ticket, Blazers LaFrentz gets

$141,361

each game

T he most beautiful and valuable document in the Trail Blazers' organization is kept on the second floor at One Center Court in a black filing cabinet that sits in a corner of Mike Fennell's office.

Fennell is the team's general counsel.

The Blazers won't tell you which drawer the document is filed in. And they won't allow you to photograph it. But that gorgeous document is Raef LaFrentz's expiring contract, and as long as we're talking about the Feb. 19 NBA trade deadline, we should get one thing straight --if the Blazers make a splashy trade, it's going to include this contract.

In fact, that minx of a contract might be the only thing the Blazers trade.

I figured you've heard enough about the document in the past year, so you might as well meet the thing.

We should probably give it a nickname, too.

Biggest Doc on the Block?

The Stacked Pact?

Willy Wonka's Rip City Golden Ticket?

LaFrentz's contract, like all NBA employment agreements, is printed on white, 81/2-by-11 paper. It has 16 boilerplate pages of the league's "Uniform Player Contract." Also attached are four pages of exhibits, which include details of his $12,722,500 in base compensation for the 2008-09 season, plus incentives, player protection and medical clauses.

Basically, the thing is a dream. For a team. For a player. For an attorney. And LaFrentz, who flies in and out of Portland for doctor's appointments, is probably lying on a beach somewhere toasting to it.

We should all toast to it.

The contract, as you've been told, expires after this NBA season, which makes it attractive to teams wanting to stay below the salary cap and/or luxury tax, and also, to those hoping to have more flexibility to sign a free agent this summer. Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard declined to comment, but a source in the front office said he's been fielding a growing number of inquiries from NBA teams in the past 72 hours.

Those inquiries almost exclusively focus on LaFrentz's contract.

Blazers assistant general manager Tom Penn, who might be the contract's closest friend if it could talk, casually refers to it as a "super expiring" contract. LaFrentz is out for the season with an injury but is paid $141,361 every time the Blazers play a game. After the team's 41st game this season, the league's insurance policy on players kicked in and pays the team 80 percent of his salary as a rebate.

Super, see?

This makes LaFrentz's contract wicked-beautiful to other NBA general managers. Especially executives who have teams that are cash-strapped, failing to draw, or flirting with having to pay a costly luxury tax. An NBA team potentially trading for LaFrentz's contract would not only get the salary-cap savings, and perhaps become a player in free agency, but would also collect $113,089 per game for the rest of the NBA season.

That's a big cash bonus for some needy franchise.

One of the prevailing theories is that the Blazers will take that savings themselves, and avoid paying a tax, especially after being saddled with that $8 million head-bop penalty after Darius Miles played his 10th game this season. In this tough economic climate, the suits at Vulcan, Inc. have been busy auditing owner Paul Allen's holdings, and looking to tighten the strings.

I'm convinced the Blazers are Allen's most economy-exempt enterprise.

He sees the star power of Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. And he sees big-time potential in Greg Oden. The Blazers' growth curve feels steep and accelerated. The window of opportunity is opening sooner than expected, and we've all seen enough of Allen's spending in sports to understand that he's willing to pay if he knows he's buying big thrills.

We're not talking about a No. 8 seed in the Western Conference anymore.

Allen has been close to winning big with the Blazers and even closer with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl once. As the window opens, don't think for a second that Allen is going to let his most valuable asset rot away in that filing cabinet. It's why Portland must find the best possible deal for that contract, and kiss it goodbye.

We spend a lot of time talking about players and chemistry, and debating whether the Blazers chose the right player when they selected Oden, but it's a document that is going to most alter the course of the franchise this month.

They should have housed the thing in glass.

John Canzano: 503-294-5065;

JohnCanzano@aol.com

Read his blog at blog.oregonlive.com/

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