But the Trailblazers–sometimes call the Jailblazers and of late, the Frailblazers–owned by billionaire Paul Allen, is the local team, and since Comcast offers their games, and since the vast wasteland of television sometimes has nothing on I want to see, we tend to get hooked into the games.
Root for the home team, why not?
Even got to go to one this season with my son, whose company has tickets a couple rows from the floor.
Basketball is fast. You can see what is going on, and even low-scoring games will put seventy or eighty points up per side. Unlike, say, soccer, where you see a bunch of human ants on the field from far away, they run back and forth for like six hours, and nobody makes a point the whole time ...
Basketball is physical, and the drama is there. (Watching the Lakers play recently, there was a great little bit of business: Pau Gasol, about to shoot a foul shot, walked to the goal, then reached up to straighten and fluff the bottom of the net. Flat-footed. A tall guy, Gasol.)
I wasn't tall enough to play when I was a kid, and by the time I started to stretch out, track was more appealing, but I played HORSE and could shoot granny-style foul shots. Those were the four sports we had back in the day: Football, basketball, baseball, track.
Saving throwing the next door neighbor's ball back over my fence, I haven't even touched a basketball in years.
But Portland made the first round of the play-offs, which is fairly amazing, given that the team has been riddled with injuries. Been enough knee and foot surgery to keep a big clinic busy, and at one point, there were only eight healthy guys who could dress out, some of them still wet behind the ears. Nate McMillan was so desperate he was stopping tall guys on the street: Hey, you busy Thursday night?
The local all-star, Brandon Roy, a twenty-six-year-old kid that everybody likes, had surgeries on both knees and fell off the map. He came back, but he wasn't the same. It was sad, there was some doubt that he'd ever play any serious minutes, though the coach gave him a shot and he did contribute, the magic was gone.
Washed up, the fans said. Get rid of him. Overlooked, he began to despair.
Until yesterday.
Portland was down twenty-three points in the third quarter against Dallas, after a zero-for-fourteen-shot run when Roy lit the Rose Garden up like a movie premiere. He sparked a run with eighteen points in the fourth, great shooting, passing, and the Blazers, who looked all but guaranteed to lose, making the series 2-1 Mavericks, and going to their house for the next game, suddenly came back from one of the deepest holes in NBA playoff history to win by two points.
It was amazing to watch, and not just because they won, but because everybody in Portland was rooting for Roy. If you want to see what a home court advantage is, watch the replay of that quarter. Look at the sidelines when Andre Miller, a man not known for his public displays of emotion danced–and I mean danced–up and down hooting like a banshee.
Whatever happens, however the Blazers fare, that quarter was one local fans will remember. Now and then, you get to witness sports redemption, fist-pumping, grinning, laughing, and shaking your head. This was one of those.
Go Blazers!