The Jailblazers in Retrospect: It was never about character, it was about losing.

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I think its fairly evident, given the upheaval of Portland Fans by a bad string of games and bleak future.

Winning with assholes and thugs > Losing with nice guys

 

[maxiep]

It wasn't that way for me. I was ashamed of the Jail Blazers. To each his own, however.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I didn't care about the character to be honest. I just want to win. These "good character" stories and the "fan pledge" the organization shoves down our throats make me sick. Well, I don't mind them doing good in the community, but that's secondary to winning.

 

[illmatic99]

Winning with assholes and thugs > Losing with nice guys

Been saying that since the beginning. But with these guys, we've won more than lost, so I don't think it's entirely fair to label their tenure with the Blazers as "losing."

 

[Nikolokolus]

The bottom line is that it's always about winning or losing.

But when adversity hit that batch of knuckleheads their shitty character showed through and they spiraled down that much quicker and it made it impossible to root for them -- I wanted them to fail towards the end.

The real issue is that being a winner is more than just being talented or physically gifted, there's a mentality that goes along with it that is willing to sacrifice and shut out distractions and the teams during that period lacked enough players with a winning mentality.

The problem with this current team isn't that they are full of nice guys, it's that they are mostly "nice guys" with a lot of balky knees. No matter how nice somebody is, if their body fails them, there's no compensating for that.

 

[GrandpaBlaze]

We have a bunch of nice guys which, at one time, gave us all great hope. Unfortunately:

* One is suddenly and prematurely past his prime and hasn't adapted
* A couple are nice but need to have more "meanness" or aggressiveness (too nice/passive)
* One sees the doctor more than some of us see our wife/husband or children
* A coach who has consistently shown a remarkable inability to adapt (that's my plan & I'm sticking with it)

My vote is to bench Roy except for at most 20 min per game and essentially make this Miller's team. Miller, Wes, Batum, LMA & Camby or Joel as the starting group with a very thin bench. Still give plenty of time to Armon/Mills to let them fight out who deserves the backup role (if either really takes charge and says "it should obviously be me" or if we get into another Jack/Telfair/Blake scenario).

I have no plans on the Blazers being in the playoffs this year. They are a broken team with virtually no reasonably valuable assets with which to work.

Gramps...

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

The last few years the Blazers were on par with those jailblazer days -- around 52-55 wins per season.

However, those jailblazers didn't get smashed in the first round so easily as the Roy-led Blazers have.

 

[Minstrel]

As maxiep illustrates, for some it was definitely about the character. But I think for most people, in pretty much all fan bases, it's all about the winning. If a team is winning, a lot will be forgiven. If the team is losing, whatever attributes the players have will be phrased in such a way as to villify it (too thuggish, too nice and soft, too passive, too selfish, etc).

In the end, fans don't tolerate losing. Some fans don't tolerate bad attitudes, but a fan base as a whole doesn't tolerate losing. No matter who's doing it.

 

[MickZagger]

If that 2000 team would have beat the Lakers like they were supposed to and went on to win the championship would people look back and say that team was full of a bunch of thugs? Nobody would care, they would look back and think what a great and loaded team that was.

 

[Sinobas]

True, not many cared about the Blazers "thugginess" until they started losing, then, it was just like the iceing on the cake. God, why'd you have to bring up 2000 again. That's what this whole franchise is about, near misses and draft day blunders.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

It wasn't that way for me. I was ashamed of the Jail Blazers. To each his own, however.

My mother and my best friend's mother in law bath turned off the Blazers because of the character issues, and while my mother had tuned by in, my best friend's mother-in-law still holds a grudge.

Not everyone is all about winning.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

If that 2000 team would have beat the Lakers like they were supposed to and went on to win the championship would people look back and say that team was full of a bunch of thugs? Nobody would care, they would look back and think what a great and loaded team that was.

Character apparently changes the price of admission for some people, so to speak: a bad boy team in a good boy town needs to win a whole bunch more to become unimpeachable than a good boy team in a good boy town. Some people think that's pathetic, that people could like a bad team so much. Whatever.

 

[Natebishop3]

Show of hands; how many people will refuse to watch a movie/tv show because one of the actors has a criminal past/drug problem?

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Show of hands; how many people will refuse to watch a movie/tv show because one of the actors has a criminal past/drug problem?

And this ties into the other thread about whether sports is just entertainment or if it's also tribal pride. The teams are set up to explicitly represent a city or state, after all, whereas an actor is not.

I won't watch any movie Darius Miles has been in... but I think that's a cop-out.

 

[e_blazer]

Two words:

ANCIENT HISTORY

Let it die.

 

[STOMP]

Show of hands; how many people will refuse to watch a movie/tv show because one of the actors has a criminal past/drug problem?

or for that matter don't fondly recall the Blazers lone championship because their best player was a known pot/acid head and their leading scorer got in a lot of fights on the court?

