Trail Blazers Can't Get Out of Their Own Way, Even When They Do the Right Thing

Yet again, the Tom Dundon-era Trail Blazers have stumbled into the correct decision and still managed to do it in a way that alienates and embarrasses the franchise's fans and employees.

It happened in the playoffs, when they begrudgingly conformed to standard NBA practice and let their two-way players come to San Antonio for Game 5 of their first-round series, only after the decision to leave them at home for Games 1 and 2 became a national story.

It happened over the summer with the coaching search: their ultimate choice, Micah Nori, came with universal rave reviews and has hit the right notes in his first training camp and preseason. But his hiring came on the heels of Dundon publicly undermining Tiago Splitter, who led the Blazers to the playoffs for the first time in five years after Chauncey Billups was arrested by the FBI on the second day of the season, by shopping his job around during the playoffs. To make the matters worse, the contract Nori signed drew national scrutiny and a public rebuke from the National Basketball Coaches Association. Once again, good results from bad process.

The final (for now) resolution of the ongoing TV broadcast saga is another one to add to the list: a decision that should be a win for everybody but doesn't feel like one because this ownership group is incapable of getting out of its own way.