PORTLAND NBA DREAMS IN DUST BIN AFTER WC FINALS

Who loses to the World Champions in sport? Everyone.

The Portland Trail Blazers were taken out in four games. In three they had a good lead in the third quarter.

Fan comment runs from quitting to choking, leaving out the part where the Warriors made them quit and choked them out.

One fan keeps a light lit for Hero Ball, because it’ll take a hero to push one of the greatest teams in NBA history out the door.

I’ll keep the light on because there is a hero out there waiting for the call to show up for a Portland NBA experience.

The new guys showed some heroic moments. Curry, Kantor, and Hood flashed some greatness before our eyes, then showed why they were available in trades.

Those are players who will flourish even more in the right environment. Portland showed they can grow in the Rose Garden where they played themselves into a better version of their NBA selves.

Am I wrong? As a sports history fan I pull references from the past to prove points. Take Tom Brady for example. Would he be considered the greatest of all time, the GOAT, if he’d been better in college and had a higher draft number?

What if he had been drafted in the top three like Oregon’s Joey Harrington so many years ago? It feels like yesterday when the Detroit Lions pulled him out of college and dropped him in their outhoused organization.

With Coach Mooch and GM Millen milking the Ford family and ignoring the reasons why the team sucked so bad it broke superstar hearts like Megatron and Barry Sanders, forcing them to hang it up too soon, their #3 drafted prize quarterback was crushed from the start.

Detroit Motor City left him hanging out to dry, and he wasn’t even wet.

The same thing seems to be the future of Oregon Heisman winner Marcus Mariota on the Titans, as if they say, “here’s the ball, go do something with it.’

Looking back even further, the career of Jim Plunkett is an exception.

From Heisman, to #1 pick, to has been in short order, Plunkett the flop came off the bench and led his team to two Super Bowl wins. In the first he was the MVP. Not bad for a scrub the NFL was done with.

Guys who can play need the right place to flourish.

So what have the Blazers shown fans this season? We know they can exceed expectations. We know the leader isn’t a whiner who looks to blame others for a loss. We know Portland NBA will draw interest in free agents looking for the chance to shine.

The final four of pro basketball, no matter what the rest of the world plays, is the top of the top, the cream of the crop, along with being a grind that turns players into mush.

For all of the bitching and complaining about the Blazers losing their last game of the year, how would have it sounded if it happened in the first round against the transplanted Sonics? Or the second round against the former ABA team Denver Rockets/Nuggets?

They took the next step in what Philly calls The Process, except cheesesteak city ended their season a round earlier. Score for the Portland process?

Today Portland NBA fans can stop sniveling and smell the flowers. They can embrace their inner-Pansy and scream into the internet void what went wrong and how they would change things.

With attention spans being as short as they are, fans will fade from being butt-hurt now to being butt-hurt over the next thing, like not getting what they ordered in the fast food line.

No chalupa last night, no Mac hot pie, no reward coupon redeemable in a drive through on the way home, and it’s over for them.

It’s over for the rest of us, too, but not for the Portland NBA future. I’ve got a feeling the players and front office will combine on recruiting trips to find the right players to take the next step forward.

What is the name of that step? The Finals.

We saw Pippen show up for the West Finals, but no Clyde Drexler? Who is the greatest Blazer again, and why don’t we see him giving props to the team?

I think he’s waiting for the right moment, a series he can relate to. He’s been to two finals in Portland and lost, one with Houston and won, so we know what he’s waiting for.

All hands on deck, Clyde. Make a promise to hang with the team you took further than anyone since 1977 and you’ll feel the surge like they do.

You know what that’s like, Clyde? Asking for a friend.