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2000-01 Portland Trail Blazers: Wallace runs rampant

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Roar Guru
23rd April, 2020
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Some Blazers fans I have spoken to honestly believe they got PTSD from this season.

They are scarred by the blow of unjustified crimes and juvenile behaviour. It seemed every second week the Blazers were in the news for a mishap that will not be repeated, until someone else on the team would outdo the scandal the next week. This included behaviour that ranged from acting like a fool to engaging in unforgivable criminal activities.

The season was kicked off by acquiring literally a 300-pound version of Shawn Kemp, sending away the frustrated Jermaine O’Neal and landing Dale Davis, an all star the previous season who had led the Pacers in rebounding seven years running.

So what happens when you have an ageing roster full of veterans eager to win their first championship? The answer is this case was rampant childish chaos.

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But the fingers were pointed at coach Mike Dunleavy. To start the season, players were openly frustrated with their playing time and the number of set plays on offence. So after another loss in Denver just three days before Christmas, the coach and players sat down and aired their differences.

Oddly enough it led to some positive development. Dunleavy agreed to loosen the reigns and the team won ten straight games. But as soon as the team was back on track, Dunleavy returned to his yelling and micromanaging proclivities. So the players continued to resent it.

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A good example of this lack of control within the team was Rasheed Wallace’s tech count.

Rasheed Wallace

(Photo by Icon Sportswire)

To this day, just thinking about this makes me smile. While unlikely, it is still possible that NBA players can break records like Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Possible, not probable.

But Wallace is the only athlete in maybe any sport that can sit back comfortably knowing nobody will ever take his title of most technical fouls in a season with 41. Firstly, because nobody is as crazy to get a technical foul every second game again. Seriously, that would have taken effort.

But secondly, thanks to a rule change in 2006, nobody can literally get 41 technicals due to automatic suspensions after a certain threshold of technicals. In Dunleavy’s offence, Wallace would have been a headache for any coach, as he was suspended twice for tantrums and ejected seven times. There’s only so much you can do.

And to top it of, Shawn Kemp was struggling off the court. Kemp – the overweight, over-shooting, foul-committing Sonic legend – was well past his glory days of the ’90s. And when Kemp was traded from an impressive 18-9-2 season in Cleveland, not even his worst critics expected him to be averaging 6-4-1 for Portland.

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What’s just as sad, however, is that Dunleavy had no other option but to rely on Kemp to play back-up for Arvydas Sabonis and Wallace. The Blazers – who already had enough controversy to last a century, who had already fallen from the first seed to the sixth, and who at the time had lost ten out of their last 15 matches – were heading into the playoffs incapacitated.

After a Bonzi Wells torn ligament, the Blazers were swept in three games by none other than the Los Angeles Lakers. If only Bonzi Wells was playing – he is after all the official Kobe stopper. Kidding. But not about the self-appointed nickname…

After Rasheed Wallace threw a towel into Sabonis’ face during a road loss to the Lakers, Wallace charged at Dunleavy in the locker room and had to be restrained by teammates. If that tale of the Jail Blazers to end the 2001 season was not enough, they were about to seriously up the ante with controversies and police charges.

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