Web site. In the place of the usual promotional materials, there are articles adorned with the words "standoff," "issues," and "uncertainty."

Until the owners and players learn to act nice, we're not getting any basketball anytime soon.

Good. Lock them out.

It will spare Blazer fans of another gradual step down before the team had even made it to the top.

It's hard to believe that a team with so much promise during the past four season only peaked with consecutive first-round exits. But here we are, during a time when the team would normally be preparing for the next season, and the team looks no better than when it was struggling to contain Luis Scola and Aaron Brooks in the 2009 playoffs.

Management has imploded, and the team still has no idea what direction to go in. All of the recent wheeling and dealing has just been sound and fury, signifying nothing. When the dust finally settled, the team had taken one giant step ... to the side.

Another year of the Brandon Roy Farewell Tour. He'll have a couple games where we catch glimpses of the amazing player he once was, but then force us to watch as he limps up and down the court, desperately trying to recapture something that isn't there.

Another year of Marcus Camby being a little bit older, a little bit slower.

Another year of relying on third-tier players to help win games, like Wesley Matthews and Raymond Felton.

Another season of backup point guard from Jarrett Jack, er... Steve Blake, uh... Sergio Rodriguez, uh...Jerryd Bayless, er...Patty Mills, er... Armon Johnson, er...Nolan Smith.

And of course, another year without Greg Oden.

The excitement has dimmed, and the lockout will save fans another season in which the team slips down another rung on the ladder.

Compare this to the last lockout in 1998-99, when Blazer fans were itching see the team take the court. The Blazers were ready for a full season with Damon Stoudamire, who at that time was still one of the most exciting young point guards in the league. They had Brian Grant on the boards and Rasheed Wallace starting to come into his own. Things were on an upswing after several mediocre years of watching Kenny Anderson and Gary Trent try to lead a middling team to the playoffs (two notable point guards of the era: John Crotty and Rick Brunson). Steps were finally being taken forward.

Who knows? Without a lockout, maybe this Blazer team would've been something. Maybe LaMarcus Aldridge would've elevated his game to an even higher level this season. Maybe Gerald Wallace would suddenly turn into a winner. Maybe Nicolas Batum will decide another year of erratic playing time is the catalyst to turn him into a superstar.

But is this team worth a fifth straight season of "maybe?"