After holding practices at their facility in Tualatin nearly every day since the start of training camp, the Trail Blazers took last Friday and Sunday off. The off days presented a last chance for players to spend time with their families, take care of outstanding chores and errands around the house and enjoy some time on their own before the regular season begins Wednesday night. Instead, they chose to spend more time with each other.
Despite having spent the better part of the last three weeks with each other and the fact that they’ll see each other nearly every single day for at least the next six months, the team, from players to coaches to front office staffers, met up in downtown Portland for a surprise party for Rodney Hood, who turned 27 on Sunday. Though Hood thought that he was going to be spending a quiet evening alone with his family, Hood's wife, Richa, invited the team and a number of Rodney's friends and family from back home in Mississippi to celebrate, all to the astonishment of her husband.
"I was super surprised," recounted Hood. "Me and my wife were just going out for a birthday dinner -- I usually don’t do anything for my birthday other than spend time with my kids. We were walking to a bank across from El Gaucho and I thought it was weird. Somebody came out and met us, said it was private dining for two, so I still didn’t think anything. I walked in, I saw everybody, I almost broke down and cried. That was a special moment for me."
There was food, a cake, music, dancing, presents, all the typical accoutrement you'd find at a birthday party. But Hood seemed most touched by the job Richa did of keeping the event a secret and the level of support he got from a team he's only been a part of for roughly eight months.
"For all of my teammates to come, most of the people throughout the organization that’s here day-to-day came, it was an amazing feeling to see that," said Hood. "And then see my family and friends fly out and keep it a secret from me, that was amazing. But just the support, everybody coming out to have a good time. Usually when you get to my age, you’ve got kids, nobody really appreciates you anymore in that respect. It was memorable, I want to thank my wife again for that."
Obviously it's not uncommon for a basketball team to all end up at the same place. And the team does put on events for the players, be it making reservations for dinners, scheduling busses to take groups to the movies or the occasional shopping trip on the road, but those events, even if informal, still came off a bit different with the team's support staff coordinating. So for Hood's surprise party to draw a crowd, on the last weekend before the start of the season without it being a requirement says something about a team with six new players from the season prior.
"I think it’s cool because it’s something that the team isn’t setting up, it’s something that doesn’t have anything to do with basketball," said Damian Lillard, who was in attendance Saturday night. "That’s the brotherhood side of it and the friendship side of it that makes it all that much better. It’s like, okay, we’re teammates, we’ve got to win games, you’re gonna lose games and be criticized and we gonna go through all this stuff together, but it’s that personal time that really counts.
