The Trail Blazers Are Back - And So Are The Fans (Mike Kahn)

[ABM]

From: Fox Sports

Just consider for a moment an NBA team that hasn't added any significant free agents, didn't trade for any veteran stars, and has missed the playoffs five years in a row with higher expectations than the Portland Trail Blazers.

There is so much faith in the architecture of general manager Kevin Pritchard and coaching of Nate McMillan around this cadre of youth led by Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge and Rudy Fernandez, that anything less than a 45-50 win season will be a disappointment for the revitalized Blazers fans and national media.

The transition has been so dramatic from the disastrous run of Steve Patterson and John Nash promising and failing to reconstruct the team that was in the playoffs 22 consecutive season, that they are back in sellout crowd mode. After averaging a sellout for virtually all 22 of those seasons, they dropped from the 19.000-20,000 average to the 15,000-16,000 until last season when the Rose Garden reverted to a raucous 19,550 per game.

Indeed, they were nearly all the way back.

This season, the love affair with the new breed should reach another level.......................

 

[alex42083]

Good stuff ABM, thanks for the link.
I still can't believe Rudy is only 23 years old, I keep forgetting that. The guy plays like he's 26, 27. Hope he'll stay here forever.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

I never left. Fuck bandwagons (Ron Tonkin, I'm looking at you)

 

[Nikolokolus]

I never left. Fuck bandwagons (Ron Tonkin, I'm looking at you)

I don't think of this as "Bandwagon fans", more like jilted lovers that left while their significant other went on an 8 year drug and alcohol bender.

The team was clearly undeserving of being supported and people (rightly IMO) voted their displeasure with the team and it's band of miscreants with their wallets and either stayed away or withrdrew sponsorships. The seeds of that discontent which were planted by the Whittsit regime. No team (or person) is worthy of slavish devotion when they are not returning that devotion with at least a modicum or respect (I'm looking at you Bonzi Wells, and Rasheed Wallace).

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

bandwagon. if they were winning while jailblazers, they would have stayed.

 

[Nikolokolus]

bandwagon. if they were winning while jailblazers, they would have stayed.

the evidence suggests otherwise
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1024614/1/index.htm

Certainly there are some who only followed the team based on their record, but it was already starting to slip one year removed from their Western Conference finals appearance in 2000

 

[THE HCP]

I grew up in Northeast Portland where you eat, sleep and drink Blazers as kids! True Blazers fans went nowhere! In good times and bad!

 

[BalancedMan]

Good stuff ABM, thanks for the link.
I still can't believe Rudy is only 23 years old, I keep forgetting that. The guy plays like he's 26, 27. Hope he'll stay here forever.

It's frustrating because I'm 23. Kind of a different life we're living. My goal for this year is to just dunk the basketball for the first time in my life at 6'1" 190.

 

[alex42083]

It's frustrating because I'm 23. Kind of a different life we're living. My goal for this year is to just dunk the basketball for the first time in my life at 6'1" 190.

ha, yeah.. I'm two years older than Rudy, and I've played my fair share of ball in my life, but man.. that guy has played in the Olympics and done about everything you could in Euro ball, and is doing incredible things here in a new country and has been here only 2-3 weeks.
Rudy is just a freak of nature, and quite the athlete.