NBA PLAYOFFS : The Building of the Blazers : Western Conference: Portland’s team came together through some smart trades and some interesting draft choices.

It is a team that has not so much emerged as converged.

It is a team that claims it doesn’t regret drafting another player ahead of Michael Jordan.

It is a team that tapped into a couple of college basketball powerhouses, Longwood College of Virginia and Wisconsin Stevens Point, in consecutive drafts for two starters.

Thin blood lines, these Portland Trail Blazers have. But they planned it this way--at least the winning part.

Buck Williams and Kevin Duckworth came in separate trades, both converted from failed draft choices. Jerome Kersey got so little attention from college recruiters while growing up in Clarksville, Va., that he jokes about attending Longwood, an all-women’s school as recently as five years earlier, because he liked the ratio of three women to every man. Terry Porter was the small forward/shooting guard at Stevens Point who was turned into a point guard. Clyde Drexler, exciting on the court, is a bore in this group, an original Trail Blazer draftee from a marquee school, Houston.

From this has come the team favored to win the NBA title.

“Patience,” explained Bucky Buckwalter, Portland’s vice president for basketball operations, a.k.a. the man who does the deals and the drafting. “Perseverance and having a philosophy of getting the good athlete whenever possible. Athleticism has become such a big part of the NBA. Also, keeping the players once we got them. We didn’t want a revolving door of talent.”

As the doorman, Buckwalter had the final call in 10 of the 12 current players being Trail Blazers, Drexler and Porter being the only ones reaching back to the days of Stu Inman. But the front office has played the transition game as well as the current on-court group. It’s just that the right people have been shown the door.

Remember Ronnie Murphy and Lester Fonville, their first two picks in the 1987 draft? Kevin Gamble came in the third round, was cut and is now in the Boston Celtics’ starting lineup. Walter Berry and Arvydas Sabonis? Meet the first-round class of ’86. Sam Bowie as the No. 2 pick overall behind Akeem Olajuwon in 1984 over Jordan? This is where Buckwalter, then a scout who agreed with the selection, swallows hard and says he’d do it again.

The Trail Blazers, like many others in the 1980s, gazed at the Lakers’ style of play with envy, and the fact that then-owner Larry Weinberg lived in Los Angeles didn’t help much. Portland, too, wanted a team with a fifth gear and tried to make it happen.

Jordan would have been a natural, but the Trail Blazers already had Drexler, so they went for Bowie, an agile 7-footer they figured could block shots and rebound to start the breaks. In truth, Bowie did have the talent to become a fine center--but he also had legs and feet made of peanut brittle.

After playing in 139 games during five injury-plagued seasons, Bowie was traded to New Jersey along with a No. 1 pick, which the Nets turned into Mookie Blaylock. All the Trail Blazers got was credibility as championship contenders in the form of Williams, a hard-hat inside player with a reputation as a much-needed stabilizing influence.

“He was critical,” said Buckwalter, who spent more than a year working on the trade for the Net forward. “Once we were able to acquire him, I felt we had the others to go around him. That was the last key piece to our starting five.”

But the front line of Kersey, Williams and Duckworth and the back court of Drexler and Porter only came together with another steal of a deal and a couple gambles, the non-Kevin variety, in the draft.

Portland had considered choosing Duckworth in 1986, even brought him in for a predraft visit. But Berry was from St. John’s, complete with the awards and the Division I experience, while Duckworth, obviously a future Trail Blazer, got his experience at Eastern Illinois. Lured partly by glitz, they went with Berry.

Berry had awards, all right, but he also had a problem working in practice and soon became a malcontent. When the Trail Blazers looked to deal him, they immediately approached the San Antonio Spurs about Duckworth. The deal took about 10 days to finish, about as long as it took Buckwalter to learn a lesson that the school on the diploma doesn’t make the player.

“That was a final entry in that thinking, yes,” he said the other day, able to laugh about it now.

