CLYDE DREXLER: GREATEST TRAIL BLAZER IN PORTLAND HISTORY

If you’ve got one, keep it in a safe place. Mine made it out of the recycling a few times. Image via DG Studios

Proof of greatness? Wheaties says it all for Clyde Drexler.

The Glide is as close to the best that ever was that will ever wear a Blazer jersey. And it’s not even close.

The only thing missing on his teams was a Robin to his Batman. Put him on another team with a near equal and we’d be talking about a run of championships.

Everyone knows he got his ring with Houston at the end, just like everyone knows he played for a coach who didn’t like to play rookies at the beginning.

Jack Ramsay held a PhD and it wasn’t honorary. He’s a Hall of Fame coach who won a title in Portland as the Blazer coach, and a title in Philadelphia ten years earlier as the General Manager.

But he wasn’t the right coach for Drexler, and Portland wasn’t the right team.

Maybe it was the year he came out of college. Drafted #14 in the same class as Byron Scott at #4, Drexler turned out to be the best pick of them all. Larry Bird said he’d be an All-Star from the start if they played together.

And Larry Bird knows some basketball. Len Bias would have been Bird’s Drexler.

Coach Ramsay said Clyde didn’t know how to play basketball. Thanks, coach. That’s the shot in the arm you want to inject into another man’s legacy. A real kill shot.

Clyde wasn’t a Ramsay guy. He didn’t show up early, stay late, and hang around to talk shop. Clyde had a life, a real life. You might expect that from a finance major in college who worked in a bank. Pretty ‘street’ stuff, right?

Instead of the NBA lifestyle you hear about from players with drugs, guns, and babies from a line up of women, Clyde Drexler stayed in his lane. His personality wasn’t geared toward, “Look at me. Don’t you know who I am?”

He was the player you came to see, the one who did things you didn’t expect to see. And he did it over an extended time frame. Without a police record. That’s an NBA oddity.

If Bill Walton had stayed fit in Portland; if Sabonis had showed up fit when he was drafted in 1986? If, if, if? That’s what makes sports so universal.

If Clyde Drexler had more help in Portland, and a coach in the beginning who knew how to play him instead of school him, the 1977 Blazers would be the first of many NBA titles hanging from the Rose Garden.

There’s no ‘if’ in Drexler’s composure, game effort, or sportsmanship. He came to play and left to win a title, and did it with Paul Allen’s blessings.

If a future Blazer gets a Wheaties box, they’ll need more to make it to the BoomerPdx Hall of Fame.

They’ll need one of these:

Here’s Clyde in 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k-8lsQLbBs