Good thing Portland gets a do-over next year, when the team will have millions in salary cap room space available for a buy or trade.

Because unless there’s more to be announced — always possible in the NBA’s whacky secretive world — Thursday night’s draft felt like a whiff.

Maybe Jerryd Bayless will become the best player of this draft. He certainly was one of the top young players in the Pacific-10 Conference this past season. A year or two ago, when the Blazers were in need of star power, Bayless could have made sense.

But what the Blazers needed Thursday was focus. To add the right pieces that compliment Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, Lamarcus Aldridge and perhaps Rudy Fernandez. To complete a playoff-caliber team.

Instead, they took Bayless, who looks like a misfit.

Roy is a scorer. Fernandez is touted as a scorer. Aldridge sure has the makings of a scoring threat. Oden, though he hasn’t played a minute of professional ball, looks like a low-post scorer.

And now they want to add the 6-foot-3 Bayless, who set a freshman scoring record at Arizona this past season? Not to mention that he mostly played shooting guard, not point guard, for the Wildcats?

This should be interesting.

Many scouting reports refer to Bayless as a combo guard. The Blazers must think they’re wrong, and that Bayless’ high school coach, David Lopez of St. Mary’s of Phoenix, is right.

“He’s a point guard,” Lopez told the Arizona Republic. “He has been all his life. People who don’t know him well say that (he’s not). The NBA people know.”

The move to land Bayless, acquired through a trade with Indiana, smacked of desperation.

Blazers’ general manager Kevin Pritchard is quickly gaining a reputation as someone eager to take a chance. He’s been fearless the past two drafts, making 10 draft-day trades to acquire players such as Roy, Aldridge and Fernandez.

Pritchard has set the bar high for draft-day excitement, perhaps too high to reach Thursday night.

Drafting 13th, the Blazers had to move up to get one of the three players they coveted: point guards Russell Westbrook and D.J. Augustin, and small forward Joe Alexander.

Westbrook was an early surprise, going fourth to Seattle. Then Alexander went eighth to Milwaukee, leaving only Augustin available.

One pick later, Augustin was gone to Charlotte.

So, too, was the excitement from this draft, as some among the crowd of Blazer fans assembled at the Rose Garden began to hang their heads.

Few expected Pritchard to retain the 13th pick. He didn’t disappoint from that regard, but passing altogether at 13 and adding no one to the roster might have been as good a move as trading for Bayless.

Not to mention Bayless wasn’t one of 52 players — fifty two! — to come to Portland for a private pre-draft workout.

Nothing desperate about taking a player like that.

Now, Thursday’s less-than-thrilling draft shouldn’t take away your excitement for the Blazers. They remain a young team on the rise, coming off a 41-41 season, and add Oden, Fernandez and Bayless to the roster next season.

It’s just that under Pritchard, so much is expected from draft night. It was so obvious the past two drafts that Pritchard hit home runs before he left the war room.

Maybe Pritchard outsmarted everyone again this time. It’s just not obvious today.

And if not, there’s always next year.

NICK DASCHEL is a sports writer for The Columbian. Reach him by telephone at 360-735-4522 or e-mail at nick.daschel@columbian.com.