Trail Blazers 50Th Anniversary
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PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATING 50 Years of Trail Blazers BASKETBALL When you start to uncover five decades of history, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the impact of a basketball team in the Pacific Northwest on its players, fans, culture and community. We’ve witnessed more than 4,000 games, 400,000 points, and countless plays that made Rip City stand up and shout. All the while, a sports franchise has managed to bounce into our lives and shoot into our hearts. From a man with a vision and his trusty raincoat to the champs red hot and rollin’ down Broadway. From the beloved Blazers of the 90s who were best in the West to this point in Dame Time. From the memories of our very first game to our very last buzzer beater, this franchise makes up the fabric of who we are and everything our city has become. We look forward to celebrating 50 years of Trail Blazers basketball, presented by your local Toyota dealers and Spirit Mountain Casino, with five Decade Night celebrations throughout the season featuring Trail Blazers greats, a special 50th logo, court and uniforms, Trail Blazers commemorative 50th Anniversary wine produced by Adelsheim Vineyard, and more. We hope you enjoy these personal stories of Trail Blazers through history. Cheers to 50 Years, Rip City! CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 OCTOBER 7-13, 2019 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION I SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL 33 PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS 50TH ANNIVERSARY By Kent Hartman of the team’s first six years. When the Trail Blazers’ esteemed founder, Harry Glickman, along with At about ten minutes after 2:00 PM on his financial partners Herman Sar- Sunday, June 5, 1977, I was breathing Guys Like Us kowsky, Robert Schmertz and Larry rarefied air. We all were. The Portland Weinberg, landed the Trail Blazers fran- Trail Blazers had just won the NBA chise in 1970, Portland was a very dif- championship. The city, the A rare, still-existing Trail Blazers pocket schedule from ferent place, sleepy even. The metro state, and pretty much the the team’s first season of 1970-71 (left). population was less than half of what entire region, for that matter, An extraordinarily rare poster from the Trail Blazers’ it is today. The Marquam Bridge over first season (1970-71) featuring the signatures of were euphoric, me included. every player (below). the Willamette River and, correspond- I’d had the good fortune of not ingly, a completed Interstate 5, were only attending the game, but but four years old. There were also also being in the locker room only five television stations to pick during the trophy presentation from, each with its own recep- afterward (a well-meaning but tion challenges, depending on surely misguided security guard where you lived. It often required had waved my friend and me adjusting a pair of set-top rabbit inside). Not bad for a couple of ears (antennas) to successfully high school juniors. watch the handful of Blazers road Our drive home up SW Broadway games being broadcast back was even more surreal: a swirling here at home. sea of utterly ecstatic humans run- Sports-wise, many locals weren’t ning everywhere. Hundreds of peo- sure at first what to think of the new ple had spontaneously gathered team. Portland had long been a from Burnside Street all the way up to hockey (Buckaroos) and baseball Portland State University, blocking traf- (Beavers) town, if only minor-league. fic while deliriously shouting their lungs The “Bucks,” in particular, founded out. Joining in, I actually honked the and owned by Mr. Glickman, were a horn in my dad’s car so much that it perennial powerhouse, winning the eventually ceased to make a sound. Western Hockey League’s Lester Pat- Of course, the team’s official victory rick Cup championship several times. parade, held the next day and coin- Year-in and year-out, they were the cidentally on the same route, proved best non-National Hockey League to be exponentially larger and even half their seats. club in the country. Which was saying remains the stuff of lore around these Tickets were like gold. Scalp- something, given that the NHL had parts. ing entered the Stumptown lex- only six teams during much of that From that point on, the Blazers’ icon. In response to the insa- era. The Buckaroos, who frequently home games were completely sold tiable demand in those pre- drew sell-out crowds, were also the out, which included several hundred cable/satellite/streaming days, the have PHOTOS: THE KENT HARTMAN COLLECTION Memorial Coliseum’s longtime primary hastily-added standing-room-only team began simulcasting games won in a land- tenant, now required to share the spots that ringed all around the main over closed-circuit TV on a giant slide. Amazingly, the team had never