Paradigm Shift

There is something going on in Portland’s premier basketball venue: The Rose Garden. It’s something that Blazer fans haven’t experienced in years and I don’t just mean the fact that Bill Walton is back, rolling through occasionally with the ESPN network: he’s far less productive on the microphone as he was on the court. The oft-maligned Trailblazers are doing the impossible. By the impossible, I don’t mean winning. By the impossible, I mean, they’re having fun while winning. They look like a team while winning. In the NBA, such a thought is usually oxymoronic with a stress on the third, fourth, and fifth syllables. We’re talking, after all, about professional basketball, the league where players question the necessity of practice more often then actually practice and a league where underachieving is just as valued as overachieving.

However, the youthful Blazers are heralding in a new age in professional basketball, or merely returning the sport to its rightful place. Currently riding a remarkable 11 game winning streak, Rip City finally has a reason to celebrate. But what is so remarkable about this streak and their 57% winning percentage is how the team is handling the success. While most of the team is young (Joel Przybilla at the robust age of 28 is the oldest rotation player), some of the teammates are veterans. Supposed draft busts Martell Webster, Channing Frye, and Travis Outlaw are finally coming into their own as players: neither of the three is over 24 years old. Looking at the bench, sprinkled with young talent, international and domestic, there is a sense that this team is forming a chemistry that many college powerhouses yearn to possess, let alone the me-first NBA.

Watching the Trailblazers beat their division rival, the Denver Nuggets, for their tenth consecutive win was telling. As they finished the game, the bench was jumping up and down and cheering uncontrollably as Martell Webster and rookie Josh McRoberts celebrated with Travis Outlaw and Brandon Roy. Coach Nate McMillan looked on approvingly from the sideline as confetti rained down from the ceiling onto the court. The crowd was going wild and the Portland color-commentators said one key sentence: “It looks like these guys are having fun.”

This success is celebrated, even encouraged, and the Blazers, if anything have proven that the culture of mediocrity and spoiled-rotten superstars might be on its way out. Watching Dwayne Wade try to break the foul shooting record or Vince Carter pout his way to 25 points no longer has the appeal that a team playing in-sync now holds for basketball fans. Survivors of the Dark Ages, an epoch which climaxed with the Bronze medal debacle in Athens have had basketball fans scratching their heads whether or not to abandon the NBA entirely.

Now, however, there are teams again. The San Antonio Spurs have consistently been a well-oiled machine during the Popovich-era and the Pistons are one of the most boring, yet efficient rosters in all of basketball. However, youthful upstarts like the Portland Trailblazers or the New Orleans Hornets are making the team concept attractive because fans are catching the correlation between team play, positive chemistry, and results. However, more than results, fans and spectators are able to find a sense of joy in the game again. Even while disgruntled New York and New Jersey fans are grumbling on the sidelines, they’re demanding greater team chemistry instead of another superstar. They’ve had Franchise, Starbury, McCurry, and Z-Bo: they’re ready to become the Knicks again.

This me-first concept was a radical shift in sports when it first appeared in the form of Nike advertising in the mid-Eighties. However, from the trenches of the shoe wars and recruiting battles, has emerged a team concept that is impossible to deny and catching on from the bottom up. Once the NBA completes its transition from a league of players into a league of teams, the results can be nothing but positive. After all, nobody wanted to see LeBron try to beat the Spurs himself last summer; it’s just not good basketball. It is to be determined whether or not the Blazers and the Hornets are able to sustain the fire that they’ve kindled in their respective locker rooms. However, the mere existence of a team concept in a league of superstar millionaires is a step in the right direction. The NBA cannot return its former glory without such a change.