On the Trail Blazers’ lousy start, Hassan Whiteside and my former boss, Alabama’s long snapper, a Texas grad assistant and all those $$ tossed around in college football

Things on my mind as we kick off a new (and hopefully far better) year …

• A statistical analysis of the Trail Blazers’ disappointing seven-game start to the 2020-21 campaign portends that the local NBA quintet is fortunate to be 3-4.

The off-season emphasis by general manager Neil Olshey was help at the defensive end, something that was a near-constant during Terry Stotts’ first eight years as coach.