Playoffs? You kiddin’ me? Playoffs?

My 2009 Blazers playoff tickets

I’ve been a (half) season ticket holder for the Portland Trail Blazers for four years now - technically five, since I’ve already put in my deposit for the 2009-10 season.  Of course my decision to renew early this year was prompted by the letter I received stating that in order to lock in my playoff tickets for 2009, I would need to renew early for 2010.  Thus, I became a five year customer.  This week I picked up my playoff tickets.  It’s kind of strange to pick up playoff tickets - you see, since no one knows how many games will actually be played, they must provide tickets for all of the possible games.  Thus, I have eight tickets for the 2009 NBA Finals, to be played in Portland at a date and time yet to be determined.  It is quite possible - probable, even, that these games will only be played in the bizzaro universe where I am in fact the star point guard for the team.  I can see two problems with this scenario.  First, I don’t have a jump shot.  Second, I placed a $20 bet on 20-1 odds in September for the Blazers to win the NBA Finals while I was in Vegas.  If bizzaro David Stern (Danny Stein?) catches wind of this we’re finished.

Ha Seung-Jin (photo from 2005)

Back in the actual universe, this is the first year the team has made the playoffs since I’ve been back in the Portland area.  The team has come a long way since the final game of the first season for which I was a ticket holder.  That game was a 106-103 victory over an also lottery-bound Lakers team in which Sebastian Telfair scored 17 points and dished out 11 assists.  Ruben Patterson paced the Blazers’ starters with 18 points, Travis Outlaw had 20 off the bench, while a promising young center had 13 points and 5 rebounds on a nearly perfect 6-7 from the field.  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Ha Seung-Jin.   After the game Blazers Director of player personnel and interim coach Kevin Pritchard was quoted saying, “If you looked around the building tonight you saw some of our future playing out there.”  Well, sort of - Travis Outlaw is still on the team.  Theo Ratliff and Telfair became Brandon Roy, and Victor Khryapa and draft picks became LaMarcus Aldridge.  Apparently Pritchard, now the team’s General Manager, wasn’t bowled over by the future he saw.

In the years since, the roster has been completely turned over, resulting in a 2008-09 regular season which saw 54 wins and a fourth place finish in the Western Conference.  In June I predicted 55 wins and no less than 6th place in the conference.  I was off by one win, but two playoff seeds.  I’ll take that trade any day.

Something else has happened in the four years since I became a season ticket holder - the city has again embraced its only major league team.  Today thousands of fans packed Pioneer Courthouse Square for a pep-rally of sorts - a celebration for making the playoffs the magnitude of which is normally reserved for championship wins rather than playoff appearances.  The players all spoke, as did team dignitaries.  Three news choppers surveyed the scene, and KGW Channel 8 ran three hours of live coverage (in HD, even).  This is the type of thing that when picked up by the national media will label Portland as “bush league”, and “happy just to be there.”  Personally, I love it.

In high school we held pep rallies the day of football games and in the days leading up to the state basketball tournament.  In elections, we hold massive rallies for our candidates on the waterfront.  Why should it be any different for our team?  The natural argument is that the team is comprised of 15 millionaires who are paid to play a game by one of the richest men in the world, during a time in which 12% of Oregonians are out of work.  “They should be holding rallies for us, dammit” you might be saying.  Well, idiot, that’s exactly what they did.

GM Kevin Pritchard with the 1977 NBA Championship Trophy during the 30th anniversary celebration of the Blazers' championship season.

This was not a rally for the team, it was a chance for 10,000 Portlanders to gather during a sunny afternoon and forget that a lot of things really suck right now.  Most of the people who attended won’t be able to get in to a playoff game - sheer numbers dictate that.  Only a few hundred tickets were made available to the general public - the rest were snatched up by people like me, who must purchase tickets to all the playoff games in order to secure the luxury of buying tickets to only half the regular season games the following season.

These people were there because they are excited about the team.  This was a celebration that would not have taken place last year, or at any time during the last five years.  It could be argued then, that the amount of happiness brought to the city today by a mass gathering of people in the center of town would have simply been missing in the previous five years.  Sure, this is a cash cow for all involved - this is witnessed by the amount of red and black gear being worn by those in attendance.  At the same time, there is something about the affect a winning team has on a community in whole that simply cannot be measured in terms of simple economics or negated by criticism of the world at large.

Portland is a city the pulse of which once beat with the pounding of a basketball on hardwood.  Where in the early 90s the degree of civic pride could be measured by the intricacies of the signs displayed in windows of homes or businesses offering support for the team facing Detroit, Los Angeles or Chicago.  After first experiencing the disappointment of coming up short against Isaiah, Magic, and Michael, the city was alienated over the following ten years by a group of players who not only did not win, but who did not represent the character traits in which the city could have pride.

The last five years has seen a complete turnover of the team’s roster, with Outlaw the lone exception.  Along the way, the team has rebuilt its connections to the city, rebuilt its own image by embracing the high standards by which its previous incarnations had been judged, and in the process brought back a level of pride and community spirit that could culminate in a real-life pep rally in the streets of downtown Portland.  Hopefully we’ll have  a chance to do it all again in June.

Maybe that bet will help me pay off those playoff tickets after all.