‘Ride or Die’: My Favorite Blazers Memory

在布拉泽的边缘，我们借此机会分享我们的Portland Trail Blazersfandom with our readers. You can read more about ithere。

Portland Trail Blazers broadcaster Mike Rice was fueling my rage.

Chandler Parsons had just scored a layup off a loose-ball scramble underneath the hoop. The Blazers trailed theHouston Rockets98-96在2014年度西部会议季后赛的第6场比赛中。剩下0.9秒，大多数Moda Center Crowd在他们的头顶上用手沉默。

在帕森斯的前瞻性桶中展开了什么，以及接下来的，完全封装为什么我抱着这支球队这么亲爱的。

Back at my family’s old home in Southeast Portland, my dad, mom, oldest brother and I were all watching the game. We were crammed into my mom’s room beside her bed.

In June of 2012, at age 50, a ruptured blood vessel in the brain and a stroke took away my mom’s independence. The incident forced her to give up her job as a special education teacher at Franklin High School, a position she held for 26 years. To this day, she can’t walk or eat and her hands are too weak to write with a pencil. So during this playoff matchup, making it down to the basement where we had watched games for years was an afterthought. She lived out of my brother’s old room on the main floor.

That is how we ended up watching the most pivotal Blazers game in over a decade on the tiniest TV in our house in a room that felt even tinier with all the medical equipment. It was a tight squeeze, but the stress of the back-and-forth game made it impossible to watch alone. In the third quarter we even switched from the national TV broadcast to the local broadcast team of Mike Barrett and Mike Rice because we felt more assured with their familiar voices.

Now after Parsons’ bucket, we listened to the feisty Rice voice our pain and frustration by attacking the refs in true “Wild Rice” fashion.

不可否认，我同意了裁判。我觉得当他留下28秒的反弹时，燃烧者点守卫达米安拉德没有建立自己的入场，我以为罗宾·洛佩兹的中心罗宾·洛佩兹（Ropin Lopez）的反弹尝试，让球宽阔为帕森斯。每次重播我看到了我的信仰有证据。但越过米饭抱怨我越来越抛弃我的情感逻辑。当燃烧者出来时，我的兄弟和我正在巩固长期广播公司的裁判。

As Blazers fans, we had a lot of pain to feel. Only a 15-year-old freshman at Cleveland High School in 2014, I was justconscious enough to remember the blemish of the mid-2000s Jail Blazers. Then I was fully conscious to stomach the anguish of watching a resurgent, young team crumble too soon due to the paper knees of Brandon Roy and Greg Oden.

And although I was not alive in the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s, I can feel the pain that has been inflicted on the franchise since its conception in 1970. Besides one magical season in 1977, the Blazers’ storied history is rampant with heartbreaks and what-ifs. When you grow up in Portland, the pain is passed down from generation to generation.

I can feel the pain of Bill Walton’s broken foot that derailed a dynasty. I can feel the regret of drafting Bowie over Jordan. I can feel the agony of watching a Clyde Drexler-led 90s squad fall short in the Finals twice. And I can feel the still-fresh wound of blowing a 15-point lead in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals to the湖人队。The freaking湖人队。

So as Parsons — someone who had been talking trash to the press all series (about gentle Frenchman Nic Batum, no less!) — scored that go-ahead basket with less than a second left, it felt like the universe had a vendetta against us yet again.

损失意味着在持有3-1系列铅之后，燃烧器将不得不回到休斯顿游戏7。14年的季后赛痛苦没有单一系列胜利 - 当时联盟的最长活跃的干旱 - 似乎所有人都要继续。这太麻烦了，所以回头看，米饭的醋和矿井似乎很合适。

Because on the flip side of all that pain, there’s a deep, transcendent love for this franchise.

这是我们的team. Ride or die. The inverse of so many lows are incredible highs when they come. There’s something magnetic about this city when the Blazers are on fire.

