Pioneer Pride: Part 3-Portland Trail Blazers

Bank shots! What is there about a deep shot that kisses the glass so perfectly that it ricochets through the rim and hangs the net in a peculiar sideways fashion? It’s a work of athletic art. Or was.

I must return to the Portland Trail Blazers of my youth and the last NBA player to ever wear white (or black) canvas Chuck Taylors in an NBA Championship series, Herm Gilliam, who was, naturally, a Portland Trail Blazer, who helped them improbably win the franchise’s only NBA title in 1977 by playing the game of his life in Game Two of the Western Conference Finals. He rained jumpers in against the sun-soaked LA Lakers and will never be forgotten in certain tiny quarters of Oregon history as long as I’m alive and remembering the immortal radio announcer Bill Schonley’s calls describing Gilliam’s shake and bake, Red Hot and Rollin’ moves.

On Sunday, June 5, 1977 at approximately 2:02 pm, the Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Philadelphia 76ers 109-107 in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum to wrap up the franchise’s first (and still only) NBA title. I was a seventh grader.

Seventh grade marked a turning point in my life, the time when I began to cultivate a reclusive existence, a practice that has endured, in fact deepened in my adulthood. What it all meant back in 1976-77 is that I experienced every Blazer game, either on the radio or television, absent other humans. I lived with my older sister and mother but they were completely uninterested in professional basketball, as was my father, who lived less than a mile away. It was just me and Tex, our fat beagle, together in the garage, listening to Schonely’s calls on a dinky AM radio, or if a game was broadcast on television, which was rare in those days, watching it in the den.

I preferred the garage because on the vacant half of the two-car structure, I had constructed a Nerf basketball court, a 20-foot full court that replicated in precise detail, to scale, the hardwood floor of the Memorial Coliseum. And I mean right down to the Blazer logo. Masking tape marked the court’s boundaries, keys and free throw lines. Briefly, I considered using two discarded windowpanes for glass backboards, but attaching them securely to the wall proved problematic, potentially injurious, so I settled instead for plywood lifted from a nearby construction site. Two reshaped coat hangars served as rims and I persuaded my mother to buy apples packaged in plastic netting because the purchase provided the perfect material to fashion into nets that actually hung on the rim when a long range shot drilled through it. My mother also bought me Nerf balls by the dozen because Tex demonstrated a savage dislike for them if one rolled his way.

On my court, listening to the radio, I reenacted the games in real time to the best of my ability, also supplementing Schonely’s play-by-play with my color commentary. In the course of four quarters, I must have sprinted up and back the court 500 times and strung together a 10,000-word running monologue. I would address Schonely by his first name Bill and often repeat some of his magic phrases: climb the golden ladder, bingo, bango, bongo, lickety brindle up the middle, my o my, you’ve got to make your free throws, rip city!

Before each Blazer game, I laced up my low-cut white Pumas adorned with a black swirling logo. These were the same sleek leather sneakers I wore as the starting point guard for my basketball team. I distinctly remember the Pumas because they marked the first time I had not worn Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars while playing organized basketball.

As I played, I mimicked the Blazers’ trademark shots: Hollins’ ugly, lefty, sidearm jumpers, Lucas’ stutter-step, flat-trajectory, outside shots, Twardzik’s pinball, contorted drives down the lane, Steele’s throwback set shots, and the playground spin moves of Gilliam.

But it was Walton’s shots, the jump hooks, bank shots and dunks that I liked mimicking most of all. In particular, I remember simulating one of his playoff dunks, the now legendary jam in the face of Los Angeles Laker center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the fourth quarter of Game Three of the Western Conference Finals that quite obviously ranks as the greatest basket in franchise history. I can hear Schonely’s voice as if he made the call yesterday. Something about his urgent, heightening narration of the play must have unhinged me in some fashion since this image of Walton dunking over his arch rival, Portland over Los Angeles, Oregon over California, Tom McCall over Ronald Reagan—with the game on the line—has remained concrete and vivid in my mind ever since: Lucas bats the ball away, keeps it alive, over for Walton! Lucas with the steal! WALTON, OVER JABBAR! OH BABY, HE’S FOULED!

As I return to those long sweaty make-believe hours in the garage, I wonder what my mother must have thought of me, for surely she heard the running, the play-by-play commentary, the clapping, the yelling, the squeak of sneakers on concrete, the low noise of the cheering home crowd after a spectacular play when I ran over to the radio and turned up the volume. Not once did my mother ever interrupt me. No one ever did. Perhaps my mother sensed that the Blazers were my best friends and we were playing hard and well together.

The Blazers won it all that Sunday afternoon and the media quickly spread the news that our heroes would be honored the following day, and just as quickly, people devised hooky plans to attend. In what was then and still remains the largest public gathering in Oregon history, an estimated 250,000 fans swarmed downtown streets and rooftops to celebrate the championship by watching a parade of players, coaches, their wives or girlfriends and kids that began at Union Station and culminated with a rally at Terry Shrunk Plaza.

But I did not join the throng that day. That Monday happened to be one of the last days of school and for some reason, strictly my own, certainly not my mother’s, I chose not to ride a Tri-Met bus with some friends to witness the spectacle. As I recall, back at Gardiner Junior High, only two out of my regular six teachers and half the students showed up. I remember sitting in half-empty rooms filling out worksheets and viewing filmstrips, doubtless fantasizing about the downtown celebration.

We did not watch the parade on television at Gardiner, and I’m unsure if it was even broadcast. That evening, I viewed a few clips of the parade and rally on the local news and that was it.