Portland Wronged The Jail Blazers More Than The Jail Blazers Wronged Portland

Shit! The dog beat me on this! I would had a better leadin though; something like; Portland writer takes another look at "jailblazers" and calls Eggers' book bad. (in fact he might have called it "dogshit".

 

This is so, like, 20 years ago. Who gives a rip city at this point?

 

The Joey Crawford quote in the middle of the article basically says it all. Sheed was done dirty.

 

Eggers is releasing a book on it either now or very soon.

 

My first impression of this article isn't very high. I did just glance over it, and need to read it more in-depth later. He dismisses Kerry Eggers book, and I REALLY like what Kerry writes. He seems like a good dude, and his stories are of a positive type. Then, this guy goes on to use the term "fucked up", in his own words, in his own article. I can't think of many professional writers that would say that. Is Deadspin similar to a "Fanpost" on SBNation? Sure seems that way....

 

I love it! This article should be wrapped in C4 and rammed up the ass of Jaynes, Quick, Canzano, Eggers and all the rest of them!

 

Why make your stupid point in 600 words when you can do it in 5,000? Oh, right, because you are a terrible, and clearly jealous, writer who writes for free for Deadspin.

 

I loved that era.

Damon and Bonzi are still pretty tight i think, i saw DS give him a bit shoutout for maybe his bday the other day on IG

 

Excellent article. The vast majority of the coverage back then was pointless moralizing over not appreciating the manner of various players (rather than the legitimately bad people like Ruben Patterson, who wasn't one of the stars of the team). Very "I don't like this guy, so he's a bad person."

The (short) era with Sabonis, Pippen, Wallace, Smith, Wells, etc, was one of the best in franchise history.

 

Honestly always liked Sheed. I wrote an article about him for an online sports mag some years ago, called Sweet and Sour Sheed.

 

Not gonna read it but I loved that era and only got mad when Sheed hurt the team on the floor.

I never cared what they did off the court and still don't. I wouldn't let any player from any team we've ever had babysit my small child alone but so what? Has nothing to do with the product.

I don't care if actors are psycho either.

 

I value and appreciate your opinion on this, and I am going to roll with that. I was going to take the time to read this article. Instead, I am going to buy Kerry's book, and read that. Sounds like it will make a nice addition to our Blazer collection.

 

This writer is way too focused on the weed incidents. The worst Blazer transgression was the 93 Utah underage sex incident with Tracy Murray, but I guess that never gets lumped into the Jailblazer era. The fact they added Ruben Patterson after that incident really showed the front office didn't give a crap.

One that gets left off all the time (maybe it's in Egger's book) is Gary Trent beating up one of his friends for setting off his house alarm. I think that deserves an honorable mention.

 

I still love 'Sheed:

Rasheed was not dumb, of course. Rasheed was brilliant, “one of the smartest players I ever refed,” Joey Crawford tells Eggers. It says something that in Wallace’s entire career-long battle with the refs, the only guy to push Rasheed quite this far was an actively corrupt referee who admitted to skewing results for his own financial gain.

“You’re not going to believe this. He was one of my all time favorite players,” Crawford tells Eggers. “I wish Rasheed would have beat [Donaghy] up. It wasn’t the fact he disrespected my profession. I’m talking about Donaghy being what he was. It may not make sense to your readers, but it makes sense to all of us [referees]. What Donaghy did was against everything a ref ever stood for. I wish Rasheed would have beat the hell out of him.”​

 

Where is Whitsitt in all this? He's the guy who put the team together. Most damningly, he's the guy who acquired Ruben Patterson AFTER the rape.

 

The core of this article is an undeniable truth: a ultra-majority white city loves the Black players on their professional sports team when they are compliant, courteous, and almost "yess, massa" submissive to the whims of their white masters (team owners/admins, media, fans). However, when the money that was being thrown at these young black players from inner cities became so much that they didn't have to care about what people thought about them and the way they wanted to live their lives, suddenly the white people didn't like these black players any more. The weed, the petty crimes (for most... Patterson and a few others were admittedly pieces of shit that should have never donned a Blazer uniform or any other), all were just dog-whistles for being "Too Black", and people like JR Rider and Rasheed Wallace were honest enough to call them out on it, and that's why they became so reviled.

 

You will probably catch all kinds of hate for saying this, but you are absolutely right.