When the Portland Trail Blazers put Steve Patterson and John Nash in charge of the franchise 18 months ago, the two had a mandate to accomplish three things: 1) reduce the team’s massive payroll, 2) rid the roster of its many unsavory characters, and 3) keep the team competitive.

A year and a half later, it looks like they’re 0-for-3. Certainly, keeping the team competitive has been a wash. Portland’s string of consecutive playoff appearances ended at 21 last season, and it’s on pace to make a return trip to the lottery this season.

Reducing the payroll hasn’t gone smoothly either, partly because they haven’t been able to resist the urge to give anybody and everybody a contract extension. Before the season started, Portland doled out nearly $170 million to Zach Randolph, Theo Ratliff, and Darius Miles.

Randolph, at least, can argue that he’s worth the money. The bruising 23-year-old forward averages 19.4 points and 9.9 rebounds a game, numbers that earned him the league’s Most Improved Player award last season.

But the stats are the best part of his game. He’s alienated teammates with his unwillingness to pass the ball out of double-teams, and he’s MIA on defense. Those habits are the reason he’s coming off the bench for the moment, and why some questioned his six-year, $84 million extension.

While one can debate the merits of Randolph’s deal, there’s no doubt the Ratliff and Miles deals were money poorly spent. While Ratliff’s shot blocking energized the Blazers’ playoff push a year ago after he arrived from Atlanta, his fantastic finish blinded the organization to several blemishes.

First, Ratliff turns 32 in April, so by extending his contract three years for a whopping $36 million, the Blazers are paying him as if he’ll be one of the best players in the league until he’s 35.That’s a hard one to swallow, considering Ratliff has never displayed that kind of production. The law of averages should have told the Blazers not to pay based on career performance, especially since Ratliff has a chronic hip problem.

The truth is, Ratliff isn’t even the best center on the Blazers right now. He’s averaging a meager five points and an embarrassing five rebounds a game. Lately, he’s been losing minutes to journeyman Joel Przybilla. If Ratliff is like this now, imagine what he’ll be like in 2007-08, when he’s 34 and making $13 million.

The Miles decision was equally perplexing. The Blazers appeared to be playing hardball with him in contract negotiations this summer, only to mysteriously drop a six-year, $48 million deal in his lap. This one could still pay off in the long-term, but Miles has spent most of the season sulking after losing his starting job to Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

The third mandate in Portland’s revitalization program – ridding the roster of the shady characters that piled up during the Bob Whitsitt years – has been an abject failure. Witness the contract given to Randolph, whose past includes multiple arrests and a sucker punch of teammate Ruben Patterson last season.

Not that Patterson’s a prince either. He’s a registered sex offender with several other items on his rap sheet – but both he and Randolph have been on the roster for every day of the Patterson-Nash empire. So much for cleaning out the riffraff.

Meanwhile, Miles cursed out head coach Maurice Cheeks at a recent practice, hurling several racial epithets at him and telling Cheeks he didn’t care if he was benched because Cheeks would soon be fired. (Since you’re probably wondering by now, yes, they’re both black, and no, I don’t get the racial epithets thing either.)

Cheeks went to Nash to make sure Miles was disciplined. Nash had the brilliant idea of giving him a token fine and moving on. Way to crack the whip, big guy. When Cheeks basically said he’d quit if the team was going to undermine him that blatantly, Miles ended up with a two-game suspension without pay. That’s still not as long as Cheeks wanted, but he could live with it.

Until Wednesday, that is, when the Oregonian unearthed a memo between the Blazers and Miles to repay Miles for the time he missed … with interest. You would think that Portland would have all the leverage here – Miles is signed on for five and a half more seasons, after all. But at the first whimper from an agent complaining about disciplining one of their players, the Blazers immediately caved.

Of course, this directly contravenes their stated goal. At the start of the Nash-Patterson era, Blazers owner Paul Allen hoped to define the end of the “Jail Blazers” era in Portland by issuing a 25-point pledge to the fans. It included items like “evaluate character along with basketball talent when selecting players” and “establish a player code of conduct and to hold our players accountable for their actions both on and off the court.”

Based on the Miles fiasco, this document is the epitome of lip service. Evaluate character when selecting players? Hey, let’s keep Randolph for six more years. Hold players accountable? Sorry Darius, here’s your money back.

Of course, part of the problem is that Allen gave the Nash-Patterson team three goals, and achieving all three was impossible since they’re basically mutually exclusive. Building a winner isn’t consistent with dumping salary and unloading talented troublemakers, but the Blazers thought they’d slip by if they did a little of each. Instead, their dwindling fan base is more enraged than ever because the team still has too many knuckleheads, but now they’re not even good anymore. Allen can’t be happy either – he’s paying nearly $84 million for this season’s mess, plus a massive dollop in luxury tax at the end of the year.

The funny thing is that if they presented their fans a realistic rebuilding plan that involved dumping the thugs and getting under the cap, Blazer Nation would accept more losses in the short term. Instead, the team promised three goals, achieved none of them, and are right back where they started.