Trail by Fire

Ninety minutes before game time, the Portland Trail Blazers’ Rasheed Wallace sits in the dressing room, with a hairnet over his headphones and braids.

No, Blazermania isn’t what it used to be.

Not that they haven’t known cutting-edge fashion. There was Bill Walton’s headband over shoulder-length hair and Cliff Robinson, who went from a black headband on his clean-shaven head to a red one at halftime. Now it’s Wallace, heir to the Trail Blazers’ mixed message of a tradition in style and basketball.

Differences notwithstanding, there’s an unbroken line from the redhead to Rasheed. Since Walton led the Trail Blazers into the postseason for the first time in 1977--and a title the same spring--they have never failed to make the playoffs, the NBA’s longest streak.

Not that it has always been easy, or fun.

The ’77 champions, a model of on-court efficiency, blew up at the height of their powers, a victim of Walton’s increasing desperation about his health and medical care. They went back to the finals in ’90 and ‘92, led by Clyde Drexler, a fine athlete with a faint idea of where his range ended and the stands began. They continue to pursue their destiny in the postseason with a talented young team, although one that daily adds new dimension to the word immature.

Drexler’s Trail Blazers duked it out with the Lakers, who sneered at them privately, confident they could slow the game down and switch them off, which was what the old Showtime gang did in a last hurrah to the winningest-ever Trail Blazer team in the ’91 West finals, under a bright, young coach, Mike Dunleavy.

Now Dunleavy is in Portland, where the situation, mentally at least, hasn’t improved in seven years.

Try this horror show, all of it crammed into 10 weeks after the All-Star game:

Isaiah Rider leaves during a game against the Lakers, waving from the bench to his girlfriend in the stands to come with him. . . . Carlos Rogers, shortly before he is to come off the injured list, hurts his neck in what the club calls “horseplay” with Jermaine O’Neal and is lost for good. . . . Rider and Dunleavy yell at each other in a timeout huddle in Orlando. . . . Rider shows up late for a practice a few days later and is suspended for his seventh game (two by the Trail Blazers, five by the league, $359,000 worth). . . . Wallace is ejected and Rider called for a flagrant foul on Denver’s Eric Washington, who has outscored him, 17-2, after which Rider tells Dunleavy, “Get me out of here,” as they almost lose at home to the Nuggets. . . . Dunleavy, asked about his players’ emotionalism afterward, replies: “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t have just majored in psychology, I’d have a Ph.D by now and written five to 10 books.” . . . Wallace flies home for the funeral of his grandfather, missing four games, neglecting to tell the team when he’s coming back. . . . They’re blown out in Denver, after which Dunleavy notes: “A lot of guys in that other locker room are playing with a lot of heart. If you have any kind of skill, give me heart every time over guys not playing hard.” . . . They proceed to lose again to the Nuggets, who have only three wins all season over winning teams, two over Portland.

On the bright side, newly acquired Damon Stoudamire led them on a late 9-3 run up to 46 victories, in which Wallace averaged 20 points and Rider stayed for the end of all the games except one in which he was ejected.

And Dunleavy says he isn’t discouraged a bit.

“This is a high-maintenance team because of the maturity,” he says. “They make bad decisions at times that given the right information or opportunity, they probably wouldn’t make again. It’s continually a process where you’ve got to talk, work with guys.”

The operative word is continually. Last spring they finished 20-5 under P.J. Carlesimo, including a dramatic, season-ending victory over the Lakers that gave them a 3-1 series victory over their first-round foe . . . after which the Lakers dispatched them in four.

A year later, if not necessarily wiser, it’s the Trail Blazers and Lakers again.

“I think they have the same shot we had last year,” said Kenny Anderson, the point guard who was sent away in the deal for Stoudamire.

“Not to knock them or anything, but they’ll do the same thing--go in the first round. What’s the missing ingredient? I think it’s the urgency. There is none with that team, no seriousness.”

Even young teams get serious for the playoffs. If what doesn’t kill you really makes you stronger, or if maturity can arrive overnight, the way they say it does on SportsCenter, the Lakers had better watch themselves.

A Laker Shall Lead Them?

Dunleavy knows what it’s like when things don’t start the way everyone hoped, when you lose another tough one and your new world looks as if it’s falling in on you.

