If—like me—you prefer to read yuor news instead of watching it on television, and if you spend a lot of time on Blazer’s Edge, you hear almost as many cries of "Fake News!" about Blazers coverage as you do about coverage of any other subject.

The ingredients for that recipe are harvested from the geography of North America, the inauspicious nooks of Oregon history, and the construction of the Association, but people still whinge about it as if it can be changed by any means other than a dynasty or serious grassroots effort.

For your consideration: some facts

The Trail Blazers are the most geographically isolated team in the Association by a great margin.That by itself gives an enormous impetus to red-headed-stepchild status. That the Blazers play in the Frankenstein (i.e., Northwest) Division, the most dispersed in the league, helps matters not a bit either. Rivalries might be a thing, but strong away sections are not. Finally, it can’t help that at least half of the Blazers’ games tip off after 10pm on the East Coast.

Oregon sports culture gets no respect.不管多久木材军队滑稽勒ad to hot press, how many nationally-ranked players Oregon high school teams produce, how many times the Beavers contend in the CWS, or how many times everyone’s reminded that Tracktown U.S.A. is an Oregonian locale. In the money sports, at all levels, the Blazers are the only team making a national splash.

Oregon generally, and Portland especially, rep out as lily-white…And viewed in contrast to the African-American zeitgeist, that reputation is well-deserved. It goes almost without saying that as a franchise in a league that lives and dies by its success at marketing itself to African-American fans, the Blazers’ optics suffer. Dame struggles mightily to counter this perception, but there’s only so much one man—even a top-ten superstar—can do to row upstream against a flood.

As go African-American fans, so go Flyover Country fans, albeit for different reasons.Portlandiamight’ve been fantastic comedy, but it did Portland as a community no help at becoming more relatable to Americans who take pride in their capacity to slurp down milquetoast culture andlikeit.

The institutional culture that the Blazers display to fans of the game is out of step with the toxic competitiveness sold aggressively by other franchises in the NBA, and in other leagues.Blazers fans are proud that none of the players on their team sell an O.G. image—particularly after the lessons of the Jail Blazers era—and also proud that the team’s only overt displays of dubious sportsmanship are made but rarely by its enforcers. As a consequence nobody’s going out of their way to throw shade on the Blazers for the nature of their play, except maybe in Oklahoma lately. On the other hand nobody’s going out of their way to put the Blazers on a pedeestal either, because the team fights indefatigably to stick with team ball instead of encouraging transcendent performances from its stars. If somebody’s having a 40-plus-points night, something’s gone off plan… but sticking with the plan too often makes for boring television.

What can we do about all of this?

We’re better off doin’ than talkin’.Get in shape. Join a community league in any sport you care to play. Encourage your kids to participate in youth and interscholastic leagues, even if pop culture matters more to them than sports.(This writer will offer a heartfelt autobiographical note on this point as a postscript to this story.)工作together and separately to turn Portland into a town that makes up in participation what it often lacks in opportunities for observation.

Enthusiastically support efforts to bring more major league teams to town.There’s no fact of economics that automatically prevents Portland from attracting new franchises; rather, the resistance of local governments to supporting the related infrastructure demands is the biggest roadblock. While it’s irresponsible and unrealistic to cheerlead for multibillion-dollar venue financing legislation, few things speak more loudly in the name of support for the community than proof that the local sports culture is woefully underserved.

If you can, identify yourself as an ally and an excellent neighbor to members of the community raised in places and ethnic cultures different than your own.There’s nothing better Portlanders can do to improve the reputation of their town than to exemplify hospitality, to announce without reservation that all people and their positive cultural contributions are welcome.

…Or you can just keep whining. It’s your time; spend it however you like.

Postscript

The story behind my contributions to Blazers’s Edge starts with the example set by my late grandfather, who in his day was a two-sport athlete at the University of Portland and a baseball coach at Beaverton High School before he became an administrator. By happenstance he was not the one who introduced me to pro basketball, but his enthusiasm turned me into a Blazers fan. As much to the point—as part and parcel of his fan support for pro sports—he encouraged me to spend as much time active as reading or watching television, to value my physical fitness. I might be a consummate nerd to this day, but I’m glad that I was encouraged to leaven that image a bit.

I mention here on occasion that I suffer from an hereditary illness that posed a grave threat to my life, six years essentially to the day as I write this. That I’ve not merely withstood that threat but actually rehabilitated my health to a degree that can be described as absolutelygood, can be written down entirely to that example of high regard for physical fitness, and my decision as a boy to follow it—some days better than others, but in any case well enough to keep myself alive and healthy.

If my example as I relate it can inspire even one Blazer’s Edge reader to bring him- or herself back from the throes of sedentary misery, then it was worth the risk I take by discussing it.