FanPost

Blazer Anagrams

In the interest of full disclosure, I am primarily a Sacramento Kings fan, but my heart has always pumped a little bit o' red-and-black because during all those years in the 80s and early 90s when the Kings were fighting the Clippers to remain one step above the Western Conference doormat, I had to choose a team to root for in the post-season, and throughout many of those years, your Blazers were usually among the stoutest rivals of the Lakers, and I just wanted to see the Lakers lose. Also, my secondary-fandom of the Blazers was a natural choice because I'd become a Pacific Northwest fancier from an early age. It began with my fascination with Lewis and Clark, and from there, I saw spectacular scenes in coffee-table picture books, and perhaps unbelievably, as the subject of a book report in fifth grade, I sorta-randomly chose a book about urban planning and design in Portland and how the topography and early history of the region had shaped that. It got me believing pretty seriously that I was made to move there someday. To be sure, my secondary-fandom of the Blazers was quite serious enough that I bought multiple pairs of Avia 825 (lo-tops) and 830 (hi-tops) (one in each available color) as an adolescent because those were worn by none other than Clyde Drexler. (Despite my primary-fandom of the Kings, I could never justify buying a pair of C-Webb's Dada Supremes. (What incredibly gaudy shoes!))

I went off to college near Portland at the height of "Rip City" excitement, but I wasn't able to stay, and although somehow I've never moved there (even through all the recent carpet-baggery of Subaru-driving, neck-beard-wearing, food-/brew-snobs with giant collections of weird records), I still follow your team through every box score and every transaction and frequently refer here for a Blazer nation pulse-check and watch as many Blazer games as possible on TV. In the very real likelihood that the Kings leave Sacramento (or even if they remain, and I just can't take anymore Maloofery), I'll surely elevate my secondary-fandom of the Blazers to primary. So, I hope to earn the right to post this here as much as I hope you all have some fun with it.

My Blazer-fan pulse-check for the last several years--probably since that monumental collapse versus the Lakers in the 2000 conference finals--has shown that even the most optimistic among you have had befuddling bouts of despair and pessimism and an increasingly cynical attitude about player character (thanks, Jailblazers!) and games lost to injury. I know that if I didn't treat every Kings loss as a laughable spectacle and make a Mystery-Science-Theater-3000-style mockery out of every miserable drubbing, I would become so embittered and despondent that I'd probably define the reasonable limit of diehard fandom and perhaps even withdraw from friends, family, and co-workers into my own deep depression. Let's not ever lose ourselves, our sanity, and sense of humor because of a basketball team!

Let's have some fun with Blazers-related anagrams. An anti-Maloof haiku thread from a couple months back was a great relief of my my fellow fans' bitterness toward our terrible owners, so I hope this provides some of the same for some of you.

As this is my game, please lemme make some rules...

Take the name of a Blazers player (past okay but especially present), coach, or staff member and derive an anagram from it. Then use it in a sentence that hopefully makes some kinda sense, even if it is rather absurd or ridiculous or fanciful. Blazers players are indeed celebrities who are not afforded protection from laws concerning defamation, so if your sentence portrays your subject as lowdown, lewd, lascivious, or otherwise reprobate, so what!?!?!!? So long as it's not slanderous or libelous, then it's just satire, so let it roll.

One final rule...

Write your subject and anagram in ALL CAPS so we don't hafta guess what you're getting at.

I'll get it started with the first several comments....

(Finally, if you come up a letter or three short, you can add an article or preposition within parentheses.)