TAKE A HINT by ST

The Trailblazers confuse me.  I guess that's an upgrade from recent years when they disgusted me or just failed to interest me.  I thought the hiring of Neil Olshey as GM was a wise move and pointed them in the right direction.  For those new to my act, I'm not a Blazers fan.  They're kind of my adopted Western Conference team.  The key from my chair is Paul Allen pretty much remove himself from final decisions.  He has every right to input, but he's been a failure as an owner.  The teams who made the NBA Finals in 90, West Finals in 91 and League Finals again in 92 were put together by another brain trust.  Save advancing in the 1999 & 2000 playoffs, the team has never made it out of the 1st round with Allen as owner.  He needs to trust the basketball people he hires and back the heck off.  We've seen the movie with him at the helm and it's ended in disaster each time.  This coaching search has been odd.  Now it's apparently down to interim coach Kaleb Canales and Dallas assistant Terry Stotts.  Seems like a decent enough hoops guy and has had 2 different shots at a head gig.  Nearly a decade ago he went 24 & 31 with Atlanta after taking over 27 games in for Lon Kruger but followed with a miserable full year going 28 & 54 before getting canned.  As the Bucks bench boss for the 2005-06 season, he went a respectable 40 & 42 before deteriorating to 23 & 41 the following year, getting the axe prior to the season ending.  Here's my question.  If the franchise was enamored with Stotts, wouldn't he already have the gig?  Their actions dictate otherwise.  I'm thinking why not just tell Canales he gets a full year audition to see what he can do with a non-lockout camp, some nice draft picks plus the fact they kept Nicolas Batum.  If he's not their man, you can conduct an all out national search.
It was 33 years ago today the sports world got hit with one of those tragic moments.  Obviously as a sports nut & Yankees fan living in the shadow of Manhattan it hit my house a little harder.  Catcher & Captain Thurman Munson was flying his Cessna Citation home to Ohio but came up 600 feet short of the runway, crashed and died.  We later learned he never should have operated a plane of that caliber as it was too powerful and he did not have the proper experience.  The whole thing seemed surreal. I was 18 years old, had just graduated college and was working the summer in my uncle's print shop, the 7am-3pm shift.  Was crashed out on the couch in our den when my sister, then 14 woke me up with the news she'd heard on the radio.  Oddly, in another 16 months she'd emerge from her room with the news John Lennon had been shot.  RIP Thurman, the Captain of back to back New York Yankee World Series champs, the 1st two I witnessed.