Blazers’ Dream Season Crumbles

All over town, reminders of championship hopes and sobering reality mock the Portland Trail Blazers.

A huge poster featuring a smiling Shawn Kemp, with an arm around a grinning Arvydas Sabonis, has been stripped from the wall of a building overlooking Interstate 5.

The team’s preseason slogan--”One Team, One Dream”--isn’t heard as much on the airwaves anymore.

This was supposed to be Portland’s year, when the Blazers claimed the title they felt should have been theirs last season, before the Los Angeles Lakers came back from a 15-point, fourth-quarter deficit in Game 7 of the conference finals.

But age, injuries and infighting contributed to a wave of defeats over the last six weeks of the season, and now few people give the team a chance to win its first NBA crown since 1977.

“This season has been one big soap opera,” point guard Damon Stoudamire said.

The Blazers lost the final three games of the regular season, completing a slump in which they went 15-17 after the All-Star break. In their season finale against San Antonio, the Blazers lost even though the Spurs had all reserves on the floor for the final 9:40.

“It’s just embarrassing,” Stoudamire said. “This is just not where we wanted to be. I’m just disappointed the way things went this year, because it’s been such a roller coaster.”

The Spurs’ David Robinson said the Blazers seemed to be having fun on the court earlier in the season, but he’s noticed a dramatic mood shift.

“Now they seem to have no enjoyment for the game,” Robinson said. “You can’t just turn on the switch when you get to the playoffs. The teams that have the strong foundation will win in the playoffs. Portland will have to roll the dice and hope they get lucky.”

If Los Angeles beats them in the first round, the Blazers will go down as one of the most expensive failures in NBA history.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson often has derided the Blazers as the “best team money can buy.” With a payroll that ballooned to more than $88 million by the end of the season, Portland hasn’t produced much bang for billionaire owner Paul Allen’s bucks.

The Blazers’ crises have come steadily this season, picking up speed toward the end:

Veterans complained about playing time, and said coach Mike Dunleavy was too controlling of the offense; veterans Rod Strickland and Detlef Schrempf joined the team in the second half, crowding the roster further; Scottie Pippen and Sabonis missed significant time with injuries; and third-leading scorer Bonzi Wells was knocked out for the final six games and the playoffs with a torn ligament in his left knee.

The biggest blows came in the final two weeks, when Kemp left the team to enter drug rehab and Rasheed Wallace--who was ejected seven times and broke his NBA record by getting 41 technical fouls--blew up at Sabonis during a game against the Lakers last Sunday and threw a towel in his face.

“It’s been a tough ride,” reserve forward Dale Davis said. “Sometimes it’s been pretty stable, and at times it’s been unstable. Sometimes we’ve had things happen that we have no control over.”

The team made big changes following last year’s playoff meltdown. General manager Bob Whitsitt traded popular forward Brian Grant and brought in Kemp from the Cleveland Cavaliers, although the former All-Star was grossly out of shape. Jermaine O’Neal, a young, talented forward, was traded to Indiana for Davis.

Even before Wells’ injury, the Blazers had the oldest lineup in the league and a glut of veterans used to having starring roles. Dunleavy was left with the task of making it all work.

“The players we had on our team last year, if we were all back together again, they would have been very, very valid,” Dunleavy said of championship aspirations. “But we made some changes, and I think it just depends on how well you think the changes worked. There’s going to be some question marks.”

The team announced that Kemp was entering rehab the same day Wells jammed his knee and was lost for the season. Nine days later, Wallace and Sabonis got into it, and Dunleavy suspended Wallace for the last game.