My contention has always been that the guys from the "Jailblazer" era were probably not all that different then current or past Blazer teams or NBA players in general. A couple of their top players turned a cold shoulder to the tabloid slimeballs from the O and were derided on a daily basis because it. The O's constant vitriol was picked up by the national media as the story largely because the last thing they want to do is to try to build up a ratings killer from way out west... much better to have Portland as the bad guys and promote the great guy Lakers. But the fact of the matter is that Portland was drawing about 20,000 paying fans per game throughout the Sheed-Pip-Sabas Blazers and all of 5 people showed up to the protest the Jailblazers in that flop of a rally.

it depresses me that Quick is still on the beat... we deserve better

STOMP

 

[BlazerCaravan]

or for that matter don't fondly recall the Blazers lone championship because their best player was a known pot/acid head and their leading scorer got in a lot of fights on the court?

My contention has always been that the guys from the "Jailblazer" era were probably not all that different then current or past Blazer teams or NBA players in general. A couple of their top players turned a cold shoulder to the tabloid slimeballs from the O and were derided on a daily basis because it. The O's constant vitriol was picked up by the national media as the story largely because the last thing the national media wants to do is to try to build up a ratings killer from way out west... much better to have them as the bad guys and promote the great guy Lakers. But the fact of the matter is that Portland was drawing about 20,000 paying fans per game throughout the Sheed-Pip-Sabas Blazers and all of 5 people showed up to the protest the Jailblazers in that flop of a rally.

it depresses me that Quick is still on the beat... we deserve better

STOMP

That's a very good point. Thanks for the perspective on that.

 

[Natebishop3]

Well, I just found it funny because as the team started to sink below .500, many fans claimed they did not support the team because of the thugs, but as the thugs were traded away, none of those fans came back. They didn't start to show support until we got Roy and Aldridge, and even then it wasn't until we drafted Oden that most fans came rushing back into the fray.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Well, I just found it funny because as the team started to sink below .500, many fans claimed they did not support the team because of the thugs, but as the thugs were traded away, none of those fans came back. They didn't start to show support until we got Roy and Aldridge, and even then it wasn't until we drafted Oden that most fans came rushing back into the fray.

Those were bandwagoners. There's a lot of them around every team. But as a long time fan, I was still embarrassed and still had to come up with reasons to support the late 01/02 team and the entire 02/03 team. It was not fun; I had decided to enjoy my team being the bad guys, but it wasn't easy, and it didn't last.

I had more fun after the team was blown up and not playing for keeps, just running the young guys, than I'd had the seasons before it. I vividly remember the Telfair-Ha team beating the Lakers, and being fucking ecstatic about it. It was a lot of fun.

Speaking of, I'll go look for it online, but there are studies of happiness around sports teams that say fans of bad teams are overall happier than fans of good teams (though fans of great teams are the happiest). Why? Expectations. When you're a bad team, the expectations are very low, and wins are a happy surprise. When you're a good team, you expect to win most games, and when you lose, it's awful. Since bad feelings are many times stronger than good feelings in the brain (another neurological study), it goes without saying that a season full of wins can be ruined by four untimely losses at the end.

So there you go. Perhaps a zen approach to the Blazers is in order: do not want, and what you receive will always be a pleasant surprise.

 

[julius]

The last few years the Blazers were on par with those jailblazer days -- around 52-55 wins per season.

However, those jailblazers didn't get smashed in the first round so easily as the Roy-led Blazers have.

Not to be a stickler, but since people always argue about the fans leaving due to wins vs character, I'd like to point out that you have an odd memory going there.

The Blazers made it out of the 1st round 5 times in the last 20 years. 90, 91, 92, 99 and 2000.

None of those years were "Jail Blazer" years. The team only won 50+ games in 90, 91, 92, 93, 00, 01 and 03. And of those years in the last 10 years, they never won '52-55' games. After "the game 7", they went 50, 49, 50, and then no 50 win seasons until 2 years ago.

They didn't get past the 1st round as the "Jail Blazer" team. They lost those series (the few they did make) too. In 01, they were swept, in 02 (49 wins) they were swept. In 03, they would've been swept had they not changed the series to 7 games.

 

[julius]

If that 2000 team would have beat the Lakers like they were supposed to and went on to win the championship would people look back and say that team was full of a bunch of thugs? Nobody would care, they would look back and think what a great and loaded team that was.

I don't think people look back on the 2000 team as a "bunch of thugs". For starters, Ruben and Zach weren't on the team yet. It's after that year that the "Jail Blazer" stuff started. You know, when they signed Ruben, traded for a coke head, got multiple pot arrests..that sorta shit.

 

[julius]

Show of hands; how many people will refuse to watch a movie/tv show because one of the actors has a criminal past/drug problem?

Show of hands how many people here have a movie or a tv show that they go to the taping of, or grew up listening to with their dad or mom or grandparents, and have a real emotional tie to because it's about your home town?

To compare sports fans to a tv/movie show, is idiotic. For fucks sake, you're a mod on a message board about the team AND you have pictures of another sports team as your avatar. If the blazers (and ducks) meant as much to you as a tv show or movie does, chances are you wouldn't have waited as much time of your life talking about it with people online.

