It's always a little special when the Lakers come to town. The fans have fun because they get to yell "Beat LA!" and on this night there was a classy halftime celebration of the the legendary 1977 championship Blazers with most of the living members of that team present, including big Bill Walton. The Blazers won too, beating the now woeful Lakers for the 11th straight time. It wasn't particularly pretty basketball, but we'll take it: Blazers 105-LA 98.
The Lakers were coming off an absolutely terrible game in which they suffered the largest margin of defeat in their team's history, a 49 point beatdown at the hands of the mediocre Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers played with some spunk here in Portland, but their confidence still seemed shaken. The Blazers should have put this one away easily, but they didn't. Lillard and McCollum had nice games, as did Mason Plumlee, but neither team showed much defense.
ESPN was in the house for a national broadcast and Bill Walton could be seen sporting a colorful hippie headband, chatting away with the commentators. Walton was in an interesting position as his son Luke, named after superstar Blazer teammate Maurice Lucas, is now the head coach of the Lakers. For the record, Walton said he was rooting for the Blazers over his son's team, no question. Walton has been doing this thing lately where he just keeps talking, spouting a freeform monologue no matter what gets asked of him. Eventually the folks at ESPN had to shut him up:
I've mentioned this before but the tough thing about seeing the Lakers play in Portland is the huge numbers of Lakers fans who show up to cheer on the away team. It's this giant gold and purple reminder that this city is made up of a lot of LA transplants who can't quite give up their glitzy roots. But Portland is a sanctuary city and we welcome everyone, so bring it on Lakers fans!
The halftime festivities were extra long on this night because they showed a film about the 1977 championship and everyone gave loud cheers for each of the old-time players as they sat mid-court. Towards the end of the presentation I slipped out to check out the fans in the hallways. Here's what I found.
Lakers fans! These two used to live in Riverside, but call Portland home now:
Blazers fans! Born and raised:
The specter of Kobe Bryant still looms large:
I was looking for someone who might have been in attendance for the '77 championship and approached this woman. Turned out she's from Mississippi and started rooting for the Blazers in 2005:
This dude on the right was the "hometown hero" of the night, a former member of the military who got recognized during a game break for his service. I wanted to ask him about his hat because to be honest it didn't match his hippie Bill Walton jersey/vest, but I figured I'd give it a pass. Resist!
Anyway, back to the game. For a while it looked like the Blazers might run away with it in the 3rd quarter. They built up a 13 point lead and LA looked sluggish. But, in what has been an unfortunate trend all season, the Blazers took their collective feet of the gas and let the opposing team back into the game. Lou Williams and Nick "Swaggy P" Young hit a string of three pointers and suddenly LA was ahead halfway through the fourth quarter.
Coach Stotts pulled his bench players off the floor and fortunately the starters managed to right the ship. CJ Mccollum looked particularly sweet, hitting some key shots to taking back the lead for good. Phew. It would have been a real bummer to blow an easy win game on 1977 celebration night.
After the game Bill Walton and classic Blazers play-by-play announcer Bill "The Schonz" Schonley took seats at center court for a charmingly awkward chat in front of a few hundred fans who stuck around. Schonley, who famously coined the term "Rip City" could barely get a word in as Walton went on a non-stop 20 minute rant about the amazing virtues of Oregon and basketball and Blazers fans and the entire Blazers organization.
The Blazers face a much stronger team in the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday at the Moda Center. A win against them would be meaningful, bringing about the third three game winning streak of the season, and maybe, just maybe, signaling an upward trend before the all-star break next month.
