The Return of Rip City
>> 24 June, 2007
There was a time when I had to be in bed by 7 pm. For some reason, my parents didn't think I could function with any less than twelve hours of sleep every night and, as such, I had to go to bed straightaway after MASH ended. This really needled me because I always missed Three's Company, which for some reason looked like a better show than MASH, though I can't for the life of me think why. Probably it was the opening credits, with the scenes of bike riding and sailing in the Santa Monica sun - or Suzanne Summers' chest - but I guess we'll never know. This bedtime was enforced until I hit the second grade, at which point it was pushed back to 7:30 and then a further thirty minutes for each year I advanced in school.
This will all sound like progress until you consider that, by the fifth grade, I was still having my lights doused at 9:00. By this time, however, I had matured in some small way and the bedtime stakes had been raised. What really rankled me about going to bed so early - in addition to the daylight - was that, during the NBA season, no Portland Trailblazers game ever finished until at least 9:30. Didn't matter: I had to cut the TV and head for bed at 9:00 sharp, forcing me to wait until the next morning to see if Rick Adelman had led the troops to victory.
All that changed somewhere around 1989, when I got my first clock radio. My parents did not abide oversleeping and, to that end, bought me the alarm clock with the understanding that I would get myself and my sister up in the morning and out the door to school...on time. That alarm clock, as it happened, ended up serving a dual purpose: it got me up on time and it made me noticeably more pliable when it came to bedtime. Hell, no respectable Blazers fan ever watched a game on TV with the sound on, anyway: fathers taught their sons at an early age that the only way to watch was to mute the TV and tune into Bill Schonely on KEX 1190 AM. With Schonely calling the games you didn't actually even need the TV. Closing your eyes was good enough.
Bedtime, at least when the Blazers were playing, became pretty damned special with the arrival of that clock radio. I'd pull the covers over my head and form a sort of sound barrier using some pillows, being careful not to have the volume too high.
In those days, the Blazers actually won more than they lost - a lot more, in fact. It was the culmination of a twelve year wait for Blazers fans since the team had won their first and only NBA title in 1977, putting Oregon in a national spotlight it had never known. But Bill Walton had left the team shortly thereafter and the franchise slipped into a decade of mediocrity, consistently making the playoffs but rarely advancing beyond the first round. Such were the 1980s for Trailblazers fans, though I didn't suffer much because I had to be in bed by 7:00 and didn't have a clock radio yet.
Blazermania - as the medical condition is known - never died out in the 1980s; rather, it idled about in subdued dormancy through the years of Kiki Vandeweghe and Sam Bowie. But the spirit was alive. My father had - and probably still has - an old T-shirt that he bought in the wake of the '77 championship, an ugly old yellow thing that was probably screen-printed by a high school kid in his bedroom. On the back of the shirt was printed the roster of the squad that won the title. On the front, as I recall, was the Blazer logo with 'World Champions' below it. Once in while, when my dad was cleaning out his T-shirt drawer - when it was finally time to get rid of the Spuds MacKenzie and Lamborghini Countach shirts that had become too tight - he'd pull out this old Blazers shirt and I, for some reason, would get such a kick out of seeing it. He'd get a wistful look in his eyes and tell me about Bill Walton and Larry Steele and Dave Twardzik and I - not having been born until '79 - just tried to imagine what it felt like to have your team actually win the whole danged shooting match.
I almost found out in the early nineties. A Blazers squad led by Clyde, Terry, Jerome, and Buck would have brought the trophy back to Portland had they not run up against the Bad Boys of Detroit and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Those were bitter years for me as an eleven year-old kid: the parents divorced, another change in schools, and then the Blazers went and dragged us through the muck of near-elation. It was, in fact, to these years that Jim Morrison referred when he said, "let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God."
And that was a high point. By the mid-nineties, the Blazers had traded Clyde Drexler, fired Rick Adelman and slouched into the years of Uncle Cliffy Robinson, Rasheed Wallace and, all too soon, Isaiah Rider. They were still a competitive squad, to be sure - coming awfully close to the finals again on a couple occasions - but they were no longer a team I stayed up late to watch on TV, let alone to hear on the radio. That I was older and busier was part of it, but the Blazers also brought it upon themselves with their slide in the infamous 'Jailblazers' period.
