Sports Fluff

The Portland Trail Blazers, in the last three years, were ridiculed for their lack of moral integrity. But with the subtraction of some trouble-making players, like Zach Randolph and Rasheed Wallace, and the addition of younger, less troublesome players like Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge, they seem to be on the road to a better reputation.
The team name, “Trail Blazers” comes from the original settlers of the Oregon Territory, who literally blazed or created the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s. In the early years these basketball Trail Blazers lived up to that ethic. In 1977, after only four years in the NBA, the Portland franchise won the national title. In a sport previously dominated by teams from larger cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Boston, this opened the door for smaller city franchises to study how it was done, and try to replicate their success. The teams from Utah, Sacramento and San Antonio are examples of teams who have succeeded using a similar formula as the Portland model.
Unfortunately, the Portland team became a different kind of trail blazer in the 1990s. After being purchased by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, the team began to make personnel decisions based mainly on monetary considerations. They unceremoniously fired a beloved announcer, Bill Schonely, who had tirelessly promoted the team all over the state of Oregon. They hired a younger, less expensive announcer with no local ties who succeeded in alienating a large number of fans outside the Portland area. The team began signing players for their playing abilities, without taking into consideration their maturity or morality. This led to a period of time in which the only national basketball news coming out of Portland involved shootings, drugs, strip clubs or some combination of the three. The classic example of this is the time Damon Stoudamire tried to bring marijuana, wrapped in foil, through a metal detector at the airport. Not only illegal but stupid. Activities like this resulted in a new nationally recognized nickname for the team, “The Jail Blazers”. What a monumental decline for a once proud franchise.
Recently, though, the team seems to be bouncing back, again trail blazing a path to fiscal health and moral integrity. The team has solved many of its financial problems, hired more people with basketball experience than financial experience to make basketball decisions, and has drafted players with an eye toward their character as much as their scoring abilities. The new trail being blazed in Portland should result in a team to be proud of, in a league to be proud of.