Corbin Smith by Corbin Smith The 1999-2000 Portland Trail Blazers squad was an excellent basketball team. A group of grinders, bruisers, and guys who sincerely believed in team basketball, managed a 59-23 win-loss record, took that season's eventual champions to seven games in the Western Conference Finals, and set a personal statistical record that may never be topped. A deep, multifunctional squad who could adjust to basically any matchup on the fly, they were the best Blazer team that didn’t employ the services of Bill Walton or Clyde Drexler, better than any Damian Lillard squad by a country mile.  But the team wasn't experience like that in the moment. Local media and many of the fans they served were not preoccupied with the excellent on-court performances. They were, instead, mired in a neverending sports call-in radio show where drivetime dickheads harped on character, clutchness, the necessity of rules for a functioning society, and race—but in that subtextual Portland way, where the nastiness of racism is buried under a patina of liberal good manners. After that Game 7 loss, a legendary total collapse that ushered in the worst NBA Dynasty to ever do it, the die was cast. This team was bad news, worth forgetting.  For a long time, the organization acquiesced, ignoring this era with all their hearts and minds. But time had other plans. The cannabis related malfeasance that followed some of the players began to seem stupid when there were pot shops on every street in the city. There were broader reckonings with the role racism still plays in our community, and how it might affect the way people relate to a Black institution set in the middle of our extremely white city’s cultural life. Rasheed, it turned out, was right about at least one NBA referee being a thieving dickhead. And, well, the kids who rooted for that team grew up, became adults, and brought their lingering affections to the discourse.  Damon Stoudamire on the jumbo. CORBIN SMITH On Monday evening, the Blazers organization relented to the changing tides, and invited the '99-'00 team to the Moda Center for a big halftime celebration of their accomplishments, a moment that felt like a ceremony of light healing that would have felt impossible even ten years ago. They weren’t all there, of course: Scottie Pippen, Arvydas Sabonis, and, sadly, Rasheed Wallace, couldn’t make it. But Steve Smith, Damon Stoudamire, Bonzi Wells, coach Mike Dunleavy, GM Bob Whitsitt, fan favorite Brian Grant, and others were assembled to receive some long overdue recognition from the crowd, and, hopefully, open the door for the 99-00 team’s reintegration into the organization’s story about itself.  Before the game, Wells, Smith, Dunleavy, and Stoudamire sat down and answered a few questions from the press. Smith, a soft spoken guy who has worked in media since his NBA career, immediately informed everyone, as he has for years, to anyone who asks, that the Blazers were cheated in Game Seven of the series. Dunleavy, not as hot about the matter, went over these injustices one by one, a phantom foul called on Sabonis (the only guy in the NBA who could single-cover Shaq at the time) and an uncalled whacking that Smith took in the lane. As he indexed these fuck ups, Wells, sporting chic glasses and a beanie, shook his head. It still ate at him.  Sports history is a history of glory boys. Winners, stars, cultural icons who hoisted the trophy and proved all the doubters wrong. This team was not that. It was a collection of flexible, smart guys, playing in a small market. None of whom were blessed by the gods the way the greats were, they were a team designed to be dispatched by the bloated Laker squads of the world. But this run still contained these guys' lives, their dreams. Brian "Rasta Monsta" Grant. CORBIN SMITH A person who becomes a professional athlete for a living has an insane life, usually. They find out they are incredible at basketball when they are very young, they ply a trade for their high school and college years, hoping that someone in the league notices them and finds them worth paying, they spend their twenties in a vortex of attention, money, and pressure, and then their bodies begin to betray them, shuffling them over to the next phase of their lives, one they have often not thought forward to. History then takes stock of their time in this madness, and ascribes some intangible value to the work they did in their youth, and make it the monument of their time on earth. They are well compensated for all this, of course, in money and attention and opportunities. But to see Bonzi relive all that, to see his shot at some permanent glory etched in the trophies of history slip through his fingers once again, to know that there is nothing he can do about the past, well… It's rough, man. That fourth quarter cast a die for everyone on that panel, to some degree, taking a symbol of pure validation for the works of their youth straight out of their hands.  Damon Stoudamire on the mic. CORBIN SMITH If anyone could be said to have been a victim of the various moral panics that emerged from this era of Blazer basketball, it was Damon Stoudamire. The story of these squads, told over and over in the media of the time, was one of invasion: NBA players from other places, descending on our proper town with its manners and its rules and acting like bad boys. The content butcher needed meat for sausage, and moral revulsion over the disrespect and the pot use of young men would do as well as anything. But Damon is from here, and the waves of nonsense that were flung his way—most of it centered around cannabis usage that is de rigueur for any young man who grew up on the west coast, some of it from new-to-town columnists looking to make a name for themselves as the baddest, meanest sports whiner on the block—sought to alienate his hometown from him.  Stoudamire hasn’t soured on Portland entirely, he has family here still and returns to town three times a year to see them, follows the Blazers from a distance, and claims Portland as his home. But to read interviews with him on his time in Portland, one can see how much it hurt him, that it still kind of hurts him. During the press conference, Casey Holdahl, the Blazers’ main content guy, suggested that the years have been kinder to Damon and his compatriots than he knew. But, when the ceremony went down, Stoudamire's name was announced last, and he gave a speech, received some laurels, and seemed relieved at the outpouring of love he got from the crowd. I hope that this moment can serve to create closer ties between this team and the organization and the city in the future, enough that, someday, maybe, the number 30 can get lifted to the rafters for a third time. A Rasheed Wallace fan in the 100s. CORBIN SMITH ...read more read less