Second year Blazers center Jeff Pendergraph on rookie point guard Armon Johnson... "AJ, he's a dog, man. He plays his heart out. He don't back down from nobody. He just wants to please. He wants to get better, he wants to do good and do it by any means." Formore on Pendergraph's summerand his thoughts on new and old teammates alike,Blazers.com's Casey Holdahlhas you covered. -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com |Twitter

Earlier today we notedBlazers guard Rudy Fernandez blogging about "going back to work". Here's Portland Trail Blazers Director Of NBA Scouting Mike Born on the Rudy Fernandez situationduring an interview on Blazers CourtsidewithMike Barrett,Mike RiceandBrian Wheeler. ------------------------- "If we haven't done anything [trade-wise], I think we all expect Rudy to come back to camp. We're hopeful that he does." "I thought Rudy over there actually played pretty well [in the World Championships]. He had some stretches where I think people expect so much from him. Like, 'Man, he's not getting 20 [points] a night.' But if you look at his stats coming out of the prelim rounds, he was averaging about 11.5 points and 8 rebounds in 23.5 minutes. We expect so much from Rudy." "But [Spain] was sort of splitting up [playing time]. Spain is a really good team with a lot of NBA players on it. They really cut down on his minutes like they were with a lot of guys. In the 2 games I saw over there, Rudy played really well in the second half of both games. It was unfortunate that the last game that I saw he had 15 points in the second half and they lose at the buzzer [to Serbia]. But then he turned around and in the two consolation games he goes for 17 in one and didn't miss a shot and then he had 33 against Argentina in a loss, and he was 11 for 13. Those last two games he went 18 for 20 from the field and really, really played well in the last two." "We still think very highly of Rudy and think he's a terrific player. We're going to look at some options, obviously we're still looking at those, and at the end of the day if he's here, he's here. Actually, we hope he is." -------------------------Download the audio here. -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com |Twitter