Former Trail Blazers guard Damon Stoudamire joined me on Thursday on the Bald Faced Truth radio show (12-3p on 102.9-FM and 750-AM) in a riveting 20-minute interview that covered a lot of ground.

The current University of the Pacific basketball coach talked about the legalization of marijuana, growing up in Portland, and eventually the conversation turned to NBA free agency and why Stoudamire thinks Portland will always struggle to attract free agents.

"There are more attractive places," Stoudamire said. "When you look at Portland. I spent a lot of time in Memphis as a player and a coach. I look at those two places, they have to utilize the trade better than anybody. I said something the other day, with that trade has to be a risk. The biggest robbery of a trade that nobody ever says is when I was at Memphis as a coach we traded Quentin Richardson for Zach Randolph. Why? Because nobody wanted him. You take that chance. Zach had a year left on that deal, and you take that chance.

"You've got to utilize the trade because going out and trying to sign guys, there's always better options in those guy's eyes. If you haven't lived here, if you haven't been around here, (the scenery) isn't what you enjoy, it's not going to be attractive to guys coming from out of town. Even when I played, all guys do is complain about coming to Portland... to the outside, perception turns into reality."

On blowing up the 2000 Western Conference Finals team:

"This is the craziest thing about that era and that time for me that I get disappointed in. Why did we blow the team up? Why did we make the moves that we did? Because that's what we were supposed to? ... man, that's a team you should have kept together. Why? Because you had younger players that were eventually going to replace the players who were starters. That's the business, man. That's how the business is.

"You don't trade Jermaine O'Neal. The business said eventually Jermaine O'Neal was going to be the starting power forward for the Blazers. He was either going to be playing with Rasheed or they'd have moved Rasheed.... I felt like we never should have broke that team up. We were a couple of plays away. What do you do? You just bring the same team back."

Listen to Damon: