FanPost

My Blazers upbringing.




Growing up in the late eighties and early nineties I enjoyed the pleasure of watching Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter and a team of immensely likeable players. It was a good system which required everyone to buy in completely for wins. It took Michael freaking Jordan to stop us from a championship in '92; or what I like to cal the fourth best year ever ever. My father grew up in Kentucky in a big basketball family and met my mother while stationed in 29 palms. Moms from Oregon blah blah, moved to Portland something something born anf raised a native Blazers fan. I was a rebellious teen during the jail blazer era and Sheed is still one of my favorite Blazers to this day. They could play. As long as they won, who cares if they had some issues. Then the issues got worse and, while this may come as a surprise, the play got deplorable. I was rather lucky and missed a lot of that being deployed or stationed out east. Then I moved back home and Brandon Roy was tearing up defenses for a rookie of the year campaign. Roy's is still a name spoken in deep reverence around mine and my family's home. My most memorable moment was when me and my pops basically fell into some amazing tickets sixteen rows back center court when Roy single-handedly beat the lakers that one time that one year. Better than seeing Pantera and White Zombie in sixth grade. Better than spending a year driving around the country boozing it up. Better than air assaulting in to Samarra. His time was short, but he restored a lot of faith in our character evaluation. These people do represent our city in a way. It was just a matter of being more consious of injury history. Still, he was always anchored down low by Lamarcus Aldridge. Always the bridesmaid for the first few years of his career, he blossomed the unfortunate year of Brandon's beginning of the end. It was when we all realized exactly how amazing a player we had. Every year he has gotten better. Every. Year. There has been bumps along the way of course. The donut who shall not be named and the abortion of a shortened year that so many would rather forget. Then we got lucky. Very very lucky. We got the sixth pick of a certain draft a bit ago and got Damian Lillard. There are another couple of players I haven't quite hit on because I am typing this on a phone and it's late. Batum and Matthews have always been good pickups. Is it any surprise that once we got a star point to get them set up they would grow so quick and start burnin this mother down? This dude is a team first guy buying into a system that requires total team commitment. Now it seems we have a team full of infinitely enjoyable team first players. The ball movement and trust is fun as hell to watch and I am enjoying this year a lot. The losses will come but they are going to be fun to watch. J