I've said before that I'd root for this team even if they started five death row inmates, but I wouldn't feel right about it and wouldn't go out of my way to support them. I, like a lot of fans, felt betrayed by what Blazers' management had allowed this team - and, by extension, the city of Portland - to become. All those years, I thought, of furtively supporting the Red & Black after my bedtime and this is the thanks I get? The Rose Garden ticket sales told the tale: thousands of others had taken a conscious step back, too, and decided that winning wasn't worth the price of putting up with this bunch of miscreants and malcontents.
Much like those years in the early nineties, however, the Blazers are quickly moving into a new era of respectability - where the team is becoming both frighteningly talented and, for the fans, terrifically endearing. After the vexing general managerial reigns of Bob Whitsett and John Nash, Kevin Pritchard has brought a new culture to the team and, by extension, to the city of Portland, which may finally embrace the Blazers again after years of living apart. It's a cautious affection on the part of the fans: they've been hurt too many times this decade and don't want to be the fool again, but they're willing to work things out and give it another try. Players like Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Ime Udoka, and Jarrett Jack - guys who, at least on the merits of their personality, deserve to win championships - make the reconciliation a whole lot more likely to take root. Were I not in Korea, this is a team I'd happily stay up all night to hear on the radio.
As though this resurrection wasn't exciting enough already, luck went the Blazers one further and somehow handed them the first pick in this year's draft lottery, meaning they're about to pull either Kevin Durant or Greg Oden - players who, even if they still breathe oxygen like the rest of us, have the potential to change the league for the next ten years.
This change has been a long time coming, but the wait seems to be paying off. There stands to be, in the years to come, a whole new generation of kids being sent to bed early only to curl up under the blankets with their radios (if, indeed, kids even listen to the radio or have bedtimes anymore) and listen as the Blazers bring the pride back to Portland. Here's hoping this team will earn another shirt for my dad's t-shirt drawer, too, while they're at it.
This will all sound like progress until you consider that, by the fifth grade, I was still having my lights doused at 9:00. By this time, however, I had matured in some small way and the bedtime stakes had been raised. What really rankled me about going to bed so early - in addition to the daylight - was that, during the NBA season, no Portland Trailblazers game ever finished until at least 9:30. Didn't matter: I had to cut the TV and head for bed at 9:00 sharp, forcing me to wait until the next morning to see if Rick Adelman had led the troops to victory.
All that changed somewhere around 1989, when I got my first clock radio. My parents did not abide oversleeping and, to that end, bought me the alarm clock with the understanding that I would get myself and my sister up in the morning and out the door to school...on time. That alarm clock, as it happened, ended up serving a dual purpose: it got me up on time and it made me noticeably more pliable when it came to bedtime. Hell, no respectable Blazers fan ever watched a game on TV with the sound on, anyway: fathers taught their sons at an early age that the only way to watch was to mute the TV and tune into Bill Schonely on KEX 1190 AM. With Schonely calling the games you didn't actually even need the TV. Closing your eyes was good enough.
"Porter brings the ball across the cyclops at midcourt, moving left to right on your radio dial...
"It's three on two and here comes Drexler with the ball, lickety-brindle down the court. He drives...and scores!
" Bingo! Bango! Bongo!"
Bedtime, at least when the Blazers were playing, became pretty damned special with the arrival of that clock radio. I'd pull the covers over my head and form a sort of sound barrier using some pillows, being careful not to have the volume too high.
In those days, the Blazers actually won more than they lost - a lot more, in fact. It was the culmination of a twelve year wait for Blazers fans since the team had won their first and only NBA title in 1977, putting Oregon in a national spotlight it had never known. But Bill Walton had left the team shortly thereafter and the franchise slipped into a decade of mediocrity, consistently making the playoffs but rarely advancing beyond the first round. Such were the 1980s for Trailblazers fans, though I didn't suffer much because I had to be in bed by 7:00 and didn't have a clock radio yet.