“I’ll never forget it,” he says. “. . . Basically what I did, I said, ‘Look fellows, we lost a one-point game to a team that’s probably a pretty good team. And we’ve had a lot of close losses. Right now we’re 2-5 and the whole world out there is looking to shake us up.

“ ‘They’re out there saying negative things, looking for negative comments, they’re looking to really just splinter us from within. It’s important that we stick together as a team. I’m going to give it to you straight--here I am, I’m a first-year coach. I still have confidence in what we’re doing. But it still comes down to, it’s got to translate from me to you. . . . If any of you guys are of a mind, if you’re weak and they come to you and it comes to where you’ve got to defend yourself, the easiest thing to say is, hey, it’s the coach.

“ ‘And, bottom line is, if you want, you probably could get me fired at some point here, rather quickly. If you don’t play for me, that’s the way this world is. But you should only do that if you think that I don’t work my butt off, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I’ve haven’t done the things so far to win your confidence and your trust. And if that is the case, all we got to do is everybody stick together’

“It was big. Their heads were hung. . . . Magic was even a little bit down . . . but ultimately, they said the right things, they did the right things.”

Right, this wasn’t the Trail Blazers. This was Magic Johnson and the Lakers, whom Dunleavy inherited from Pat Riley in 1990.

That was the easy gig. Compared to the young Trail Blazers, the battle-tested Lakers were a dream.

Dunleavy’s first Laker team reached the finals, upending the Trail Blazers, who had won a league-high and franchise-record 63 games. A year later, Johnson retired abruptly, but Dunleavy got the Lakers back into the playoffs, establishing himself as a comer, whereupon the Milwaukee Bucks stole him with an eight-year, $12-million offer.

Meanwhile, back in Portland. . . .

The Trail Blazers had their own last hurrah, lost to the Bulls in the ’92 finals, and began an inevitable decline. Coach Rick Adelman was fired. Owner Paul Allen personally hired his replacement, Carlesimo, formerly of Seton Hall. Then Allen hired a general manager Bob Whitsitt, formerly of Seattle.

Carlesimo hadn’t been Whitsitt’s choice, nor would he have been, since the general manager believed you need a pro coach to coach pros. College coaches tend to yell at players, and Carlesimo was pure NCAA. He turned the annual declines into annual improvements (with the help of just-arrived Arvydas Sabonis), but his tenure was marked by turmoil and terminated after three seasons.

So Whitsitt finally got to hire his pro coach, the softer-spoken Dunleavy.

Not that any problems went away. Dunleavy started with an I- haven’t-seen-that-stuff approach, until they showed him.

“There’s a lot of work here, from the standpoint of teaching what it really takes to be a professional, in some cases, what it takes in order to win at certain levels,” Dunleavy says now.

“We don’t have guys who’ve experienced that. Nobody has been far into the playoffs, so it’s a work in progress. And I think that because of our youth, there’s a maturity that will come with time, that will be positive as long as we keep players and keep people together.

“And I think the addition of Damon Stoudamire could be a big plus for our team because I do think he has leadership qualities. He’s got that toughness and that worth ethic.”

That’s a lot to put on a 24-year-old, but Stoudamire, a feisty tyke from the Portland playgrounds has a lot to offer. The Trail Blazers need it all.

A Mouse Shall Lead Them?

It isn’t as if they set out to assemble the second coming of the James Gang.

With Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams and Danny Ainge moving on, the Trail Blazers turned to Whitsitt, who worked a minor miracle, rebuilding the SuperSonics on the fly--and now revitalized the Trail Blazers without attending any lotteries, acquiring Wallace, Anderson, Rider and Brian Grant. Even Laker officials worried about Trader Bob, working with Allen’s billions.

But Whitsitt’s moves weren’t without risk. Many of his new players had problem-child reputations, and if most turned out to be OK most of the time, there was still the incorrigible Rider. With help from a few others, notably Gary Trent, they embarked on a series of minor scrapes with decorum and, sometimes, the law, which won them a new nickname in the town that had always adored them: Jail Blazers.

Nor did Trail Blazer fans like it that Whitsitt never moved, staying in Seattle, ultimately becoming general manager of Allen’s NFL Seahawks too. There were charges that running this team from afar led to organizational insensitivity.

