For many Portland Trail Blazers fans, Wednesday’s announcement that Bob Whitsitt, the team’s president and general manager since 1994, had decided to resign effective July 1 was long overdue.

I share the sentiments of many Blazer fans who believe that while it’s the players who are ultimately responsible for wins and losses, Whitsitt was just as responsible for assembling a team of misfits.

Unfortunately, like many Blazer fans over the past three seasons, I have become so turned off by the players’ antics the Blazers are no longer my favorite NBA team.

I never thought it would come to that and I’m sure many others who have ended their allegiance with the team feel the same.

It’s hard to fathom how far the Blazers have fallen since their last NBA Finals appearance in 1992 when Blazermania was as high as it had been at any time during the team’s tenure, including the 1977 championship run.

Sadly, though, there seems to be little connection to the team’s past. In Whitsitt’s first season, he let the Houston Rockets steal away Clyde Drexler. In following years, the Blazers got nothing for Terry Porter, Buck Williams, Jerome Kersey and Cliff Robinson when they left. Later, Whitsitt hired Mike Dunleavy as coach and fired him when Dunleavy couldn’t win a championship with the players Whitsitt gave him.

I’m not sure Whitsitt really understood what the Blazers mean to the state. Unlike the Seattle SuperSonics where Whitsitt came from, the Blazers are the state’s only professional team. That automatically makes them more important in their city, and under a greater microscope, than teams in cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Like teams in other small-markets, fans want a team they can identify with and be proud of win or lose.

Owner Paul Allen is the fourth-richest man in the world and gave Whitsitt all the resources necessary to win a championship or two. One thing Whitsitt forgets is that integrity, discipline and character can be just as important in building a champion as having players who can hit jumps shots and rebound.

I wonder if Whitsitt and Maurice Cheeks were even running this past season’s team. The players must be running this team most of the time. How else do you explain the multiple transgressions committed by Rasheed Wallace, Bonzi Wells, Damon Stoudamire, Qyntel Woods and Ruben Patterson and management’s failure to do anything about it?

For all of Wallace’s problems on and off the court, he has only been disciplined by the team twice – both in April 2001, the second time for a throwing a towel in Arvydas Sabonis’ face during a timeout of a game with the Lakers – since Whitsitt acquired him in a trade with Washington for Rod Strickland and Harvey Grant. The trade for Wallace seemed a steal for the Blazers then.

But since Portland’s meltdown in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals against the Lakers, Wallace has steadily declined each year. He’s no longer one of the premiere players in the game and watching him lately, particularly in Game 7 of the first-round series against Dallas, it seems as if Wallace doesn’t care if his team wins or not.

The acquisition of Patterson was one of the worst moves Whitsitt made with the Blazers, right there with trading for Isaiah Rider and the Brian Grant for Shawn Kemp deal. Patterson is such a good guy that when he came to the Blazers, he had to register as a sex offender in Oregon. This past season he was arrested for assaulting his wife. His wife didn’t end up pressing charges, he returned home and the Blazers fined him $100,000. Whitsitt should have traded Patterson right there and then.

Then there was the Stoudamire benching this past regular season. Stoudamire claimed he had no beef with Cheeks and the order not to play him came from above. Then all Stoudamire did was play the best basketball of his Blazer career when he actually got off the bench following Scottie Pippen’s knee injury and outplayed Steve Nash for most of the playoff series with Dallas. Who’s decision was it to bench Stoudamire for so long and why? I bet Whitsitt had a big hand in that too.

Who knows what will happen with the Blazers now that Whitsitt is gone. Allen claims he won’t spend as much as he did before – the Blazers had the highest payroll in NBA history this year – and that character will be as important as talent in bringing in any new players.

Maybe the person or people who replace Whitsitt won’t be able to win a championship either. But the acquisitions made might show up more in a box score than on a police blotter and maybe the love affair with the Blazers can be like it was when Walton, Maurice Lucas, Jim Paxson, Drexler and Porter played for Portland. If so, that makes Whitsitt’s decision to leave the Blazers a good one. Ashley Conklin is a copy editor with the East Oregonian and a former EO sports editor.