Portland's got talent ... and not many minutes to spread around

It's a cliché in sports that you just can't have enough talent. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have too much young talent.

The Portland Trail Blazers won 54 games last season and tied for first place in the Northwest Division. By just about any measure, they're a team on the rise, not only because they have a solid nucleus of three players -- Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden -- who may someday play together in an All-Star Game. No, it's not just that.

The Trail Blazers are loaded with other young guys just looking to make their mark in the league. Of course, Roy, Aldridge and Oden are, too. But aside from them, Portland has Nicolas Batum, a budding star who was a solid contributor for France's national team last summer in the European championships. He's a player the Blazers believe has potential to be a dependable scorer and lockdown defender who came out of nowhere at the age of 19 to claim a starting spot last season after an injury to Martell Webster.

The sweet-shooting Webster is back, recovered from a stress fracture in a foot and at just 22, entering his fifth season in the NBA and eager to prove he's worthy of the contract extension the team gave him last summer. And don't forget Rudy Fernandez, the charismatic Spaniard who averaged 10.4 points per game and set a rookie record for 3-point field goals last season. Coach Nate McMillan found a way to get Fernandez 25 minutes per game last season but, as an off-guard playing behind Roy, that's going to be difficult to duplicate again.

Oh, and shot-blocking and rebounding specialist Joel Przybilla, free-agent power forward Juwan Howard, point guards Steve Blake, Andre Miller and Jerryd Bayless and sixth man Travis Outlaw. These are players who would be in just about any team's rotation.

Most, too, are young players. Having a lot of veteran players on your bench is one thing -- most are willing to buy into limited roles as long as they're going to have a chance to chase a championship. But young players? They're still trying to establish themselves. They're still looking to make a name, carve out an identity and, yes, earn themselves that first big contract.

"The key thing is 'establish,'" McMillan said. "Young players are always trying to create an identity."

McMillan went into training camp preaching two things: The team needs to improve on defense, including defensive rebounding, and players have to be willing to sacrifice for the common good.

"As long as we play together, we'll be fine," he said. "That's what it's going to come down to -- we're not going to play selfish basketball. I told them, 'It's not about you, it's about the Blazers.' We're going to play the right way."

And there is no doubt the Trail Blazers are going to play much the same way they did last season, with two go-to guys.

"Brandon Roy is going to be Option No. 1," McMillan said. "And LaMarcus Aldridge is also going to be Option No. 1. We are going to play off those guys just like we did last season."

McMillan has a great leader in Roy who has been selling the same team-first package to his teammates since camp opened. But he has a power forward in Aldridge who so far hasn't gotten the big contract extension that Roy got last summer and it has seemed to have bother him a little. "I talked to LaMarcus about it and he's cool," Roy said on the eve of training camp. "He just needs to be patient."

McMillan also has also young players who believe they should be rotation players -- yet might not see that rotation.

"We're going to try to use a 10-man rotation," said the coach. "But if we can't, if that doesn't work for us, we won't use that many. The team comes first."

Now that Webster -- who played but five minutes last season -- is back to battle Batum for the starting job at small forward, Fernandez's minutes are in jeopardy. The Spanish star didn't come to this country to be a backup and he's already on record as wanting to play even more than he did last season. But it doesn't seem likely, barring another injury, because a lot of his playing time last year came when McMillan moved Roy to small forward and played him alongside Fernandez.

For his part, Webster is not tied to being a starter. "I care more about finishing the game than starting," he said. "Nicolas wants to start so I hope he does."

Nate McMillan says any jobs up for grabs will be decided in the preseason. (AP)

Outlaw will probably not play many small-forward minutes and is going to be given a shot as the backup power forward behind Aldridge. A player who has made a lot of big shots over the past two seasons for the Trail Blazers, Outlaw is entering his seventh NBA campaign and is in a contract year -- which makes him a prime candidate for wanting a lot of quality minutes.

Przybilla doesn't seem to be worried about a starting job and after nine seasons in the league he'll be able to adapt to any role. That's a good thing because after a long summer in a lonely gym in Columbus, Ohio, with Portland developmental coach Bill Bayno, Oden wants that spot in the middle on opening night.

"I'm more comfortable and more confident," Oden said. "And it's because of all the work I put in."

So far, Oden's improvement is the real deal. His conditioning, footwork and aggressiveness are appreciably more NBA ready. He's not going to show up on opening night looking like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but he's better than he was last season, when he couldn't get out of his own way much of the time.

The big position battle in training camp has been at the point, where Blake is the incumbent and Miller, whom the Blazers signed to a two-year free-agent contract in the offseason for $7 million per, is expecting to be a starter.

That would be fine except that McMillan laid some rules down at the opening of camp that all the players who ended as starters last season -- including Blake -- still had their starting jobs unless displaced by someone else. Forgive McMillan -- it's something that came from his own experience as a player in Seattle.

He had been the starting Sonics point guard when the franchise selected Gary Payton in the draft. Immediately -- without a chance to even compete for the job -- McMillan found himself a bench player.

"They basically said the day they drafted him that Gary would be the starting point guard, without us coming to training camp," McMillan said. "My mentality was like, 'Let's come to camp. Let's see.'"

But that is the NBA mentality. Really, it's the same reality in all of pro sports. You don't take Greg Oden No. 1 overall in the draft and not expect him to someday be your starter. Having players compete for starting jobs in camp is one thing -- but come on, Fernandez can play as hard and effectively in training camp as he wants, he's not going to dislodge Roy as the starting off-guard.

Miller maintains McMillan told him he would be the starter in a meeting they had before he signed with the team. McMillan isn't talking much about it. But the suspicion is, when the smoke clears, Miller will be the starter -- even though Blake plays off Roy, who likes to handle the ball a lot, very well.

That scenario is indicative of the sort of problems McMillan is going to have to deal with this season. Last year his team was one of the most efficient offensive teams in the league but only average defensively. So far in the exhibition season, "We haven't shown much defensive improvement so far and that concerns me," McMillan said. "Guys have to commit to that."

The guess is that McMillan will get some improvement in that area, especially if Oden proves he can play at least 30 minutes a game. He can be a difference-maker at the defensive end.

But the long-range question remains something quite different: Can McMillan continue to sell his young team on the unselfishness that he's demanding? Can he keep players focused on team goals even though they're not playing the number of quality minutes their pals, their families and their agents are telling them they deserve? Can he keep a disgruntled player or players from figuratively blowing up his locker room?

Can he, in fact, get his team to deliver the unselfishness he's requesting? If so, he may have the inside track on the Coach of the Year award. And the Trail Blazers will be right in the thick of fight to finish behind the Lakers in the Western Conference.