The team that sold out for 18 seasons in a row in the tiny Memorial Coliseum and showed games on closed-circuit TV in a downtown theater saw attendance melt away in the new 21,538-seat Rose Garden, persuading Allen to propose taking 2,000 seats out. There was grumbling when the beloved radio announcer, Bill Schonley, was scheduled for retirement, reportedly against his wishes. In Portland, “Schonz,” who recently did his 2,500th consecutive broadcast, was like Chick Hearn and Vin Scully rolled into one.

When a promising start turned into a 6-9 January, with a few more incidents, suspensions, et al., the call went out for another savior . . . who turned out to be this 5-10 urchin with a Mighty Mouse tattoo.

It’s a lot to hope that Stoudamire can chill out the brooding Rider, calm the emotional Wallace and grow this roster up, but he has already helped. Insiders say Stoudamire’s mere arrival quelled a rising tide of resentment, not only among fans but sponsors, who were ready to forego future commitments on millions of dollars’ worth of support.

Stoudamire was not only local, he was perfect: hard-working, passionate and caring. So everyone took a step back and crossed their fingers . . . again.

“I don’t think it’s hard, you know,” says Stoudamire, who was traded from Toronto to Portland along with Walt Williams and Rogers for Anderson, Trent, Alvin Williams and two draft picks. “I think it’s a challenge for me because all of the pressure they got in bringing me here. That’s automatically supposed to boost this team up, so I think there’s pressure with that.

“But I look forward to that. I got a good, solid group of teammates behind me. Like I said, when we’re healthy, when we’re playing the way we know we can play, we think we can play with anybody. . . .

“For me, it offered the best package of any team out there, that I could have tried to get to. If you look at the team, our nucleus is all probably under 27. Without Sabas [Sabonis], we got probably one of the youngest front lines in the NBA. Myself, I’m only in my third year, Rasheed’s in his third year, Brian Grant’s in his fourth year, J.R. in his fifth year. When you look at that, that’s a pretty good lineup to throw out at anyone. . . .

“I’m having the most fun I’ve had in the NBA right now. I’m going into games, knowing we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know it’s going to be a close game. I’ve been on the end of 40-point blowouts, 30-point blowouts, but I’ve never been in a game until I got here when I got to go out there, throw a couple passes, go sit down and watch. That’s fun for me.”

Stoudamire, a free agent soon, says he expects to re-sign with the Trail Blazers, who are expected to give him $100 million or so of Allen’s money--they’re also paying $7 million of Anderson’s salary--a commitment, indeed, for a young player who has yet to shoot 43% as a pro.

With Stoudamire, however, comes hope, which is something they can use in Portland these days, now that Blazermania has misplaced its old innocence and doesn’t know where to find it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lakers vs. Blazers

The Lakers and Trail Blazers split their four regular-season games:

DEC. 8 at PORTLAND, L, 105-99

* Isaiah Rider scored 26 points and the Lakers shot only 41.3% and played sluggishly in loss, the Lakers’ second in two days. Nick Van Exel scored 24 points and had 12 assists.

FEB. 4 at FORUM, W, 122-115

* Eddie Jones, motivated by Rider’s “He can’t handle me” comment before the game, scored 28 points. The Lakers scored 38 fastbreak points. Van Exel scored 23 points with 11 assists and no turnovers.

FEBRUARY 10 at PORTLAND, L, 117-105

* Trailing by 31 points with 10:20 left in the game, the Laker lineup of Shaquille O’Neal, Mario Bennett, Kobe Bryant, Jon Barry and Derek Fisher went on a 19-0 run and eventually cut Portland’s lead to 108-103 with 2:28 remaining before tiring. Rider left the Trail Blazer bench and the arena with 7:17 remaining, and was suspended for one game by Coach Mike Dunleavy.

MARCH 11 at FORUM, W, 121-107

* Fisher, playing for an injured Van Exel, scored 19 points with 10 assists and no turnovers to spark the Lakers. O’Neal was the high scorer with 33 points.

(Best of five)

NBA PLAYOFFS

LAKERS VS. TRAIL BLAZERS

* Friday: at Lakers, 7:30

* Sunday: at Lakers, noon

* April 28: at Portland, 7:30

* April 30: at Portland, TBA-x

* May 2: at Lakers, TBA-x

x-if necessary