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Opinion
The 2002 season for the Blazers will have to go down as one of the most disarrayed seasons in NBA history.
If players in today’s game acted even similarly to the Jail Blazers of 2002, you would think it was click bait. But for those who were not alive 18 years ago, fans called it just another week in Trail Blazers headlines.
Coming off a season of trouble off and on the court, management felt some changes needed to happen to avoid another tumultuous season.
Maurice Cheeks, a legendary point guard for the 76ers, came in as head coach, replacing Mike Dunleavy, the coach of the year in 1999 who had taken the team to two Eastern Conference finals in 1999 and 2000 but lost both times to the eventual champions. This should have been called a voluntary sacrifice rather than a coaching promotion, as nobody had enough sway or experience to tame this crew of misfits.
Unfortunately, the only memorable moments for this squad came off the court. Moments like when Bonzi Wells and Erick Barkley, two players for Portland, were charged with trespassing after a nightclub incident.
But that’s only the off-season. Surely Portland’s public relations team had no more problems to face that would come close to that.
Bonzi Wells was a handful on and off the court. (Adam Pretty/Getty Images)
That’s when Ruben Patterson was charged with a crime that doesn’t bear repeating. These types of things, mixed with the poor behaviour of the previous two years, and it’s no wonder they were called the Jail Blazers.
In fact, Steve Kerr – a player for the team at the time – summed up perfectly how fans remember this season.
“What a great experience that was,” he said at the time.
“That was awesome. That might’ve been the most fun year I’ve had in the NBA, just to see the dysfunction. I have never seen it anywhere else.”
The Blazers lost only one less game from the year prior, thanks to a solid effort from Rasheed Wallace and Wells. But they were now heading into the playoffs against the NBA superheroes, the Los Angeles Lakers.
This made the Blazers the NBA supervillains. And in like every superhero universe, the good guys won. The Lakers swept Portland, now beating the Blazers for three consecutive years.
The team was full of really good players who had hit their prime and knew that they weren’t getting past a young Kobe Bryant at the Lakers, or a young Tim Duncan-led Spurs.
They lacked young talent to provide optimism, and a rookie Zach Randolph was never given the minutes he needed. And without the player mobility of today’s game when stars freely join other teams, the Blazers’ time had come and gone.
And what would follow would be the most controversial, villainous and downright law-breaking season ever recorded in the NBA.
The year 2003 would be a time of serious mayhem.
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