Canzano: Trail Blazers' 4 arrivals push team closer to playoffs

Blazers general manager Neil Olshey (left) and coach Terry Stotts (right) flank new players Dorell Wright (from left), Thomas Robinson, Robin Lopez and Earl Watson. (Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian)

The Trail Blazers called a news conference and introduced four new players to the city on Thursday. And anyone who has ever made a thrilling find at a garage sale or thrift store understands how proud general manager Neil Olshey must have been. And for those of you who yawned, I have just one thought.

If your needle needs moving, move it yourself.

The "This doesn't move the needle for me," crowd yawned at every one of Olshey's moves, no matter how sly and sensical last week. So you figure the naysayers probably graduated to a collective belch by Thursday. And I have no doubt by the middle of next season, they'll be the ones crowing that Olshey got lucky, as they claim he did with Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard.

The Blazers are better. That was the point of free agency and the draft. The entire Western Conference got better, but the Blazers had the smartest summer in the league despite having only $12 million in cap room and lots of competition for overvalued free agents.

Robin Lopez, Dorell Wright, Thomas Robinson and Earl Watson were the guys being introduced. I don't expect any of them will have their numbers retired and hung from the Rose Garden rafters. Then again, if there's a city that should appreciate the way Olshey pulled this together, it's Portland. The whole reason there are a multitude of jerseys from the 1977 NBA championship team in the rafters now is that beyond the obvious couple of stars, that team won with depth, great role players and solid all-around play.

Let's see: Lopez, Wright and Robinson will make a collective $12.4 million next season. Watson will make the veteran's minimum. So who was that "needle mover" exactly, who could have been had for $12 million and change?

The Blazers chased center Tiago Splitter, and were prepared to make an offer if they knew it wouldn't be matched, but San Antonio stepped in front and chose to keep him. Dwight Howard was out of Range. The Blazers didn't want Al Jefferson, and while Andre Iguodala is a better version of Nic Batum, he's also seven years older than the Blazers small forward, and more expensive. Andrew Bynum is hurt, Minnesota would have matched anything given to Nikola Pekovic, and Olshey didn't have a nickel mine to give Andrei Kirilenko, either.

Had Lopez been an unrestricted free agent, he'd have been the fifth-best option at his position. Robinson would have been high, too, at his position, because the NBA is a league built on speculative propositions (See: Oden, Greg). Maybe you wanted Chris Kaman, Zaza Pachulia, or Samuel Dalembert, but even I would have shrugged at some of that.

Truth is, Olshey inherited a treasure chest filled with second-round draft picks, castaways, Euros and busts. So yeah, what should have gone down after the introduction of the newest Trail Blazers on Thursday wasn't a shrug, but a small parade. The celebration should be that Olshey didn't do what a lot of general managers in his position might have done -- Go fish. He didn't play it safe. He tried to do something when the options where limited and you'd think that would be celebrated around here.

Portland isn't a taxpaying team. Paul Allen isn't going to overspend, with the league's second-highest payroll, as he did in being the No. 6 seed in 2002-03. Allen isn't going to open that checkbook again unless he smells a run at a championship, as he's doing with his Seattle Seahawks now. And so what we have in Portland is a team that is going counter-culture to what's happening in the rest of the NBA.

It's a star's league. Big-name players win titles. That's what we're told. That's what fans are sold. But Portland's already tried, under Allen, to buy a championship while disregarding team chemistry. We saw how that worked out. And so the underlying theme on Thursday wasn't about an era changing, or even fans getting to know any of the four new players, but for this city to maybe understand what's just happened.

The Blazers didn't win a championship. But they just gave themselves a chance to make the playoffs next season. After seven of the last 10 years in draft-lottery hell, you'd think that would be celebrated.

Be clear: The Blazers got Lopez, Robinson, Wright and Watson when they could have had a single star player.

Maybe that didn't move your needle. But it sure moved the Blazers toward the playoffs again.

-- John Canzano