East has gotten a lot stronger, and it's not going to be the joke it has been. The talent is out there, and it won't be long until the East is as tough as the west. I cant wait to watch the top notch basketball which that much competition brings. It has been a great offseason. Fantasy drafts are going to be fun this year!
1) Sabas played basically the twilight of his career here. 2) He owed the Blazers a pretty big debt for being his only source of quality medical attention for years. It's difficult to imagine another player carrying that sort of loyalty. 3) He was in the earlier, pre-Portland absolutely sucks window I previously mentioned. 4) We haven't done so well with the Spaniards, Argentenians, British, Yugoslavians or wherever Drazen was from, and now even the French.
I will be SHOCKED if the East ever stacks up against the West. Sure, a team like the Bucks seems to be on the rise...but as one rises another sets (CHI, ATL?). The East will always be a top-heavy conference with 2-4 teams contributing meaningfully to the NBA, while the rest of the conference just takes up space.
MWWAAAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA A European [player played his career in Portland and so clearly it has appeal? Listen, I am not down on Ptown like some are, but this is a foolish rational. First, he only played for what... 6, 7 years? Second you said it yourself. He is European, he doesn't know the details of the cities in the US. Find an AMERICAN born NBA player and make that statement and then it will hold some cred.
So? You know he wasn't allowed out of the Soviet Union for his prime years, right? And besides, once he got here and was good, other teams wanted him but we kept him. This is (a) speculation and (b) silly. I don't get this "Portland absolutely sucks" business. Sucks why? You think there are no Black Hipsters? You seriously think it's worse than Oklahoma City? Salt Lake City? Or any NBA city that isn't LA, NY or maybe Chicago? NBA players are obscenely rich: when you're obscenely rich it really doesn't matter where you play. Define "done well". If we're talking "got them to play for us" then we have done very well. If we're talking "managed to acquire the truly great players from those country", not so well (except maybe Drazen, but we needed Buck more than we needed another shooting guard). Name me one player of the nationalities that you listed (you didn't list Turkey) that we targeted in free agency and failed to get, or that we lost in free agency when we wanted them to stay.
So you answered all of the doubters but my post. Again, when did Sabonis have time to study, travel, grow up in the states to know what different cities are like. Also, what I bolded above: I am pretty sure they absolutely care to some extent. They care whether the city has a team poised to be contending. They care about the cold air and weather that stiffens the bones and makes it harder to warm up and get loose. AND, with the NBA being more Hollywood than ever before, I am pretty sure they do care about where they can get the most attention. ( this last part has been a topic of past and probably doesn't matter as much anymore compared to the first two things I listed. In the end, to say that Sabonis WANTED to be in Portland, is pretty much speculation too is it not? Do you have a quote or interview where he stated this? If not, then your posts are moot in this matter.
??? We didn't trade Drazen for Buck. We traded Sam Bowie for Buck. Drazen and Buck were teammates the entire time Drazen was in Portland. We traded Drazen in a 3-team deal with NJN and DEN that netted us Walter Davis a year and a half after we got Buck from the Nets. BNM
D'Oh. That trade happened the year before I became a Blazers fan and because Drazen and Bowie were both Nets and I knew Bowie was traded for Buck, I assumed Petrovic was a package deal. Made an ass out of me, at least.
I followed the team and cheered for them to beat the 76ers back in' 77 (in my youth, I was a big fan of Walton, both college and NBA), but did not move to Portland until January, 1989. The first Blazers game I attended was the '89-'90 preseason home opener and I was back a couple weeks later for the regular season home opener when they retired Walton's number and honored the inaugural team from 1970. Counting preseason, regular season and playoffs, I attended 25 games that season. I was hooked. I didn't hurt that they made the finals that year. That was also the same year both Drazen and Buck joined the team - Buck in the off season trade for Sam Bowie, and Drazen as a rookie who had been drafted a couple years before. What a fun team that was to watch, and man the old MC was rocking back then. My ex-wife's company was a major corporate sponsor back then, and we got lots of free tickets. They were either top two rows (regular employee comp tickets) or 4th row (her boss' season tickets when he couldn't attend). Fun times... BNM
