It should be said that the Merc's (Sarah) Mirk was on this two months ago, and she also makes the salient point that the Blazers are not granted first dibs on the Rose Quarter, although I'm sure their submission will get plenty the look-see....
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Your reporter is not paid well, especially if one agrees nothing is not "well." There are, however, myriad minor perks and fringes that have come up now and again, that offered at least something out of the ordinary if not a keepsake thrill. I got to ask Nancy Pelosi a question at a press conference in Portland in 2008. I've drunk free beer at an environmental coalition party, and I was able to meet Dan Savage while working last year's Rebooting Democracy. The Attorney General even stops by to chat when he sees me typing downtown at lunch. And I have two highly official-looking Obama visit press passes, complete with lanyard, that did indeed get me into media-restricted areas and past long lines--and to meet Colin Meloy of the Decemberists while waiting for the Senator/President.
As noted, your mileage may vary as to the interest level or brush with greatness any of these opportunities represent. And I'm shamelessly name dropping, but in order to make a point: in four years Loaded Orygun has been to some interesting places, usually as a skeptical observer who invariably takes more than their fair share of strawberries from the cheese tray. But until last night, your reporter had never actually been schmoozed as, quote, "an opinion leader."
And yet there in Suite 33 of the Rose Garden, a half hour before the Blazers would squeak by the Denver Nuggets before a packed house sounding ready for the real games, were Larry Miller and J Isaac, President and VP of the team respectively. Also in attendance were several other "opinion leaders," all assuredly more legitimately so than I, including a friendly group representing the effort to get the USS Ranger carrier decommissioned on the Willamette downtown.
And sitting in a plush chair, drinking a Jones root beer, was your reporter. Supposed to be there, in fact. Invited, even. Came up via the special elevator and everything. The invitation was to hear one of the first outreach presentations of the crystallizing plans for redevelopment in the Rose Quarter, to be retro-trendily named Jumptown.
{A little on the presentation, some on the game, and a passel of photos below the jump...}
Trivia question to start you off: how many NBA arenas do NOT carry the name of a corporate sponsor? Answer: just four--the Palace at Auburn Hills, the New Orleans Arena, and the two "real" Gardens left...Rose, and of course Madison Square. There used to be a Boston Garden; now there is a TD Banknorth Garden, which I think is about as real as Macy's Yankee Stadium, so they don't qualify anymore despite clinging to the word. Yet, I wonder how many come up for renewal this recession year, and how many go back to being named after a town or an owner due to budget cuts.
Ahem. Trivialities aside, the Blazers snuck the brooms by the Knickerbockers in the Rose Garden tonight, completing the Garden Cup Sweep with a pretty hair-raising (and thus damned exciting) 109-108 win. No cookie for that lads; 50 wins means you have to do things like that to lesser teams--but it's nice to see it anyway and it's a good confirming sign of a team that is still working with properly screwed on heads, and enough talent to take out most teams most nights. Can't ask for a whole lot more than that. The rest is just the same bounce of the ball that makes each year's titlist a surprise at the ultimate.
From the media report by Blazer's Edge Ben, the mood in the clubhouse was actually quite somber, either through exhaustion or intensity and refusal to be satisfied with an effort that could still benefit from improvement. He says he would have predicted Nate would carry the same kind of mood postgame, but instead reported that coach was in a "take it and run" mood, accentuating the positive to great degree.
I have to say I don't disagree with Nate on this one; I think it's a much more valid win than say, New Orleans, and it was a damn sight better than the effort against OKC. That was putrid--Portland clearly took a personal day for that game, and they seemed to realize it afterwards and redouble their focus for the Knicks.
Instead of playing like ass for 2-3 quarters and mounting a major comeback to make it interesting at the end, against New York the Blazers played hard, plus basketball for those same 2-3 quarters and suffered through minimal (very) low spots. And after every such low, they held their poise as if they had felt in control the entire game.
They did what you hope they do every time they're close with a little time left--make almost every time down the floor, and get good defensive stops. Whereas against OKC those trips were turnovers or bad jumpers, and they gave up makes with poor coverage at the other end, against New York everything clicked, and suddenly they were the same team that could not miss to open the game.
I took lil' Joe down to the Rose Quarter this past weekend, to catch the 3rd running of the Vans Invitational, part of the X-Games styled "AST Dew Tour." Yes, by abbreviating the phrase that had "tour" as one of the words in the first year, they are now calling it the Action Sports Tour Dew Tour, but the folks who showed up in droves all weekend (more than 50,000 in total, up 7% from last year) don't seem to care about pernicious corporate branding techniques.
If you were able to go and avoid being pelted (literally!) with Slim Jims or confronted by dudes pouring "Baja Dew" from coolers on their backs, you must have hidden in the bathroom. And that's the more useful stuff! The number of plastic necklaces, temp tattoos, stickers and God knows what else are such that teenaged company reps simply stand on stages in the tour's festival courtyard, throwing them at scrambling attendees waiting to catch the next sparkly geegaw. It's kind of like Mardi Gras without having to show your tits (that I noticed).
But behind the fervent marketingpalooza, the festival events are fairly wholesome and exciting affairs, and the side booths--where kids can rock-climb, skate, or ride both BMX and motorized MX bikes (not to mention play PS3 games on big plasma screens)--are attractions as popular as the events themselves. Plus, if you were lucky you got to see the biggest sports star under 21 on the planet, and witnessed US history on bicycles.
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