Bonzi Wells, ever the statesman, is reflecting his past and his old team, the Portland Trailblazers.

"You think about it, and it's been tough on them since they traded me, Jeff (McInnis) and Rasheed (Wallace)," said Wells, who is on the injured list with a slightly herniated disc in his back. "It's ridiculous. The next three or four years are going to be bad. Rebuilding in the NBA is tough."

In ?I-told-you-so-fashion? Mr. Wells continued to make farily observations doused in spite toward his former team.
"They've still got good players," he said. "But they traded away their best players, and now their chemistry is messed up.

"I think Cheeks leaving was unfortunate. If they were going to fire Cheeks, I thought they would do it at the end of the year. Being in the last year of his contract, I thought he'd at least finish the season. It's tough to go through rebuilding, but they traded all of their best players away.

As Bonzi rides the bench in Memphis, nursing his injured back, he can?t help but relive the ?glory years.?

"It's terrible," he said. "I look at the games every now and then to check up on my guys, and it's night and day compared to the way it used to be."