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We wrote this before watching the end of last night’s Blazers vs. Rockets OT thriller, won on a Brandon Roy three with 0.8 seconds left.
Last week another NBA season got underway, and for the first time since 1966 Seattle didn’t have a team in the fight.
If you've forgotten why, The New York Times Magazine explains how Clay Bennett, the misunderstood visionary, rescued the Sonics from an un-caring elitist city.
We dislike David Stern, we dislike what the NBA did to Seattle. However, we do love professional basketball, which is why we are going to try and become a fan of the Portland Trailblazers.
We understand that many Sonics fans could never do this, and that some Blazer fans don't want our local sports fan touch of death to follow us across the Columbia. To each their own.
We see the new professional landscape as a united Northwest front. We love that there are Portland residents who cheer for the Mariners and Seahawks as their team; the more the miserable.
First of all, we are not one for forced geographic rivalries. All the great ones (Sox-Yanks, Cowboys-Redskins, Michigan-Ohio St.) have more going for them than the location of stadiums. For the past twenty years, when the Blazers were good, the Sonics were great, and vice versa. Growing up, we hated Utah and Houston much more than Portland.
Then there is the case of all the 206 connections. Nate McMillan, one of our favorite NBA players and Mr. Sonic, is the Blazers' head coach. Fellow Garfield alum, Seattle native, and our favorite college player (soon to be our favorite basketball player) Brandon Roy is the face of the Blazers. The team is owned by Seattle's Paul Allen, who also owns the Seahawks and South Lake Union.
Our new cable package gives us Portland's Comcast sports channel (179), and all the 55 televised games that come with it.
It also gives us another excuse to visit one of our favorite cities. Our first trip is already planned for December 18th.
However, with all that being said, one can't just pick a new sports team and immediately expect to become a part of its nation. Fandom is about an emotional connection to a random assortment of grown men that you will never meet, or ever really want to spend time with. How else can one justify returning to something that causes so much pain year after year after year?
Like a person or an ice cream flavor, you can't force yourself to love a team.
Sports fans live and die with news about their squad. If there is no emotional connection, then it's not your team, it's a team you like. If we find ourselves not caring whether the Blazers won, or not getting upset over an All-Star snub, we'll understand that it was not meant to be and move on to a life of NBA widowhood.
Even if we do attach ourselves to Portland, it will never be the same as how we felt about the Sonics. They were our team, and the Blazers are a party we're inviting ourselves to.
One final note, the Sonics were our team through the 2007-2008 season. We are not adopting the Blazer history, and won't be telling our children about the last time we saw Buck Williams play. We will keep Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp as part of our sports fan past, and hopefully add Greg Oden and Marcus Aldridge to our future.
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I was visiting a friend in Portland a couple of weeks ago and she said lots of people there just assume that at some point that Paul Allen will pick up his team and take them home with him to Seattle. That doesn't sound likely to me, but you never know.
Wish I could just start liking Portland and the NBA but at this point I doubt I could realign myself to support anything David Stern is behind.
Until David Stern is out of the NBA, it's basically a tainted a gig. Kind of like a Roman Polanski film.