NBA PLAYOFFS : Trail Blazers Put Ramsay on the Spot

A mediocre season and an abrupt collapse in the NBA playoffs have left Jack Ramsay’s future as coach of the Portland Trail Blazers in doubt.

After his team’s season-ending loss to the Denver Nuggets Thursday night, Blazers’ owner Larry Weinberg wasn’t talking about Ramsay’s future, saying it was an inappropriate time to comment on the subject.

“I’m sure that people are going to criticize everybody,” he said. “I think the major change we’re going to make is to score more points than the other team.”

“This has been a strange season all around,” Weinberg added.

Ramsay, who has one year remaining on his contract, would say only that he hasn’t made up his mind whether he wants to come back next season. He added, however, that he always has fulfilled his coaching contracts.

At age 61, Ramsay has been with the Trail Blazers for 10 years. In 18 seasons as an NBA coach, he has 786 victories, best among active coaches and second on the all-time list.

His Bill Walton-led team won the league title in 1977, Ramsay’s first season with Portland. But although the Blazers made the playoffs eight of the next nine seasons, they have managed to win only two playoff series.

The Blazers were a model of inconsistency all season. They got off to a strong start, but faltered badly in the last half, especially when center Sam Bowie went down with a leg injury that ended his season in January.

Portland was the only team to beat the Celtics in Boston. But in February, the team lost 12 in a row, the longest losing streak in the NBA this season, and wound up at 40-42, the second losing campaign in Ramsay’s Trail Blazer tenure.

The players say they don’t know what to expect during the off-season, especially after the trade two years ago that sent three Blazers and two draft choices to Denver for Kiki Vandeweghe.

“Nobody’s talking about it,” forward-center Mychal Thompson said of Ramsay’s status. “Everybody’s worried about their own destiny because the history of this team is that you never know where you are going.”

Jim Paxson, once an NBA all-star and now a Portland reserve, said, “We do what we have to do on the floor. All the other decisions are made over at the Lloyd Building,” site of the Blazers’ headquarters.

Vandeweghe, whose contract expires at the end of the season, said he never criticizes his coaches. But he went out of his way to praise the job Denver’s Doug Moe did in the playoff series, which featured two Nugget victories in Portland.

“I think that Doug utilized his players very well,” Vandeweghe said. “You can see that by somebody like (Danny) Schayes and (Blair) Rasmussen coming in out of nowhere. When somebody’s hot, he’ll go to him.”

However, that is not Ramsay’s style. Ramsay’s substitution pattern varies only slightly from game to game.

“He stays with his pattern, no question,” Vandeweghe said.

Vandeweghe said that on many occasions, he found himself on the bench with the other main cogs of the Blazers’ offense--Thompson and Clyde Drexler--while he watched a Portland lead evaporate during crucial stretches of the fourth quarter.

“Before we get back in the game, they’re close and have the momentum,” he said.

“But I really don’t think it’s the fault of anybody particularly,” Vandeweghe said. “Any time a team loses, you always look to the coaches. But the coach isn’t out there playing.”