Last night Marcus Camby, the starting center for our Portland Trailblazers suffered an ankle injury. Now injuries for blazers centers are nothing new, (don't worry I'm not going to mention you know who) but how will this effect the 2012 blazers; the run and gun blazers who rely more on scoring than they have in the past? Marcus Camby is averaging 3.4 points a game and according to the average NBA fan the blazers aren't losing much. We know better, Camby is the heart of our defense and heaps up the boards.
Tonight we are facing the Houston Rockets, (4-7) a team that lacks inside scoring, once you get past Hasheem Thabeet (yes I'm joking). For this road trip it means that Aldridge will just have to man up and Batum and Gerald are going to have to rebound even more than they already do. We should be fine for this game, we should be fine for the rest of the road trip.
Now what happens if Camby misses significant time? Barring a miraculous comeback from Greg (I said it) we have no legitimate starting center outside of Camby. This is a huge problem that we need to address, I've thought about trading Gerald for a legit center and it does make some sense. Batum is more than capable of starting and there is a strong possibility this is Gerald's last season as a Blazer. But other than Dwight Howard there is no way we will get a center that is as valuable as Gerald. I believe we can win this season so I don't want a center that might help us in the future
That leaves us relying on the 37 year old body of Marcus Camby, something that doesn't scare me as much as it should. I really think he can stay healthy for the majority of 2012 and be very instrumental in keeping us as contenders in the NBA.
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