I think I dissected the Portland Trailblazers’ current problems, and the manner in which the franchise has gotten to the woeful place that it is today, way back in 1999. It’s inherent in my blue-print on destroying The World of Professional Sports. My little satire was botched by picking the wrong team for victory in the NFL… The Saint Louis Rams went on to win the next Superbowl. But, the NFL is structured under a Commie-Marxist model of revenue-sharing and the like, and the wieners of the league — The Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals — were coming off of decent seasons. The league is thinking of jettisoning some of their Commie-Marxist philosophy — with the player’s union demanding a move toward Laisez Faire Capitalism– a move most people believe would be a mistake, for Communism is what got the National Football League to the place it is today — the Premier Money-making Sports Venture in America. For the purpose of MLB, the wiser wise-guy pick would be any assortment of teams that refuse to try to win — The Detroit Tigers — as our Decades long Jinxes are falling away… the Chicago Cubs nearly got to the World Series, and if it weren’t for Steve Bartman would have had their crack against the New York Yankees. The National Hockey League, I might add, has succeeded in destroying itself without my input.

As for the Portland Trailblazers, and Enemy # One for Portland Trailblazer fans is Owner Paul Allen. He and his Company recently announced that the team is hemmoraging money, and they had the galls to ask the City of Portland and the State of Oregon for a bailout. But, I ask you to look at Paul Allen’s reign of Terror, and how the team itself has done. There are two periods of time under the ownership of Paul Allen where the Portland Trailblazers were “National Champion Contenders”. They lost to the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Chicago Bulls on one end. They lost to the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers — and it is this series that I will zero in on in a minute, as it was the franchise’s best chance, and it tells the story.

So, the Portland Trailblazers have a — what? 15 point lead? over the Los Angeles Lakers in that seventh and deciding game of the Western Conference Finals, mid-way through the fourth quarter. The Eastern Conference is considered an inferior conference, though to be fair it would be a couple of years before you could look at the two conferences and say that the entire Western Conference roster of playoff teams was better than any team in the East, and the peculiarities of the Portland Trailblazers would show that they just might be vulnerable to the Indiana Pacers (who weren’t too bad… they won a couple games in the Finals). Depending on whether you are a Portland Trailblazers fan or a Los Angeles Lakers fan, the Portland Trailblazers then either blow the game, or the Los Angeles Lakers stage a valliant come-back.

The next season, the Portland Trailblazers come in with the slogan: “One Team, One Dream.” It’s a far cry from this year’s “Ready or Not, Here We Come” — a slogan that, for me, is an admission that they’re not very good. In the recesses of my mind, I once imagined a sports’ team with the slogan, “Amassing A Destruction of Biblical Proportions Upon the Opposition.” The question of what you’re going to do if that team does not manage to “amass a destruction of biblical proportions upon the opposition” is simply that the team is going to look kind of stupid. As for the Portland Trailblazers… they spent the majority of the season in first, second, or third place in the standings — credibly able to assert that they were “one team” with “one dream” — the dream being “The Championship.” But they started to lose. To everyone. They were in fourth place in the standings. Fifth place in the standings. Sixth place in the standings. They finished up with a Seventh Seed. Somewhere along the lines — probably somewhere between when they were in sixth place and seventh place– the team’s marketing department and commercials dropped the slogan “One Team. One Dream.”

Paul Allen attempted to buy (as opposed to develop) a Championship — future be damned — following that model of mine from 1999 to do so. He nearly succeeded. But when you try to buy a championship, you find out that you are one The Portland Trailblazers were a collection of extremely talented players, and it was said that if you bench the entire starting line-up, you’d have another starting line-up coming off the bench. It was flexible in that way. The problem being — when the team hits a wall, as it did mid-way through the fourth corner of game seven of the Western Conference Finals — there was no super-super start (Read, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal) to take over the game. Never mind that… it was an extremely expensive collection of players. Imagine that they won the Championship. Good for them. In a couple years, you’re going to still have to slash payroll, get yourself under the Salary Cap, get yourself under whatever the heck the name of that other Cap is, and you’ll end up with a bad team that doesn’t attract very many fans to the stands… and, oh, by the way: Paul Allen sold the stadium, having… you know… bought a very expensive, money-losing, but winning team.

Here’s to you, Paul Allen. Everyone seems to suspect that Allen wants to dump the Trailblazers and purchase the Seattle Supersonics. He has gone from being seen as Mr. Moneybags, throwing “what it takes” into getting a High-Calibre team onto the Sourt, to being seen as a Disinterested Carpet-bagger from up north. I imagine if he does buy the Sonics (who have their issues, and whose owners I hear are doing the same stunts to the city of Seattle and state of Washington as the Blazers are doing here in Portland and Oregon), he can follow my Sports Business model again. So, Seattle Supersonics fans can look forward to a team that teeters on the edge of a Championship, either making it or not making it. And then they can look forward to a horrible team. Enjoy it, Sporting Fans. That is all I have to say.

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