For me, I’ve got to rank the Rasheed teams top, merely because those are the ones I remember the best. I remember the whole town being swept up in it, and KGW coming to my 4th grade class because we were all dressed up in Blazer gear.

The Championship era teams come second just because they won a title. I’ve read about them, and can’t wait for Portland to hopefully experience another championship team soon.

The Clyde teams rank last for me simply because I don’t remember them, and they didn’t win a title. That’s not to say they are a bad team, but for personal importance to me 3rd is where they rank.

If this iteration of the Blazers can have any kind of run of success, even if it is similar to the Rasheed Teams (the least successful on this list) would put them at first for me. Once again, it all comes down to relevancy. I was fortunate enough to see many games over the last two seasons, and I feel like they are my generation’s team.

In my opinion you have to rank the 76-77 era as the best. Even if you did not live through it it has become legendary. The Blazers won the Championship with a team and in a fashion that is still talked about today.

I’ll put the 90-91 era second. That team was amazing. In so many other time frames that team IS a World Championship team. Denied the big prize by the likes of Thomas, Dumars, Jordan and Pippen, Drexler, Porter, Buck, Duck and Kersey are 5 names that any true blooded Blazer fan can say with ease. That team was a joy to watch and despite falling short of a World Championship that team endeared itself to the entire state of Oregon.

The 1999-2000 team had it’s moments but they get ranked 3rd. As much as I enjoyed watching Sabonis, as much as I admired Scottie Pippens talent and yes, even marveled at the ability of Rasheed Wallace there was always the feeling that the team was Bob Whittsits “experiment”. I always had the feeling looking at the roster and the constant influx of talent that Whittsit was allowed to obtain that success was inevitable, unfortunately I looked at the same roster and often concluded that eventually failure was also inevitable. Some good times, but it was a big expensive roll of the dice that didn’t really produce, one of the better Blazer teams ever assembled but the only thing legendary about that team was the record breaking payroll Paul Allen maintained.

I think being consistently great is better than a Miami-like short-lived run (which I consider 77 to be like). I’d rather have a bunch of good years than just a couple. But I could be persuaded otherwise maybe, since I was born in 81 and didn’t have the pleasure of actually experiencing the championship.

99-2000…just a bunch of hired guns, really. Not many of them were born-and-bred Blazers (so to speak). That puts them #3 for sure.

…but I’ll be surprised if the current team doesn’t end up far outshining those earlier glory squads. That’s simply because this team is built to last. Of course, “the best-laid plans of mice & men soon go astray”—more often than not. But I really don’t see that happening this time, barring a devastating run of injuries. The team is just too deep and too stocked with talent and leadership—from the GM on down.

Even if these Blazers ultimately only win a single title, like the Walton team, it appears they’ll likely contend for a decade or more. So we’re talking about thrilling hoops action year in and year out. This is a once-in-a-lifetime ride we’re in for: following a team loaded with talent, character, & youth.

The Drexler teams really were champions. Other than Jordan finding the ‘zone’ in a few games and they’d have been the champs. Great chemistry and role players.

The Walton run next … short but sweet.

The teams at the turn of the century really never captured that magic.

I think Brandon and the boys are really something special. To be honest, championships aren’t every thing. I think they are really recapturing the city after so many down years. It’s gonna be fun.

1. - 89-93. 2 main reasons:

- Longevity at the top of the league

- Faced the highest level of competition the NBA has ever seen, and they were top 5 every year.

- The model team for the Portland franchise.

1. - 77-78

Maybe this really should be 1a and 1b. Because each era is special unto itself. This team was a couple of healthy knees away from reeling off 3 championships in a row. And they ran the fast break as well as anybody has ever run it in the league. Just beautiful.

1. - Present era

I think this era has already pushed the Jailblazer era so far out of reach, I think everyone in Portland is feigning amnesia and blocking out the years of JR Rider and Rasheed Wallace. It’s all a blur. They will quickly achieve similar on-court success as the 99-00 team, and have a legit opportunity to come away with a championship when it is all said and done. Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge have already become all-time favorites, easily replacing the likes of Sheed, Bonzi, and Damon (Sabas, you’re still safe).

1. - Jailblazers

Quite the enigmatic era. When they were winning, nobody really cared about the off-court trouble. When they began to lose, it was hell to pay. The deadly idiot’s disease was rampant in 2000. That was their championship to lose… and they lost it. Was Donaghy in that game?

