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.
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.
With David Adelman, Talking “the Joker and Jamal” and the Nuggets’ amazing ride to the Western Conference finals
David Adelman was up past midnight Thursday in his hotel room on the Disney campus in Orlando. For the better part of an hour, the Denver Nuggets assistant coach was Facetiming with wife Jenny and their two children, son L.J., 6, and daughter Lennan, 5, who were all back home in Denver. And there was some conversation with Nuggets head coach Michael Malone.
Blazers-Lakers should be an intriguing matchup. And my pick for the series winner is …
A few observations as the eighth-seeded Trail Blazers take on the challenge of facing the top-seeded L.A. Lakers in a seven-game first-round playoff series to which everyone across NBA circles will be paying attention …
• In a word, watching the Blazers’ nine-game run-up to the NBA playoffs has been fun.
Not because they made it — after 45 years in the sportswriting business, I’ll probably never think like a fan — but because Portland’s seeding games have been so watchable.