Blazermania - as the medical condition is known - never died out in the 1980s; rather, it idled about in subdued dormancy through the years of Kiki Vandeweghe and Sam Bowie. But the spirit was alive. My father had - and probably still has - an old T-shirt that he bought in the wake of the '77 championship, an ugly old yellow thing that was probably screen-printed by a high school kid in his bedroom. On the back of the shirt was printed the roster of the squad that won the title. On the front, as I recall, was the Blazer logo with 'World Champions' below it. Once in while, when my dad was cleaning out his T-shirt drawer - when it was finally time to get rid of the Spuds MacKenzie and Lamborghini Countach shirts that had become too tight - he'd pull out this old Blazers shirt and I, for some reason, would get such a kick out of seeing it. He'd get a wistful look in his eyes and tell me about Bill Walton and Larry Steele and Dave Twardzik and I - not having been born until '79 - just tried to imagine what it felt like to have your team actually win the whole danged shooting match.
I almost found out in the early nineties. A Blazers squad led by Clyde, Terry, Jerome, and Buck would have brought the trophy back to Portland had they not run up against the Bad Boys of Detroit and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Those were bitter years for me as an eleven year-old kid: the parents divorced, another change in schools, and then the Blazers went and dragged us through the muck of near-elation. It was, in fact, to these years that Jim Morrison referred when he said, "let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God."
And that was a high point. By the mid-nineties, the Blazers had traded Clyde Drexler, fired Rick Adelman and slouched into the years of Uncle Cliffy Robinson, Rasheed Wallace and, all too soon, Isaiah Rider. They were still a competitive squad, to be sure - coming awfully close to the finals again on a couple occasions - but they were no longer a team I stayed up late to watch on TV, let alone to hear on the radio. That I was older and busier was part of it, but the Blazers also brought it upon themselves with their slide in the infamous 'Jailblazers' period.
I've said before that I'd root for this team even if they started five death row inmates, but I wouldn't feel right about it and wouldn't go out of my way to support them. I, like a lot of fans, felt betrayed by what Blazers' management had allowed this team - and, by extension, the city of Portland - to become. All those years, I thought, of furtively supporting the Red & Black after my bedtime and this is the thanks I get? The Rose Garden ticket sales told the tale: thousands of others had taken a conscious step back, too, and decided that winning wasn't worth the price of putting up with this bunch of miscreants and malcontents.
Much like those years in the early nineties, however, the Blazers are quickly moving into a new era of respectability - where the team is becoming both frighteningly talented and, for the fans, terrifically endearing. After the vexing general managerial reigns of Bob Whitsett and John Nash, Kevin Pritchard has brought a new culture to the team and, by extension, to the city of Portland, which may finally embrace the Blazers again after years of living apart. It's a cautious affection on the part of the fans: they've been hurt too many times this decade and don't want to be the fool again, but they're willing to work things out and give it another try. Players like Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Ime Udoka, and Jarrett Jack - guys who, at least on the merits of their personality, deserve to win championships - make the reconciliation a whole lot more likely to take root. Were I not in Korea, this is a team I'd happily stay up all night to hear on the radio.
As though this resurrection wasn't exciting enough already, luck went the Blazers one further and somehow handed them the first pick in this year's draft lottery, meaning they're about to pull either Kevin Durant or Greg Oden - players who, even if they still breathe oxygen like the rest of us, have the potential to change the league for the next ten years.
This change has been a long time coming, but the wait seems to be paying off. There stands to be, in the years to come, a whole new generation of kids being sent to bed early only to curl up under the blankets with their radios (if, indeed, kids even listen to the radio or have bedtimes anymore) and listen as the Blazers bring the pride back to Portland. Here's hoping this team will earn another shirt for my dad's t-shirt drawer, too, while they're at it.
1 comments:
This is going to be an exciting week for Blazer Fan.
Post a Comment