It’s always darkest before the dawn, as they say, and nowhere is that more true this morning than in Portland. The Trail Blazers are suffering through another losing season, at 24–34 entering Thursday’s game against Charlotte, and were greeted with the news yesterday that the team president and general manager, Steve Patterson, is resigning immediately.

The Blazers hired Patterson in 2003, when former executive Bob Whitsitt departed, and gave him orders to fumigate the locker room, reduce salaries, and maintain a winner. Given the first two objectives, it’s no surprise that they fell short on the third. A crumbling Portland team would have been hard-pressed to maintain a winning record in any situation at that time, but especially given the bosses’ mandate to dump the shady characters and reduce salary.

The odd part is that he mostly failed in the other two objectives as well. Patterson eventually rid the Blazers of most of their shady characters, but it took far longer than anyone expected. And the unloading he did was almost all by attrition: Patterson didn’t trade “Jail Blazers” like Ruben Patterson, Bonzi Wells, and Rasheed Wallace until their contracts had nearly expired.

Even now, Portland’s two most prominent players — forwards Zach Randolph and Darius Miles — are no strangers to the workings of the criminal justice system. Patterson and the Blazers also earned scorn locally for their coddling of Miles even as he undermined previous coach Maurice Cheeks, at one point agreeing behind the scenes to return money to Miles from a disciplinary fine. Incidents like that eroded the once-ravenous fan support to the point that Portland came in last in attendance last season.

Patterson also failed miserably in his efforts to get the payroll under control, falling prey to the same weakness that befalls bad executives across the league — falling in love with players he’d just acquired. Miles, for instance, played well in half a season after a trade from Cleveland; he got a $48 million reward and almost immediately lost his passion for basketball. Randolph won the Most Improved Player award and got the league’s most improved salary, too — six years and a whopping $84 million.

And when Patterson traded for Theo Ratliff, and the big man blocked a few shots in his first games as a Blazer, Patterson came up with his piece de resistance: a ridiculous, three-year, $36 million extension that may be the single worst contract decision of the past decade. As a result, the Blazers won’t have significant cap space until 2009 at the earliest.

By now, this story should be getting familiar for Knicks fans. Fat contracts? Dysfunctional team politics? Weird personnel decisions? Say, doesn’t this sound like Isiah Thomas?

And in fact, it was an Isiah-esque move by Patterson that got him in this mess in the first place. Though most figured he’d be in charge of the business side as team president since he hadn’t worked in basketball in a decade, he surreptitiously put himself in charge of personnel, too. The move was so unexpected that the Pistons’ assistant general manager, John Hammond, had nearly agreed to sign on as the Blazers’ general manager before realizing he was about to become Patterson’s lackey.

Instead the team hired John Nash to be the powerless general manager/glutton for punishment, before he was fired in a face-saving move after Portland’s miserable 21–61 campaign in 2005–06. Although the Blazers have fared better this year, nobody is giving Patterson the credit. It’s nearly universally agreed that the incredible draft engineered by player personnel director Kevin Pritchard is what has Portland on better footing.

Nonetheless, Patterson retains a Zeke-like ability to see a bone-dry glass as half-full. “Sometimes it’s better for somebody to take the ball the last 10 yards than somebody who’s taken it the first 90 yards,” Patterson said on Thursday, overstating his rushing total by about 89 yards.

Patterson apparently resigned because the team wouldn’t extend his contract, which was due to expire after the season. That’s where we get to the dawn part. The Blazers may be just as bad as the Knicks at the moment, but today they’re a step ahead because they’ve already taken out the trash. Without their own Isiah to cut cap-killing deals and snuggle up to overrated quasi-stars, the Blazers can move forward with a more genuine rebuilding program.

Moreover, the Blazers are already in surprisingly good position thanks to their impressive draft. Despite 2006–07 being one of the lamest rookie classes in ages, the Blazers could end up with three bona fide stars from this haul.

In fact, they arguably got the three best players in the whole draft. Guard Brandon Roy is a smooth shot-maker who is the NBA’s likely Rookie of the Year, while long-armed forward LaMarcus Aldridge reminds many of former Blazer Rasheed Wallace, minus the histrionics. And Spanish point guard Sergio Rodriguez is an assist machine who plays with flair reminiscent of a young Jason Williams.

Throw in a few other quality youngsters from previous drafts — guard Jarrett Jack, forwards Martell Webster and Travis Outlaw, and, of course, Randolph — and the Blazers have a lot of building blocks already in place. They’re not unlike the Knicks in that respect: New York has three solid first-rounders from last year’s draft and a couple other good young players, but, like Portland, has several decrepit, overpaid veterans dragging them down.

The key now for Portland is finding somebody who won’t screw it up. The Blazers have Seattle Seahawks executive Tod Leiweke in charge of things for now (owner Paul Allen also owns the football team), but he’s a placeholder who is expected to hire a real, live basketball man to take charge of the operation between now and draft day.

Locals are hoping that Pritchard gets the call after the way his draft-day maneuvering helped the team rebound from last year’s debacle. Kings’ general manager Geoff Petrie, who played for the Blazers and appears to be near the end of the line in Sacramento, is another possibility. Whomever they hire, it’s almost certain to be an improvement.

That’s more than the Knicks can say at the moment, but at least New Yorkers have a little more hope today. No owner can have the wool pulled over his eyes forever, and it appears Knicks poobah James Dolan has become increasingly aware of his basketball emperor’s nakedness. The Blazers’ ouster of Patterson is a happy, if vicarious, reminder that eventually somebody better is going to be in charge of the Knicks, too.

jhollinger@nysun.com