All of last week's talk about fans' reaction to players brought up a question in my mind. Each fan base has their own peculiarities about what they like and don't like in players. A guy who gets over big in Kansas City may not do so in New York. A guy who trades on a certain skill may be over-appreciated in one town and under-appreciated in another.
So what really rings Portland fans' bells?
If you were to design the ideal Blazer player in terms of positive fan reaction, what would he be like? You can use any criteria you wish: position, skills, demeanor, off-court stuff...whatever you think is important. There are only two rules:
- Don't create a Superman (or Michael Jordan) player by listing off 92 things this guy is perfect at. Anybody could do that. Instead pick 5-6 items and maybe explain why you think they're significant in Portland.
- We just got done talking about race on Friday and I don't want to continue that discussion here. Giving the benefit of the doubt to 99.9% of Portland fans I'm preemptively declaring that Caucasian, African-American, Brazilian, Korean, or whatever doesn't matter too much so don't use race as a category.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)