Berry continued on his road to a nothing career, and Duckworth, with then-coach Mike Schuler emphasizing his role in the offense, became the league’s most improved player in 1987-88 and a two-time All-Star. Beyond that, Buckwalter became convinced that NBA talent is not limited to Division I.

They should have realized that by then, with Kersey having arrived in 1984 and Porter in ’85.

Kersey was a raw talent from a Division II school who was projected to go as late as the fourth round, before a good showing at a postseason showcase for relatively unknown players at Portsmouth, Va. But he was an athlete, which appealed to Portland.

“Any shot beyond four feet was a real adventure for him,” Buckwalter said. “And he had no feel for the court. . . . But we had decided to go for good athletes and make them into good basketball players. That was our thinking with Jerome.”

Porter was different. He showed talent in the 1984 Olympic trials, so much that the Trail Blazers expected him to go to Houston or Boston earlier in the first round, and they planned to select a local favorite from Oregon State at No. 24, A.C. Green. But when the Rockets and the Celtics passed on Porter, taking Steve Harris and Sam Vincent, respectively, and the Lakers grabbed Green one pick before, Portland was thrilled to get Porter.

At the same time, they realized the risk of trying to turn a forward into the prime ballhandler. Decision-making on passes, especially doing it on the run as the Trail Blazers wanted, is more often instinctual rather than teachable.

The final key addition came during the last off-season, the theft of Danny Ainge from Sacramento, which gave Portland a third guard, outside shooting and another clubhouse presence. The Kings had long been holding out for better offers, insisting that the Clippers give Ken Norman and what turned out to be the No. 13 pick last summer, and they ended up with far less. Ainge cost the Trail Blazers rarely used Byron Irvin, a first-round pick this year in what is regarded as a poor draft and a No. 2 choice in 1992 who would have practically no chance to make a squad as deep as Portland’s.

Even with a seven-man rotation set, as a result of the development of second-year backup forward Cliff Robinson, Buckwalter was still tinkering with a very successful team as late as January. In going for an insurance policy, he risked team chemistry, because how Walter Davis would play was not the question as much as how he would handle not playing.

Davis, after all, averaged 26.8 minutes in his 39 games at Denver this season, and it turned out he would get half that with the Trail Blazers. The 14-year veteran had already rejected a deal that would have sent him back to Phoenix, site of his greatest playing days but also his darkest moments as part of a drug scandal. When the Trail Blazers decided to proceed with a move as part of a three-way trade with Denver and New Jersey, it was only after positive replies from unofficial feelers that Davis could sit quietly if needed.

“I was coming from a system in Denver, where we had the worst record in the league, to the best record in the league,” he said this week. “Coach (Rick Adelman) didn’t promise me anything. He said I might play 20 minutes a game, I might play two. I told him I was just happy to be here.”

The Trail Blazers were happy to have him, if only as a defensive move. Not Davis’ defense, but the knowledge that getting another potential playoff weapon also kept him out of the hands of San Antonio and the Chicago Bulls, two possible title challengers who had also shown interest in dealing with the Nuggets.

Finally, the Blazers of today were left to grow together. It is a team that has matured well.

Building the Blazers

STARTERS

Player How Acquired Buck Williams Traded from New Jersey, 1989 Jerome Kersey Drafted from Longwood (Va.) College, 1984 Kevin Duckworth Traded from San Antonio, 1986 Clyde Drexler Drafted from Houston, 1983 Terry Porter Drafted from Wisconsin Stevens Point, 1985

RESERVES

Player How Acquired Alaa Abdelnaby Drafted from Duke, 1990 Danny Ainge Traded from Sacramento, 1990 Mark Bryant Drafted from Seton Hall, 1988 Wayne Cooper Signed as free agent, 1989 Walter Davis Traded from Denver, 1991 Cliff Robinson Drafted from Connecticut, 1989 Danny Young Signed as free agent, 1988