facility with a bunch of basketball walkway inside the Memorial Coli- screen at the Paramount Theatre even put together a winning season, players. seum (Note: the “Veterans” part of the downtown. Those 2,500 seats usually let alone made the playoffs, until that But the Blazers grew on people. name wasn’t in use during the 1970s). went in a hurry too. golden run during 1976-77. Suddenly, Chalking up twenty-nine wins (a then- 12,666 frenzied faithful could be Portland’s post-championship our once under-the-radar little burg record for an expansion team) and counted on at every tip-off — a atmosphere was positively electric. had hit the bigtime. The whole thing walloping the defending world cham- much-envied homecourt advantage The newly-coined phrase, “Red, Hot & was as improbable as it was unimagi- pion New York Knicks that initial season in a pre-Magic Johnson/Larry Bird NBA Rollin’,” became a rallying cry. Had Bill nable, especially when viewed where some teams struggled to fill Walton run for governor he would through the decidedly provincial lens SEE GUYS, PAGE 36 CONGRATULATIONS TRAIL BLAZERS, FOR 50 AMAZING SEASONS! Together, we’re building healthier communities. 34 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION I SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL OCTOBER 7-13, 2019 PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS 50TH ANNIVERSARY About Dame Time By Casey Holdahl makes the work, and eventually lace, then Portland’s starting small for- every other part of your life, misera- ward, to the New Jersey Nets in ble. Sure, working for a team during exchange for two players — Mehmet As the team embarks on their 50th the good times often doesn’t feel like Okur and Shawne Williams — who year of existence, there’s a fair work at all, but during the bad times, would never suit up for the Blazers amount of evidence to support the it can be brutal. and a first-round pick in the upcom- notion that suffering simply comes And a three-year series of events, ing 2012 Draft. with the territory of being a fan of the culminating with the 2011-12 lock- Despite the Nets having the fifth- Portland Trail Blazers. Granted, it isn’t out-shortened season, certainly qual- worst record in the NBA at the time, the kind of suffering which really mat- ifies as one of those bad times. After they only asked for Top 3 protection, ters in the grand scheme, and fans of a brief moment in which it seemed a peculiarity of the deal that is nearly every team invariably end up cursing as though the team might be on the impossible to fathom less than a the stars at some point, but the qual- verge of contending, Greg Oden’s decade later. The Nets would finish ity and regularity of gut punches knee gave out, Brandon Roy’s did the season tied with the Kings for the those devoted to Rip City have the same, two general managers fifth-worst record, and after the Draft endured over the last half century were fired within a span of 10 months Lottery, were awarded the sixth over- PHOTO: SAM FORENCICH/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES certainly qualify as hard luck. and Nate McMillan lost the locker all pick, which would be conveyed Lillard and Olshey with 2012-13 Rookie of the Year trophy. (Copyright 2013 NBAE) So when you work for a team with room and, eventually, his job. And on to Portland. After a multi-season run such a profile long enough, most the business side, rumors of whole- of misfortune, we finally had one go And since the team had been look- either learn to roll with those punches sale changes had a significant num- our way. It wasn’t necessarily a fix, ing for their Point Guard of the Future or eventually come to the conclu- ber of employees wondering if per- but at least there was cause for opti- for close to a decade, a senior from sion that perhaps sports are better haps it was time to start making mism. Weber State named Damian Lillard left to leisure. That’s not to say that preparations. The season ended with the team seemed to make sense, both in terms people who work for teams aren’t But there was a glimmer. The day losing seven straight and nine of their of talent and fit. fans on some level — almost all of after parting ways with McMillan, last 10 to finish 10 games under .500. After participating in the full bat- us are — but if you can’t, at least on Chad Buchanan, a holdover from the Roughly a month later, Neil Olshey tery of events at the Draft Combine, some level, compartmentalize the two previous front offices tasked with was hired to take over as General which basically doesn’t happen in swings of emotion that inevitably leading the team during the lockout Manager, with the first order of busi- today’s NBA for players whose selec- occur throughout the course of one season, officially pulled the cord on ness being to figure out how to best and/or multiple NBA seasons, it the season by sending Gerald Wal- maximize the Trail Blazers’ draft assets.