Portland Trail Bloggers

If you’ve been keeping up with Blazers news at all, then you have been reading Oregon Live’s Behind the Blazer Beat’s blog series “Rip City Revival.” Yesterday, they just started their new series which features point guard Steve Blake. As you may or may not know, I am a huge Steve Blake fan. To see the Rip City Revival feature make a series about my boy Blake makes me extremely happy.

The link includes a video which shows snippets of what Blake’s workout sessions, his time at his youth basketball camps and how he spends time with his family. He also gives some great commentary about how he’s been training in the off-season and what he expects out of this team this summer and when the regular season starts.

Included with the video is a really fantastic article from Jason Quick about Blake’s admirations of staying a Blazer and being their starting point guard when the NBA Championship rolls into the Rose City. Here’s an excerpt from the article featuring Blake’s thoughts on his role (or not) as a future Blazer:

“Always a tireless worker in the offseason, Blake is pushing himself like never before, perhaps too much, he admits. He says it has little to do with his contract status — after this season, the Blazers can either release him or pick up an option for one more season — and nothing to do with the team drafting Jerryd Bayless, a hotshot guard who is coming off a Most Valuable Player performance in the Las Vegas Summer League.

Instead, Blake is motivated by something he rarely lets get to him: People doubting his game, and questioning his long-term value to the team. He has set out to prove them wrong.

“I want to prove I can be a starter for a long time, not just for one year,” Blake says. “And I want to prove that I can be the starting point guard on a championship team.”

I’m really glad to see that Blake is not the type of player to take criticism lying down. He hears the cries of Portland fans everywhere wanting an “All-Star” point guard and he’s having none of it. It seems as though Steve Blake has spent his entire off-season planning how he’s going to prove to every single doubter both here in Portland and in the NBA that he is a valuable asset to Portland and their aspirations of a NBA title.

The rest of the article really goes in-depth on both Blake as a NBA player and as a human being. It’s an absolute must-read if you are a Blazer fan.