I love a lot of what I have seen from the big fella. But in his grilling by the Oregonian's Jason Quick, Blazer President Steve Patterson alludes to some unspoken troubles with him, saying there were "some other things that weren’t positive about him that I’m not going to talk about." Could be an effort to justify the pick of Sebastian Telfair, or maybe there really is some intrigue.

JQ: The Telfair draft, in talking to some of those departed scouts. They went into that day that night, feeling that Jefferson was going to be the guy. There was the greatest crop of point guards coming up the next year, next year’s draft. Why the shift?

SP: Well, I think the initial recommendation was from the scouts was Tiago Splitter. Maybe someday Tiago Splitter will be the next great player in the league but we haven’t seen him yet. Al Jefferson was a last minute recommendation. Young man refused to come in and work out and refused to take any tests. He was playing the same position where we had Shareef and Zach. Maybe someday he’ll be a good player. I don’t think anybody can say for sure yet.

JQ: Was there a shift in focus there though? Did you guys go into that day feeling like Jefferson was the guy?

SP: No, I think the discussion around Jefferson came in as a last minute guy after Splitter pulled out of the draft. There was discussion about Telfair, a whole host of others.  But I think that if we got a guy that won’t work out, won’t take a test. We finally had to fly a psychologist down there for him to take a test. He had difficulty with it. There were some other things that weren’t positive about him that I’m not going to talk about in the interview. And quite frankly, we were coming up on having nobody under contract in the backcourt, quick, after the year. We had one year left on Damon.