1. Drexler Blazers: Best team the Blazers have ever had…yet.
2. Walton Blazers: Won the title, but disappointed the following season due to injuries.
3. Roy Blazers: Best looking team in decades. Roy is the savior, Oden is the key to championships. The rest is gravy.
4. Wallace/Sabonis Blazers: Great individual players, but couldn’t function as a team, thus the 2000 breakdown.

The current team has the potential to surpass them all in my list because the core group are all Blazer draft picks and of course have the talent and seemingly the committment and drive to win. The way the team has been built contributes to the connection I feel to the team. Which leads into my rankings of other eras…

1. Drexler Era – This team was built slowly and with a lot of failed experiments (Kiki and Bowie are the two that stick out) but good, low draft picks over time led to this team’s success. Even Drexler though he was expected to do well in the NBA fell to #14 because of questions about his outside shot. But all of these guys achieved their success through hard work and reaching higher than people thought they could.

2. Walton Era – Championship, teamwork, tough, gritty play, buying into the coach’s system. Best Blazer team ever if not for injuries. I think they were 50-10 in 1978 before injuries decimated them.

3. Rasheed Era – Hard to root for this team at the time. I was excited when they were winning games but I always felt they could have been more dominate if the committment to winning had been there. I didn’t mind getting Pippen and Detlef the second year but was kind of disappointed they broke up the entire young second unit in favor of an old, fading star approach. I thought they would win it all but i thought they were impatient with youth and traded away a shot at a longer run for a chance to win now. Oops…No championship.

anyone in the age group of young adult to adult during that Walton era voting for anything but the 76-77 team. There is no comparison. Nor is it likely, that there will ever again be a team that so totally consumed a city and state as did those “red hot and rolling” Blazers of 76, 77 and 78.

… in that they largely reflect my own experience with the team. I moved to Portland in the spring of 88. (I had come from Syracuse where Mark Bryant was finishing his senior year.) I didn’t become a Blazer fan until they traded for Buck Williams. His arrival coincided with the Blazers becoming one of the most feared and best loved teams in the league. How that love from the fans compared to the Walton era team, I don’t know. So my opinion is potentially biased. With that said:

1) Walton era – not only did it bring the only championship, it established a love affair between the Blazers and the fans that made an NBA franchise is a small market viable.

2) Drexler era (or as I call it the Buck years) – the best, most sustained period of excellence in Blazer history and the team that made me fall in love with the Blazers.

3) Wallace era – say what you want about Bob Whitset, but he pulled off one of the more difficult feats for a GM in any sport – retooling a team without losing a beat. This was perhaps the most talent laden team in Portland’s history and one I found it easy to root for. If we could only replay that game 7.

I’m also going to have to agree with hurryup and others about the Roy (and soon to be Oden) era. They have already managed to generate a huge amount of excitement in me and have helped reunite the team and the entire organization with its fans. A 50 win season and the playoffs this year cements them at no lower than 4th all-time, no matter what might happen beyond that.

76-78 Blazers win. While they were short lived, they played as pure a basketball game as I have ever seen. The offense was a thing of beauty, defense lead to fast breaks and the crowds were unbelievable. This truly was a TEAM for all time.
Drexler Era – Gave us some fantastic basketball, thrilling wins, but always a bit short. They won more from forcing their brand of basketball on others then being a team that executed flawlessly. Sometimes they won in spite of themselves and always eventually lost because of themselves….but just by a hair.
99-2000 I never quite connected to them in the same way I did with the other two teams. I wanted them to win, but I didn’t feel that I was pouring my whole heart into them as I did the others.

Current Team – My heart is with this team, I want them to succeed moreso than any since the Drexler days. I anxiously await. I think they will be more like the Drexler teams where they will force their will on others. I hope they gell into a team such as the Walton led gang. But really I think they will have their own identity and hopefully a place in our hearts to equal if not bypass the other teams listed above. I’m crossing my fingers……And toes…..And legs…….and anything else I can find…..

I saw all those teams (my age is showing)….I’d have to rank 76-78 1st not only because of the championship, but because I actually went to 2 playoff games (the Bulls series/best 2 of 3). A lot of people forget but that series was probably the toughest matchup we had. All 3 games came down to the wire, and we could have easily lost in the 1st round. Seeing that team closeup (I was in the first level of the MC) was amazing and I’ll never forget it.

90-92 is a close second. I loved that team. Someone else said it above, the names Clyde, Buck, Terry, Jerome and Duck will live on forever in Blazerland.

99-00 bringing up the rear for me. I liked (most) of the players, they went deep….but the devastation of the WCF Game 7 loss just about sent me off the deep end. Still hurts to even think about it.

