Another losing season for Blazers? Tanks a lot
Mercifully, the Trail Blazers’ season has ended.
Blazers bag a big win, but this game was about Dame
In an NBA regular season, every team plays 82 games. Some of them are big, a few of them really big.
With playoff chances not worth a hoot, Blazers aim to develop Scoot
Another Trail Blazer season is almost upon us.
Blazers end another forgetful season — and now the work begins
If they get the No. 1 pick in the June 22 draft — they have a 10.5 percent chance — they will take 7-4 French wunderkind Victor Wembanyama. And keep him.
On Hanneman’s week in Pittsburgh, Blazers’ defense, follow-up Vegas Bowl notes
Craig Hanneman knew he was going to Pittsburgh for the Steelers’ 50-year anniversary celebration of the “Immaculate Reception.”
Lillard is Blazers’ biggest scorer — Who is the G.O.A.T player for the Trail Blazers?
The wait is over. In his 11th NBA season, Damian Lillard is the Trail Blazers’ career scoring leader, having passed Clyde “The Glide” Drexler last week at Oklahoma City.
Blazers’ focus is Sharpe in what they hope is a major draft night coup
The important phrase to remember: “Time will tell.”
Through a dismal Blazer season, Brooks says he still loves it here
For nearly three decades, Scott Brooks made visits to Portland to play against the Trail Blazers — for the first 10 years as a player, then another 18 as a coach.
Schonz calls it a career: ‘Good night, everybody!’
As would be expected, Bill Schonely did not have the most restful night of sleep on Sunday.
Larry Brown looks out front window, lands on Memphis Tigers’ bench
Larry Brown is more than a basketball lifer.
Pros vs. Joes No. 13: Despite the Blazers’ rocky road, Brooke Olzendam’s having a ball
If there is a poster person of popularity among fans in the Trail Blazers organization these days, it’s probably not a player or coach.
Talking sports: Trail Blazers trading frenzy, MLB strike and Adley Rutschman, Pioneers’ Jay Locey to the USFL
Weighing in some sporting issues of the day …
• There must be a method to Joe Cronin’s madness.
Or as Ricky Ricardo might say, “Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
Covering a number of subjects, including bad basketball in Oregon, the Trail Blazers’ future, Dan Burke, Gary Payton II, Patty Mills, Nike & Alberto Salazar …
A few sporting items on my mind as we ring in the new year …
• The state of Oregon is known for some pretty good basketball, but its major teams are displaying little of it so far this season.
Should Buck Williams be a Hall of Famer? Says Fordham Prep’s sports analytics club: ‘Yes’
Those in Portland in the 1990s recall Charles Linwood “Buck” Williams as the lunch-bucket power forward whose acquisition proved the missing link in the Trail Blazers’ rise to NBA Finals in ’90 and ’92.
With Neil Everett and Dewayne Hankins, talking Blazer broadcasting for 2021-22
Summing up the Blazer broadcasting scene for the upcoming season — and there are plenty of changes …
• Neil Everett sounded like a kid in a candy store when I caught up with him via phone while he was at his vacation cottage in Seaside.
“I just found a vintage Trail Blazers jacket at an antique store in town,” Everett told me. “I don’t know what year it’s from, but it has to be 30 to 40 years old and it looks like it’s never been worn. I’m so fired up.”
Everett paid $300 for the jacket.
On the Pre Classic, Rich Brooks’ 80th birthday party, Adley (and Ad) Rutschman, Damian Lillard, Kevin Calabro and the Trail Blazers …
Sporting items on my mind as we swing into a new week …
I’ll put the Prefontaine Classic up against any 2 1/2-hour sports event in the state of Oregon — and yes, I’m including a basketball game involving the Trail Blazers.
The 47th annual invitational — with a crowd of 8,937 looking on at the newly refurbished track and field shrine called Hayward Field — featured nine meet records and seven world-leading marks in the first international meet since the end of the Tokyo Olympic Games two weeks ago.
Herb Brown, Mark Warkentien Endorse Blazers’ selection of Billups as head coach
Herb Brown was an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons for only one season — but what a season it was.
The older brother of then-Detroit head coach Larry Brown was on hand for the Pistons’ ride to the NBA championship in 2003-04. One of his favorite players to work with on that team was the new head coach of the Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups.
“I love him,” says Herb, now retired and living in Traveler’s Rest, S.C. “He was terrific when I was with the Pistons. He’s a major reason why we were successful. He was a great leader. He took coaching. He understood coaching. He was truly professional.”
On Kevin Calabro and Jordan Kent, the sports broadcasting scene in Portland, Ime Udoka, James Allen, the Cambia Portland Classic and much more …
Knocking it around on a potpourri of sports topics …
• Kevin Calabro’s return to the broadcasting booth with the Trail Blazers is not a done deal.
The Blazers, who let Jordan Kent go last week as their TV play-by-play announcer, have extended an offer in principle to Calabro, who served as their TV play-by-play man from 2016-20 but gave up his job during the COVID-19-interrupted 2020 campaign.
A fond farewell to Herb Brown, the octogenarian Oregonian who has coached the world
Put Herb Brown in among the famous Oregonians who flies under the radar in the world of sports.
The older brother (by 4 1/2 years) of Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Brown is an accomplished casaba coach in his own right.
Brown, who turns 85 in March, is most well-known for his time spent as head coach of the Detroit Pistons from 1975-77.
But Brown’s resume is replete with stops throughout the world. The native New Yorker has had assistant coaching jobs with eight franchises, including the Trail Blazers. He was a member of Maurice Cheeks’ Portland staff from 2001-03.