LaMarcus Aldridge believes he would have been the odd man out in Portland had Brandon Roy's knees held up and Greg Oden remained healthy.

"I probably would have ended up signing somewhere else," Aldridge said. "Think about it. I was the last option out of those guys, so they both would have gotten max deals, and they wouldn't have given me my deal (five years, $62.5 million). They only signed me because I was the only low post threat left on the team. If they had Greg, they don't give me the number I wanted, and I'm somewhere else. I think about it all the time. I wouldn't even be here had Greg not gotten hurt."

Roy, Oden and Aldridge played only 76 games together, posting a 51-25 (.671 winning percentage) record.

"Me, Brandon and Greg," Aldridge said. "At the dinner table, I just remember seeing a vision of us three together, and it was something special. I felt like we were so young, we had so much time to build chemistry, so much time to grow and get better. I just saw all three of us having multiple rings. At least one ring. But it never came together. It never panned out."

Nate McMillan said he told Aldridge early on that he thought he could be the best of the Big Three.

"L.A. had more versatility than any of them," McMillan said.