Bad news, NBA fans – you only have a few hours left to hop onto the Portland Trailblazers bandwagon. Last train leaves at midnight, apparently. That was the note sent to us this afternoon from the guys over at Fan’s Attic, who passed along a link to today’s low-on-the-radar news that Spanish wunderkind Rudy Fernandez officially signed with the Blazers. This isn’t some inexperienced teenager we’re talking about – the kid’s a 23-year-old shooting guard with unlimited range. Put him and Brandon Roy or Martell Webster or Buckets Bayless on the perimeter with Greg Oden in the post …

We get the uncontrollable urge to vomit when talking heads get all knee jerk, so we’ll try to temper our enthusiasm: Assuming Oden can stay healthy for the next three months, Portland could very, very, very good next year.

A peek at the depth chart:

PG – Blake, Rodriguez
SG – Roy, Fernandez, Bayless
SF – Outlaw, Webster
PF – Aldridge, Frye, Diogu
C – Oden, Przybilla, LaFrentz

These Blazers haven’t accomplished jack. They’re teeming with that annoying, amorphous quantity known as potential. They play in the much-more-challenging Western Conference. But perhaps this is worth noting: the Blazers’ odds to win the NBA title – set by men much smarter than us before Bayless was drafted – were 25:1, which is the same as 2008 playoff teams Orlando and Denver, and better than ‘08 playoff teams Washington, Toronto, Atlanta and Philly.