http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/or...f/2009/11/canzano_its_the_blazers_turn_t.html
Canzano: It's the Blazers' turn to do for Paul Allen what he's done for them
By John Canzano, The Oregonian
November 16, 2009, 7:14PM
Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen has billions of dollars, and the world's two biggest yachts, and a spaceship project, and now he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. He has cancer. And news like this always lands with a thud.
"All we really have is our health," Allen told me before the season began.
I believe him now more than ever.
Doctors will tell you Allen's type of cancer is aggressive, and liable to show up anywhere from the lymph nodes to the brain. But it's not unbeatable. Studies show that early detection, good genetics and, maybe too, good circumstance help people beat cancer. And Allen has the kind of money and connections to get the best treatment on the planet.
But also, research shows a positive outlook matters.
I once wrote about a female cancer patient who was given six months to live. She just kept smiling and making plans, even as doctors told her the end was coming. She traveled, and bought season tickets to Ducks football games, and enrolled in classes. She lived nine years and it wasn't lost on me, as she went, she had a couple of cruise-line tickets booked in her name.
There's going to be a lot of talk today about how badly the Blazers need Allen alive. And why not? He's provided for the organization -- paid the bills, built the Rose Garden, created jobs, withstood an awful bankruptcy and broken brand -- and all the while Allen has made rich men out of young, talented basketball players.
He bought draft picks and stockpiled talent in a recession market. And Allen's funded the current party for Blazers fans by signing Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge to more than $140 million in combined contracts.
He's carried the Blazers.
So today, I wonder if what Allen needs above will and treatment is for the franchise he cared for financially for so long, to carry him.
I'm asked all the time why a man who could buy anything he wanted decided to own the Blazers and Seahawks. Sports franchises are rarely profitable. The headaches can be supersized. And as high as Allen ranks annually on the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people, there are brilliant individuals all around him on the rankings who selected less complicated diversions.
There are thrills in life which don't cost money. The joy of watching your child ride a bicycle for the first time. Celebrating an anniversary with a spouse. But Allen doesn't have children and never married, and for a man like this sport is an especially warm companion.
Few ventures can lift the human spirit the way sport can. Allen didn't just buy the Blazers, he bought goose bumps. And I'm thinking today, a man saddled with a scary disease and a struggling economy tugging down his portfolio would probably love nothing more than to escape it all with his basketball team for a couple of wonderful hours on game nights.
Allen, who had a heart surgery at the end of last season, is now enduring chemotherapy and plotting another comeback, but also he has Roy and Aldridge on the court. And the hope in Greg Oden, too. And while it sounds silly to talk sport with cancer as the underlying topic, when we visit our sick family members or close friends isn't sport is exactly what we end up talking about?
The disease ends up a bag of bricks. At some point we all have to set it down.
There is so much hope in the Blazers future. This is an organization inching closer to big-time legitimacy and there have been times when we look at the organization, see so clearly what outsiders are missing, and feel as though we're sitting in a special place, watching something magical materialize.
When the Blazers make a big play at the Rose Garden, and the building is shaking, I often find my eyes drifting toward the basket on the home-bench end. Allen's seats are on one side of it. I smile when he pumps a fist, or gets on his feet, because in one of those moments I think we all relate deeply to Allen in a way we otherwise cannot.
Maybe you haven't always liked Allen or understood him. But as owners go, he's the best in sport. He grants his management autonomy, and plenty of cash. And for fans, he makes you feel as though you're all in it together.
The email that circulated internally at Allen's parent company, Vulcan Inc, talked about optimism. It was written by his sister, Jody Allen. The email pointed out that 25 years earlier her brother beat Hodgkins, and he'll continue to work around the offices, and "he has no plans to change his role."
I think he should, though.
He carried the Blazers for so long. It's time they carry him.