I sincerely hope our new team outshines all of the above. Go Blazers!

The thing i remember most about that season was when I waited on Kobe Bryant at the restaurant where I worked. We had just acquired Pippen and I couldn’t help but to talk a little trash to him about how good the Blazers were going to be in that upcoming season. Although we did have an amazing year, he ended up getting the last laugh by knocking us out of the playoffs….at least he left me a good tip!

1. is the Walton era due to the championship, nuff said.

1. is the CTBDJ (Clyde, Terry, Buck, Duck, Jerome) era

Man, I’ve been watching the replay games on Comcast Sports net lately, and they were better than I remember them being. Short shorts looked really bad, I can’t believe we didin’t see errant man jewels from time to time.

1. is the Brian Grant era (it was never Sheed’s team IMO).

The feeling I had, the week long depression after that game 7 collapse is still the feeling I rate personal sports heartache by. I was in college at the time, and I was ready to go wait in line for finals tickets while studying for my Spring Term finals. These teams had some heart, but lacked leadership once B Grant was shipped away for a pot bellied Shawn Kemp. That trade alone solidified Bob Whitsitt as the dumbest smart person ever in my mind.

Although I only remember the 1999-2000 directly, I must say:

1# – 1989-1992

2# – 1977-1978

3# – 1999-2000

I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m ranking these based on my opinion on the talent level of the team and the accomplishment of the dynasty. I’m not really including how the city reacted..

1. 1977-1978

Pros:
This was an amazing team with one of the greatest coaches ever and, so far, the greatest Blazer coach ever. The team was deep with unassuming and underrated talent.

Cons:
This team was unfortunately short lived for how young it was. Also, it is important to note that the league was in quite a transition period during this time and while there was a still alot of talent, there were not a lot of truly great teams in this era. I sometimes think that management jumped ship too early on Bill Walton and his team and that things may have ended up different if they had held the pieces together until at least 1980.

2. 1989-1992 (this could even be considered the 1986-1992 team)

Pros:
Long term success against some of the greatest teams of all time with a team stacked with all-stars and great role players. They recovered well from the double disappointment of Sam Bowie and Mychal Thompson (whenever i think about how much potential today’s Blazers I have.. I remember about how amazing that front court might have been in an alternate reality) and were entirely legitimate contenders. They also played great defense for a western conference team!

Cons: Obviously, they did not win a championship and finally had to sit back and let Clyde go win one with Houston. They were only around a seven player deep team, and I think this hurt them more than once when they got to go against deeper Pistons and Bulls lineups. They should have figured out a way to have gotten Sabonis over earlier!

3. 1999-2000

Pros: They had great players, a good coach, and they won games. They were strong on both ends of the court.

Cons: They weren’t built for sustained success and got less than the full potential of their great players. They had a golden opportunity to sneak in at least a Finals appearance, but instead had two disappointing ousts in the Western Conference Finals. And instead of building off of that frustration to get further.. everyone got pissy about either lack of playing time or lack of production and the lack of team cohesion became obvious.

Finally, I would nearly rank today’s Blazers ahead of that 99-00 team. In terms of talent being gathered for long term success, they are lightyears ahead of that team. They obviously haven’t accomplished enough to put in this list until at least we see how they handle themselves in the playoffs. But if I go back on my initial criteria of not counting the city’s reaction, it is amazing how many of us in Blazermania-land have fully embraced this team when they haven’t proven anything or even posted a single winning season. Winning is not the only thing that makes a great team and I think that in ten years we will seriously have to think back to these years when we were gathering assests and potential to understand how far we really went. It real feels like KP has built this team better than ANY past Blazer team to a degree that could only be compared with the legitimate great NBA dynasties of all times. It feels like even if something unfortunate were to happen to a key member of this team that we would still find ourselves ahead of the pack because we have so many assets. And if the stars align and everything rolls into place as it is planned.. well.. then we will be one of those legitimate great NBA dynasties.

no matter how sweet others may be. The 1977 team put Portland on the national map and transformed a city. The capper was when Ken Howard on his TV show, The White Shadow, said in a 1978 or 1979 episode that he loved three things, and the third one was the Portland Trailblazers. My friends and I were watching that episode and got a kick out of it. The 1977-78 team was the trailblazer team for all future Trail Blazer teams.

However… if the current team wins, say, at least three championships, they may supplant the 1977-78 team in my heart.

The Drexler teams were one star short of winning multiple titles, which they would have done regardless of Isiah, Magic and Michael. They played to the best of their abilities — a Rick Adelman trademark. I put them in a tie with the current team for second place.

