To answer the question in my headline… no, probably not.
…… and I would love to end the piece there. Wouldn't that be great?
By now we all understand that Adam Morrison is never going to live up to "third overall pick" status. That was made pretty clear, pretty quickly. Now Morrison is looking for situations where he can become a decent role player who earns a nice little paycheck for a few more years.
So the kid who grew up in Spokane, Wash., and went to college there is going back to the Pacific Northwest for one last NBA gasp with the Portland Trail Blazers. He has been invited to their camp after some time overseas and a summer auditioning for everyone in Orlando and Las Vegas.
But Morrison goes into Portland without any real guarantee of anything. The roster is overloaded, as all are at this point, so he is fighting even to make the team beyond September.
I got a chance to see Morrison this summer while he was with the Clippers in Vegas. One thing he can definitely still do, and will probably always be able to do, is shoot the ball. He can get hot, and he can hit a ton of shots in a row. But we always knew he could shoot.
The question now for Morrison is can he do anything else for Portland? Or, at the very least, can he be so automatic that he creates the space that other players can exploit?
Morrison will make money playing basketball. The question right now is, will he have to convert the rest of his money into U.S. dollars from whatever currency he is paid… or will he get a nice little direct deposit he can check on from the comfort of an apartment in the same time zone as the rest of his family?