I remember the first time I felt the phenomenon of “Rip City.” It was a 2006 game against the Jazz, just at the start of the team’s major image rebuild and the “Rise With Us” era. Tickets were still cheap and my family went often, but for the first time in my Blazer-watching career, I witnessed a win at the Rose Garden. Fans streamed out of the arena, still cheering with Chalupa coupons in hand. A man sporting a fedora blared his saxophone on the concourse, while my brothers and I high-fived strangers.

My dad kept shouting out the window of our car, “BLAZER MANIA IS BACK!”

We are a fan base that prides itself on not needing the jumbotron to prompt our chants, on going bonkers for a free Chalupa giveaway in a blowout loss, on being the absolute best in the NBA. As CJ McCollum understood in his2019 Players’ Tribune article titledRip City, “it’s not just some rah-rah thing, like they can show up and get loud for games. That’s part of it, but it only scratches the surface.”

作为四大城市唯一的代表of U.S. major sports leagues, the Blazers represent an overwhelming source of pride. I tried to pinpoint what makes Blazers fandom different. I landed on how the team embraces and accentuates the identity of this city. Portland represents the small-market underdog, overlooked despite the city’s great beauty because it’s tucked away in the Pacific Northwest.

不仅如此,波特兰也奇怪,“Portlandia” has helped reinforce to the nation. The city reveres the arts and hipsters and microbreweries and cannabis. A professional sports franchise doesn’t necessarily fit that mold, yet the Blazers make it in. Undoubtedly, it’s “cool” to root for the Blazers. There’s no pastime that’s more “Portland.” They uniteeverybody，从直接的商人到纹身的溜冰者。溜冰者的西装外套帽可能会有一点复古。

So for these reasons, when I see the Portland skyline on a TNT broadcast, it’s meaningful to me in a way a fan from New York or Boston would never be able to understand.

所有这些历史 - 深痛和深爱 - 每次燃烧者乘坐球场时都存在。从来没有比0.9秒放在帕森斯上篮后的0.9秒。这一切都发生在眨眼之间。

Parsons falls asleep. Lillard sprints to Batum, clapping his hands. Batum inbounds the ball to Lillard. Lillard shoots a fadeaway, leaning three-pointer from the left wing. Swish.

绝对爆发。系列结束。

回到我妈妈的小房间里，我的情绪从失望的狂喜中转换，这么快，我的思绪几乎无法理解转变。我的声音仍有愤怒的痕迹。我的尖叫声“是的！是的！”听起来更像是确定的大喊大叫，一点点嘶哑，好像我正在跨越一代人驱使西装外套疼痛的恶魔。我脱掉凳子，当我在电视上抽我的拳头时，几乎摔倒在妈妈的床上。

但我永远不会忘记我在Pantemonium转向我的妈妈时所看到的：躺在她的床上，她的虚弱的胳膊在她头顶上升，挥舞着明显的力量，因为她尖叫着我们。我不知道她有身体或声音。也许当时她没有。这是那些让你实现运动能力的时刻之一。

Then Rice said something that made me smile.

“You can’t take it away from us, Callahan!”

在季后赛历史上最令人惊叹的镜头之一之一，米饭不能抵抗裁判员迈克卡拉班的射门。当我再次观看时，它让我笑到这一天。

近八年后，我已经看到了这么多次，我几乎麻木了，但如果我认为真的很难我可以重新记忍第一次看到它的感觉。

我很幸运能够在我生命中作为粉丝的许多伟大的运动时刻祝福。我在芯片的夜间凯利俄勒冈州鸭犯罪时长大。我是洛阳大学芝加哥的学生体育记者，当学校在2018年制造了灰姑娘到最后四个。我甚至站在更衣室里，而参与者和妹妹让·塞恩在精英八次胜利后吻了南部区域奖杯。然后我得看到Damian Lillard于2019年击中了另一个系列型蜂鸣器 - 距离西方会议决赛的途中。

但是对于情感的戏剧性变化，恶魔的驱魔，我的妈妈和迈克米饭，达米安拉德拉德的0.9秒暂停毫无疑问，我生命中最伟大的运动时刻。

At least until the Blazers win a championship.