The Jail Blazer teams were a waste of Sabonis and oxygen.

Even though the only championship in Blazer history happened a year before my birth, I think I have to rank the 77 team number one. The more I read about Bill Walton the more I like him (even though my first impressions of him as a broadcaster were negative. He always seemed to be unfairly harsh on Portland. Although, Steven A. Smith, has become enemy number one in that regard since.). Mo Lucas was/is a badass and I loved the celebration scenes after the victory.

Number two has got to be the 89-92 team. This was the beginning of my Blazer-fandom. I barely ever got to see a game, but we listened to everyone on the radio. Bill Laimbeer’s three point shooting in that double overtime loss to Detriot will always haunt me. I also remember being up pretty good on the Bulls in a critical game when Jordan went crazy with all HIS threes. The thing that keeps this team out of number one in my book, is Clyde Drexler. He was my hero, and while I can’t blame him for Jumping off the Blazer’s sinking ship, I will never be able to forgive him for representing Houston ever since the trade. He was OURS most of his career, and even though he is a Houston native, it broke my heart to see him wearing the Rockets coat in that 50 greatest players of all-time ceremony.

Of the three eras mentioned, the one I got to see the most of on TV was the era that ended in 2000. These guys were also my guys, no matter how many Techs Sheed got, or what a jerk Bonzi was, or how many times Stoudy got busted for weed. None of that mattered to me, I kind of liked the bad boy image. The reason why these guys are 3rd is because the most lasting memory of their era was the game-seven 4th quarter collapse that cost us a championship. (we would have killed the….Sixers, wasn’t it?) Everything else about that team, to me, is buried beneath that disappointment.

Now, onto this current team. These guys EASILY have the chance to surpass all of the other three. But if no real winning, if no real deep playoff runs actually happen, then it will just be remembered as that time I was SO EXCITED by a team that never did anything. These guys have the chance to be number one in the books of Blazer fans for generations to come. I mean look at me. I put a team that I wasn’t even alive to see as number one. Trust me, my kids will never be able to forget it should these guys get multiple championships over the next 10 years. Future generations will read about this team and wonder why Channing Frye is so tough on the current (future) Blazers in his broadcasting comments. The next 50 greatest players ever list could include more than one Blazer. Who knows? The next great chapter in Blazers’ history is poised to be written. Look out league, here we come.

90’s team and the 77 team have to be tied. The 90’s team was more talented and had a longer run but was never able to win it all so they can’t be above the 77 team. In the same respect the 77 team holds our only championship but they were terrible the year before and didn’t really do much after. No one doubts their amazing abilities, they are hanging from the rafters for peets sake! They were both amazing so they both are number 1.

00-01 Team was very exciting to watch! They had such amazing talent, everyone was a
Blazer fan until that WCF finals game 7. Many people were willing to accept their poor behavior even look the other way until that big loss. This team will be overlooked after a decade or two so I don’t really think they rank with the other three.

Present This team has the ability to leapfrog them all. If they can win at least 2 championships they will be considered one of the best teams of all time, not just for the Blazers but for the NBA. It really adds up to are they legit enough to stay healthy and get it done with all the other young studs in the league. I think they can, and will,so I say this will be the greatest Blazer team to ever take the court.

there was no poll, or that the last “sorta” team was not the yet-to-be-proven 2ks.

I’d have to vote for the aforementioned, as I’ve only been following the Blazers since their doghouse years. ’77 sticks out to me as their one main triumph, however.

I’d love to see, this being a slow news month and all, a point-counterpoint of Blazer legacy vs. Blazer expectations here on the BEdge. That would be some serious Swersky [stuff].

I would say my choice is first the 89-92 era due to the fact that I was to young to know what was going on in 77. Also that the 77 team was so short lived (I wonder if the Blazers would have been able to win more championships if they kept Moses Malone.)
The late 80’s Early 90’s team had time to gel and get to know each other. The main components -Clyde, Porter, Kersey and Duck had a few years together before Buck and Cliff came along. I felt that the Blazers never got the respect of the officials or the league. If so I wonder what might have happened.

The 99-00 Team was good but had too many distractions. I know that many people felt that the Blazers imploded down the stretch but IMO it was also the officiating that helped begin the l*kers 4th Quarter run. But even so I don’t know, even with all that talent, if this team would have not imploded at some point soon after.

This team we have today is the most talented team I think the Blazers have ever had. Will it be greater that any other? We have to wait and see.

1. 1. 89-92
2. 2. 76-77
3. 3. 99-00

Soon to be # 1. 2008-2069

D Marty