blazesketball

I’ve spoken previously to the extent to which the offseason represents a vast and desolate content desert, and holy shit is that continuing to be a thing. It is empty; it is a dead, unending nothingness. I started writing about Brett Favre’s post-final-retirement commercial career last week. Like I was literally embedding video of this man endorsing Copper Fit compression sleeves. It was getting bleak. Content-wise I’m extremely ready for training camp, but in the meantime, we must push forth undeterred.

The other day, one of my friends brought up the time that Joel Pryzbilla reinjured his patellar tendon due to having slipped in the shower–because those are the kinds of friends that I have–and it got me thinking: what are the other most absurd days that we’ve witnessed as Trail Blazer fans?

The Blazers’ history in general has been a mixed bag; some good, some bad. Mostly bad. But at the very least, it’s certainly been interesting. Comically unfortunate events like the aforementioned Vanilla Gorilla shower fiasco have seemingly plagued the Blazers for as long as they’ve been in existence, and today–together–we’ll take a stroll down memory lane and revisit some of the most quintessentially Blazer days in Blazers history.

[Sidebar: I was born in the mid-90s, so my frame of reference starts at about 1999;  anything pre-Bonzi Wells is out of my zone of relative familiarity.]

The list–in no particular order–is as follows:

November 21, 2002: Sheed and Damon decide to drive home rather than get on the team plane after beating the Sonics in Seattle, and subsequently get pulled over with 40 ounces of weed IN A YELLOW HUMMER. This, specifically, is why we need to bring the Sonics back.

February 2, 2013: Nolan Smith gets put into a game in crunch-time for what from my recollection was the first time ever, and promptly hits the side of the backboard with a game-tying three.

(Unobtainable specific date in 1994): Mike Rice gets ejected from a game as a radio announcer, the only known incident of this ever happening to somebody in his profession. A young Steve Javie was the referee in question, and due to the incident he and Rice supposedly never spoke again.

January 24, 2012: Luke Babbitt officially becomes the Chalupa Man, effectively ending his career in Portland.

April 19, 2005: Darius Miles goes for 47 and 12 on the Nuggets in Denver. I’ve never felt more optimism in my soul than I did after this game. D-Miles and Telfair were going to lead us to the promised land! Until they didn’t, like at all.

May 20, 2000: Sheed gets ejected for looking at a referee funny. The “GET AWAY FROM ME STEVE” game.

March 29, 2007: Zach Randolph drops 43 and 17 in his last game as a Blazer.

July 2, 2015: The national media find out about Lamarcus Aldridge leaving the Blazers via a Kim Hughes interview conducted in Meyers Leonard’s high school gym in Robinson, Illinois. Still no word on if they ever put up a banner to commemorate the occasion.

January 26, 2003: Sheed gets suspended for 7 games for calling former referee and current parolee Tim Donaghy a, and I quote, “punk-ass motherfucker”–on a loading dock behind the Rose Garden. The length of the suspension was also partly due to Sheed allegedly (but probably not, because Tim Donaghy is Tim Donaghy) physically threatening Donaghy. Sheed dropped 38 and 10 in the game, tho.

March 2, 2005: Kevin Pritchard coaches the team for like eleven games after Mo Cheeks gets fired.

February 19, 2015: The day we traded Will Barton away. A lot of people probably think of this more in terms of the day that we traded for Arron Afflalo, but they are incorrect. Every bad thing that happened to close out that season was a karmic consequence of trading away Will Barton. Never let anybody tell you anything different.

January 30, 2010: The Andre Miller Game baby. Dre drops 52 on the Mavericks in Dallas, representing perhaps the most inexplicable 50+ point game in NBA history.

May 2, 2003: The Blazers come all the way back from a 3-0 deficit in a series against the Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, only to lose Game 7 in Dallas. This is where I found out what being a Blazer fan was truly about; glorious hope, and then crushing, unremitting sadness. Sheed dropped “Both teams played hard my man” after Game 4 of this series, too.

October 25, 2013: Meyers gets beat out by Joel Freeland for the backup center job slightly over a year after being selected in the lottery.

1993ish: Neil Olshey gets fired from whatever soap opera Neil Olshey used to be on. Then, he somehow becomes an assistant coach for Jason Kapono’s high school team in Los Angeles (!), then starts a company that conducts pre-draft workouts for prospects, then gets hired by the Clippers. A Kurt Warner-esque career trajectory.

February 15, 2006: Sebastian Telfair accidentally (AND SUCCESSFULLY) brings a loaded gun onto the team plane.

December 9, 2011 aka Black Friday: In the wake of Brandon Roy’s retirement, it’s announced that Lamarcus Aldridge would undergo heart surgery and Greg Oden had suffered yet another setback in his recovery from knee surgery and would be unlikely to play in the upcoming season. Don’t even want to talk about it.

February 18, 2004: Sheed gets traded to Atlanta, plays one game for the Hawks–drops 20/6/5/5/2–then immediately gets traded to Detroit. (Sheed doesn’t actually even have to be a member of the Blazers to have his exploits make this list, by the way.)

February 28, 1978: This is kind of where it all started. Other than the injuries which plagued the franchise’s seminal cornerstone, Geoff Petrie, the Blazers had experienced a relatively charmed infancy, having established themselves as a potential dynasty the previous spring when they came back from a 2-0 deficit to defeat the 76ers in six in the Finals. As the legend goes, they began the 1977/1978 with a 50-9 record, and appeared poised to go back-to-back, until Walton broke his foot in a rematch against the Sixers in Portland. They would win the game, but lose the Walton they had once had forever.

November 2, 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGwzcuKDzJE

January 27, 2004: Darius Miles stars in The Perfect Score, a really bad movie with a really good title about a bunch of high school kids cheating on the SAT. [Sidebar: Darius Miles shot 74.9% his senior year of high school. Tha gawd.]

December 5, 2009: Oden fractures his patella in a game against the Rockets on national television. Did I cry? No. Fuck off. Maybe. Whatever. Fuck off.

June 24, 2004: The Blazers draft Sebastian Telfair and Ha-Seung Jin ON THE SAME MOTHERFUCKING DAY.

October 30, 2012: Olshey declines to pick up Nolan Smith’s third year option 16 months after he was picked 21st overall. Shout-out to Chad Buchanan. And the side of that backboard.

June 7, 1990: Following the Blazers’ (at the time) critical Game 2 win of the Finals in Detroit–which tied the series at one apiece–Terry Porter tells anybody who will listen, “We going to the crib and we ain’t coming back!” The Finals at this point were still in the 2-3-2 format, and Detroit would go on to win all three games in Portland and the series. I was still four years short of existing at the time, but I can imagine that watching that play out was a total fucking bummer.

April 25, 2003: Mo Cheeks helps that girl finish the national anthem after she forgot the lyrics.

December 4^, 2009: Nate McMillan ruptures his Achilles in practice, having had to participate in a 5-on-5 scrimmage because the Blazers only had 8 healthy players. Monty Williams got burn in that practice, too.

July 3, 2003: Damon tries to bring an ounce and a half of weed wrapped in tin foil onto the team plane. Honestly, this list could’ve just been comprised entirely of different instances of things members of the Jail Blazers tried to bring on the team plane. Jail Blazers 4ever.