The late ’90s and early 2000s were a hard time to be a Trail Blazers fan. While the team was borderline incredible and might even have won a championship—had it not been for those pesky LA Lakers—it was also an era when the team and Portland didn’t seem to like each other very much.
At best, fans in the Rose City tolerated the players—led by Damon Stoudamire, Bonzi Wells, and Rasheed Wallace—as they carried on a combative relationship with one another, spectators, and referees. A few had run-ins with police. Netflix’s Untold: Jail Blazers tells the story of this era, pulling its title from a nickname Willamette Week created in 1996.
Wallace, Wells, and Stoudamire all agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, and each of them come across as varying degrees of likable. Wells presents himself as a mellowed-out middle-aged guy—a far cry from the firebrand who once declared that “fans don’t matter to us.”
Wallace provides comic relief. The charming, talkative guy in the doc seems friendlier than the anti-social tinder box many Portlanders will remember, but he still seems like a few therapy sessions will probably do him good.
Of the three, Stoudamire’s story is the one that looks worst in retrospect, and not because of anything he did. Stoudamire recalls being pulled over by Lake Oswego police, officers searching his home without a warrant, and being dragged into court for possessing marijuana. His tale isn’t one of misbehavior, really. It’s about a successful Black man being harassed by suburban law enforcement.
Also of note is Shawn Kemp, a former all-star whose health and performance on the court declined while he was in Portland. Kemp sought help in 2001 for cocaine abuse, which cut short his time with Blazers. The documentary doesn’t go into it, but this was the beginning of a longer, dark period for Kemp, who went on to struggle with addiction and legal issues.
The real villain of Jail Blazers is Bob Whitsitt, the Blazers’ general manager from 1996-2003. Whitsitt was the man who was largely responsible for putting the team together, and in one tense segment, the interviewers confront Whitsitt about adding Ruben Patterson, a registered sex offender, to the team.
Patterson’s hiring alienated fans in the early 2000s, and during his stint as a Blazer, Patterson’s wife called 911 alleging domestic abuse. In the documentary, Whitsitt is unapologetic—insisting, even now, that no player in the NBA was better-equipped to stop Kobe Bryant. But anyone watching knows that it didn’t work. The Lakers beat the Blazers again and again.
Geoffrey Arnold, a sports writer for the Oregonian who’s a recurring talking head in Jail Blazers, notes, correctly, that “Damon, Bonzi, and Rasheed—they didn’t go to jail.” Those high-profile players were hotheads who acted like assholes, but didn’t actually end up doing time. Stoudamire did get in legal trouble, but in 2026 getting caught with weed seems downright quaint.
But, despite all that, there’s something a bit off about Untold:Jail Blazers.
Portland, according to the documentary, is a small, moist township somewhere in the hinterlands between Seattle and Los Angeles. At one point someone calls the city “a wet Austin, Texas.” Establishing shots show rivers, forests, clouds, and the Portland, Oregon sign, as if city skylines are in short supply around here.
Untold: Jail Blazers is more than a little snide about Portland itself, with the implication that it’s weird this humble hamlet even has an NBA team. Plenty of mid-sized cities (Indianapolis, Charlotte, Denver, Sacramento, etc.) have NBA teams. Plenty of NBA teams haven’t won even a single championship. But the film is committed to portraying Portland a certain way.
The documentary ends with a Blazers reunion at the Moda Center. Stoudamire and Wells arrive to applause, but Wallace declined to attend. It’s a triumphant moment and a happy ending of sorts for this particular generation of the team.
Untold: Jail Blazers is now streaming on Netflix