 

[Masbee]

Well, I just found it funny because as the team started to sink below .500, many fans claimed they did not support the team because of the thugs, but as the thugs were traded away, none of those fans came back. They didn't start to show support until we got Roy and Aldridge, and even then it wasn't until we drafted Oden that most fans came rushing back into the fray.

You are overlapping periods.

Those fans didn't immediately come back when Roy and Aldridge were drafted because A) they were not hearalded, can't-miss prospects, and Zach and Darius were still on the team. Zach was getting arrested and the team was still very much the "JailBlazers".

Those fans started coming back after Zach was traded and Roy and Aldridge had shown they could play and the future was bright.

 

[Nikolokolus]

You are overlapping periods.

Those fans didn't immediately come back when Roy and Aldridge were drafted because A) they were not hearalded, can't-miss prospects, and Zach and Darius were still on the team. Zach was getting arrested and the team was still very much the "JailBlazers".

Those fans started coming back after Zach was traded and Roy and Aldridge had shown they could play and the future was bright.

Zach was traded the same day that Oden was drafted,and when he was added there was a huge spike in interest. But when Oden went down with his first microfracture surgery I can tell you from first hand experience that people weren't exactly flocking to the Rose Garden the first couple months of the season.

I know this because I went to watch a game against Milwaukee that year and got 100 level tickets 13 rows behind the Blazers' bench from a scalper for 30 bucks ... coincidentally that overtime win came in at number 3 in what would eventually become their 13 game winning streak that year. To me that was when people finally started to pay attention to the team again. Ultimately it's still all about winning or losing in this city.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Zach was traded the same day that Oden was drafted,and when he was added there was a huge spike in interest. But when Oden went down with his first microfracture surgery I can tell you from first hand experience that people weren't exactly flocking to the Rose Garden the first couple months of the season.

I know this because I went to watch a game against Milwaukee that year and got 100 level tickets 13 rows behind the Blazers' bench from a scalper for 30 bucks ... coincidentally that overtime win came in at number 3 in what would eventually become their 13 game winning streak that year. To me that was when people finally started to pay attention to the team again. Ultimately it's still all about winning or losing in this city.

I don't see how not wanting to pay to was a 30-win team that got then lost their savior before the season even started makes everyone a fair weather fan. Just because I didn't start buying tickets in earnest until last year doesn't mean I am a fucking fair weather fan only interested in winning. There's some bad logic in using a sellout streak or attendance in measuring fandom. All that measures is how the cost of attending balances with the enjoyment of going to a game. You can be a fan of a bad team and still think it's not worth $30 to see a loss.

Winning brings people out of their homes and into the sunlight, but it doesn't mean they aren't at home watching the team or listening on the radio when the team is struggling. People have no reason to proudly spend a bunch of money to watch a team lose. That we improved so much that season is great, but it was unexpected, and we'd lost something like 7 in a row before that win streak started. There's no reason to pay cash to watch a loss when you can get the same loss for free.

 

[Nikolokolus]

I wasn't pointing to anybody in particular for being a fair weather fan, I'm simply stating that in the aggregate, the city didn't come back to the team until that win streak -- don't take what I said so personally.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

I wasn't pointing to anybody in particular for being a fair weather fan, I'm simply stating that in the aggregate, the city didn't come back to the team until that win streak -- don't take what I said so personally.

I used myself as an example; winning raises one side of the cost/enjoyment equation (the "enjoyment" part) such that more people will attend because they see the event as worth their while. Before that winning streak, we were a 31 win team on pace for another 31 win season. Why pay good money when you could see them lose for free?

Once the winning started, even though they were still not a 50 win team, the people started showing up, because the possibility of seeing a win and really enjoying themselves was more and more likely, making the cost of a ticket (3x that of a movie ticket, and a lot more than cable or listening on the radio) worth it.

Just because people didn't start attending until after that streak doesn't mean those same people weren't fans before. They just had cost/enjoyment ratios in their head that needed to be met before it was worth their money to attend.

 

[Nikolokolus]

Look I only took issue with your assertion here:

Those fans started coming back after Zach was traded and Roy and Aldridge had shown they could play and the future was bright.

Nothing more, nothing less. trading Zach isn't what brought people back and it wasn't simply because Roy and Aldridge showed they could play during their rookie seasons. It took an honest to god winning streak to get people back in the seats.

So from that respect I think this city has kind of a front-runner's mentality. On the other hand I look at team like the Golden State Warriors who have been historically awful, but yet still rank at the top of the league in attendance year after year. Just because you personally aren't a fair weather fan, doesn't mean that Portland isn't full of them.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Look I only took issue with your assertion here:

Masbee said that, not me.

How can I take your argument seriously if you can't even be bothered to distinguish between two posters?

 

[Nikolokolus]

Masbee said that, not me.

You're right ... I guess you were taking issue with me taking issue with Masbee's statement.