TRAIL BLAZERS? WHY NBA PLAYERS SHOULD LOVE PORTLAND

Portland Trail Blazers talk gets louder during a team in transition, which is where they are in 2022.

Is it a reload or a rebuild? Will Dame stay or will he go?

Answer those questions and you may be a General Manager candidate.

But there’s still one over-arching question that needs an answer:

Why does Portland get the reputation of Siberia with NBA players?

News Flash: Every NBA city between the Los Angles “I’m tired as hell, I want some wine and to go to bed” Lakers, and the New York “fans can’t expect the team to go far with Julius Randle as their best player” Knicks, is Siberia.

Imagine being the rising young star among other basketball players your age. Your parents hire a private coach/guru/highway to the big time/ with college recruiter connections and send you to a basketball academy for your tenth birthday.

After all the attention with AAU travel teams and sponsored camps and leagues, after high school championships, after a one-and-done college all-American career, guys who play in the Association are used to adulation.

That’s when Oregon can be lonely. They’ve got NBA written all over them and nowhere to go.

The Trail Blazers may have a great fan base for games, but there’s the life to live outside the forty eight minutes of game time.

It’s an Oregon life and it’s not for everyone in a fast paced world of airports and busses and arenas.

And hotels.

Gary Payton Isn’t Helping

The Glove had a few things about fun to share on Yardbarker.

. . . those who manage to stay in the league and have a long career enjoyed the privileges of being in the association. 

Today that means branding and recognition and a future like Kendrick Perkins and Grant Hill.

If they play their cards right they may find a post-NBA career in the spotlight with Charles, The Jet, and Shaq.

Do it right and they might score a gig like Reggie Miller and the biter.

But those aren’t the perks Payton is talking about.

Besides the money, you can get a lot of recognition, especially with females. 

To me, this is a tell. The generic term ‘female’ applies to most species; I like the term ‘ladies’ and ‘women,’ for a defining touch.

Male and female sounds like a 4H project.

Ladies love cool players. LL Cool P.

Hall of Famer Gary Payton is no stranger to this, as he had two kids with two different women at the same time. 

“When you’re so popular, during that time, what’s gonna happen?” Payton continued. “A lot of women are gonna come at you.”

Portland Women?

Do the Trail Blazers have a poor reputation with players because Portland lacks women coming at them?

Portland is different like that.

Portland women looking for a rich guy don’t hang around Moda Center after games, or in front of the Hotel Monaco.

Young, ambitious, single women in Portland would rather hook up with a West Hills piece of shit cheating on his wife over a long Palm Springs weekend. Twice a month covers the bills.

“Honey, it’s a planning seminar from Friday to Tuesday with my fellow executives,” they tell their wife. “I’ll be back on Wednesday to help with the kids.”

Sometimes it’s a philandering bastard from a mansion on S. Military Road, Lake Oswego.

Those two area, by the way, are ripe for big investment and expensive restoration, NBA player big.

2

NW Portland had a bar I liked.

I knew the bartender, the owner, and the owner’s beautiful wife who also tended bar.

One slow Wednesday afternoon a few of the owner’s beautiful wife’s beautiful friends stopped in for drinks. There was a twenty-something neighborhood guy in a booth with a beer and a binder, listening in on their bar stool talk.

The three women had a similar look. Mid to late twenties, fit, perfect posture, no makeup, their hair tied up, strong shoulders and small waists.

It was a Wednesday after a ‘long weekend in Palm Springs’ sort of day and they were tired.

“Sometimes these long weekends are too long,” one said.

“That’s what she said. I’m tired.”

“I’m tired and sore.”

“My date asked if I’d be ready for another trip in a couple of weeks.”

“Mine just wanted to talk. I could leave again tomorrow.”

“That’s my last of the month.”

They shared notes on their men, the problems with the wives and kids, and how they were helping everyone get along better. That was their plan.

They were living the life and loving it, just not as much at the end of a trip as they loved the adventure of the planning and the start.

They were Portland women who liked making plans.

With sugar daddies on one hand, and a boyfriend who loved them on the other, they planned on settling down in the suburbs with a decent man, kids, volunteer in schools, the whole family raising trip.

Portland Trail Blazers Culture Shift

Dame Lillard seems like a family man. So did CJ McCollum.

They’ve done things here that mark them as Oregon guys.

Dame has a car dealership in McMinnville; CJ has a vineyard.

These guys have planned a future in Oregon and aren’t afraid to embrace the state.

And the Trail Blazers are better for it. These are real trail blazers in real life, not transient blazers, not jail blazers afraid to drive thirty miles outside Portland.

Portland might take a commitment to live in that NBA guys aren’t ready to make?

Dame has found a better way.

Back to the Glove of Love:

“It was just a thing that; you grew up, you ain’t had that many women that was gonna say you was fine,” GP said. “It was just that type of situation, and when you get a bad one and keep getting bad ones, you was like, ‘Man, I can’t turn that down.’ It’s like you can’t turn it down.”

Yes, you can turn it down, Gary, but you didn’t. Every one is a bad one, is that it?

If you grew with little attention from the women you held in awe because they were so gorgeous and smart and inventive, it’s still no excuse to turn into a man-skank and start collecting baby mommas across the country.

“It is what it is,” The Glove said. “We were like that. Nobody else was different. Everybody was the same. We was in Oakland, we didn’t see a bad one, we didn’t see that. We would probably see one bad girl, she probably had a boyfriend already, and we couldn’t get her. But when we’re getting approached, we see 10,15 of them, and they’re giving it to you. So it was just one of them things.”

One Of Those Things

Portland can feel like Siberia in the summer heat if you’re stuck here and wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Being close the mountains doesn’t matter if you’re not a mountain guy. I’m not.

Being close to the beach doesn’t matter if you’re not a beach guy, or not married to someone who feels the ocean recharges their soul and spirit. I am.

“If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

That goes for New York, New York, and Portland, Oregon.

Dear NBA Free Agents,

No one knows better than you about adjusting to new places.
It takes more than just showing up to live here, and you make your living by doing more than just showing up.
Come to Portland and fall in love, fly over Mt. St. Helen, sail on the mighty Columbia, join CJ’s winery.
Join the Trail Blazers and show the NBA how your light shines with Dame.
He knows how to turn the game up with your help.

You won’t have to adjust to less than you expect in Portland. Everything is right here, and even better, there’s enough for you, too. It’s always your turn to do some trail blazing.