[W]hat (Trail Blazers General Manager Neil) Olshey and the organization must grasp is that they’re saddled with the stigma of being the equivalent of the NBA’s Green Bay Packers without all the cool things associated with being the Packers. No fan stock certificates. No frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. No Vince Lombardi. Just a great city to raise children, be in love and pay taxes if that’s your thing and the NBA isn’t filled with blue-chip free agents who list those things as key factors.
People who are fortunate enough to love where they live often wax rhapsodic about the virtues of residing in (what they perceive to be) God’s Country. I’m no different; I consider myself incredibly fortunate to live in Portland. I’ve always believed in the importance of place, and that where we are physically can have a tremendous impact (for good or ill) on our overall mental and physical health. I love living in a place with an overabundance of physical beauty, great restaurants, and creative energy. Being here feeds my soul in ways that living in Texas and Minnesota never did or could. I could expound at some length about how and why Portland is and always will be home…but I suppose that’s something really of interest only to me.
I know people who consider themselves blessed to live in Cleveland, a place that to me feels like the Fifth Circle of Hell. I suppose that’s what makes human diversity so interesting- one person’s toxic waste dump is another’s Valhalla. If everyone felt as I do, Portland would be unbelievably crowded and traffic would suck. As difficult as it is for me to imagine, some folks don’t like Portland- too small, too provincial, too damp and dreary, the local newspaper sucks, etc. Except for the thing about the Oregonian (it does kinda suck), many of the things outsiders hate feel like virtues to me. To the larger outside world, though, Portland must seem like a quirky frontier town with too much coffee and not enough…whatever it is people might look for in a city.
Sadly- for local basketball fans, at least- there’s a small but influential population subset that considers Portland to be a suburb of Novosibirsk: NBA players. Fans of the Portland Trail Blazers have much to mourn this offseason, as the free agent signing period came and went and much of the team that began last season with so much promise has left for greener pastures. Robin Lopez, Wesley Matthews, Nicolas Batum, and, most notably, LaMarcus Aldridge (4/5 of last season’s starting lineup) will all be wearing different uniforms next season. I don’t blame players for choosing where they wish to ply their trade, because free agency isn’t something a player often enjoys over the course of a short career. When they do, they make the best deal they can for themselves, their families, and whatever other considerations are of importance to them. It’s the very same thing you and I would do if we were blessed to have a choice of employers willing to toss millions of dollars at us. I’ll admit to it; if I was a star free agent point guard and a team in Ashtabula, OH, wanted to throw $80 million at me over four season, I’d learn to love coal in one helluva hurry. I’d expound at considerable length about my love of steel mills, coal mines, and whatever else makes Ashtabula the place every NBA player dreams of bringing a championship to.
‘Course, one my contract expired, all you’d see of me would the taillights on my Escalade flying out of town at warp speed….
Turns out that Portland isn’t exactly seen as the dream destination those of us who live here believe it to be. It’s not Ashtabula, but to most NBA players it’s not far removed.
Portland — the city — must rank somewhere between 27th-30th as a destination in the eyes of a typical NBA player.
Before we go any further, take off your three-goggles and ask yourself how many NBA cities you’d put Portland in front of if you were a player. Utah, for sure. Milwaukee, maybe. Sacramento, Oklahoma City or Cleveland, maybe? Or maybe not. Granted, I asked sports agent Leigh Steinberg that very question this week and he said, “If I lived in Portland it would take an AK-47 to get me to move to Cleveland.”
Unfortunately, Steinberg is a 66 year-old with a shaky handle.
If you’re a fabulously talented hyper-glandular athlete with a world-class fade-away jump shot and/or a killer crossover and fortunate enough to be a free agent, odds are you’re probably not looking to move to the Rose City. I get it- small town, upper left coast, media black hole, the place where twenty-somethings go to retire.. If you’re looking to polish your brand and maximize your earning potential now and into the future, it’s not hard to understand why you might prefer New York. Or Dallas. Or Chicago. Portland is the kind of place one moves to if you have a different agenda- raising a family, quality of life, availability of good beer- encompassing things found in abundance here. There’s a reason why you’d never see a Lebron James or Carmelo Anthony wearing a Trail Blazers uniform. In the mind of the average NBA player (and their agents), Portland IS Siberia.
The city of Portland and the Trail Blazers have been trying for year to persuade the NBA to bring the All-Star Game to Portland, a plea that’s fallen on deaf ears. The official reason given by the league office is a lack of available hotel rooms. Strictly speaking, that’s true…but it’s not the whole truth. When it comes to the sort of night life NBA players have come to expect, Portland’s a vast wasteland. Sure, Puddletown has an abundance of four-star restaurants, top-notch food carts, and an impressive array of world-class microbrews, but night life in Portland is now where near what it is in places like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
And some of us like it that way.
Most of us who live in the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan are really don’t want more people to move here. More people migrate here than to anywhere else in the country, and it shows in the cost of living and traffic that grows more challenging and ridiculous by the day. It’s too bad NBA players consider Portland to be halfway to Magnitogorsk, but if that’s the biggest problem we locals have, I suspect we’ll take that without much complaint.
Trail Blazers fans still fondly recall their team’s 1977 NBA championship, and they’d be well advised to continue doing so…because the odds of another coming around any time soon are long. At least we have MLS’ Timbers to obsess over.
At least this isn’t Cleveland….
