Portland Is Cooked Again, but Not Well-Done

Still tasty after all these years....

1997, Trail Blazers on toast. Lakers snap them down like hors d’oeuvres in the first round, ousting them, 3-1.

1998, Trail Blazer appetizers again, on ice with cocktail sauce. Lakers devour them in the first round, 3-1.

2000, salad featuring Hearts of Blazer, pulled from their bodies in Game 7 of the West finals in which they lead the Lakers by 15 in the fourth quarter and lose.

2001, Trail Blazers served as tortillas with guacamole, flattened by Lakers in a 3-0 first-round walkover.

2002, Trail Blazer chops with mint jelly, as the fellows succumb like little lambs in Games 1 and 2.

You’d think these guys would have learned something by now, like, Couldn’t we try getting in someone else’s bracket? But no, it was the same overmatched, under-executing band who forgot about everything they had talked about for three days, like posting up Rasheed Wallace, Bonzi Wells and Ruben Patterson, and instead fired away from the perimeter, missing most of them, trailing by 21 and finally losing, 103-96.

Oh, and Patterson committed a flagrant foul against Shaquille O’Neal. And Dale Davis got two technicals 27 seconds apart in the third period, the second for kicking the ball--not that he was tired of playing Shaq or anything--was ejected and tore off his jersey as he stomped off to the dressing room.

This is also a Laker-Trail Blazer tradition. A year ago, Davis elbowed Robert Horry in the throat in Game 2 and was suspended for Game 3.

Unfortunately for the Blazers, they’re still the Blazers.

“Trying to compose myself,” Coach Maurice Cheeks said at the postgame news conference. “So I don’t get a technical....

“We lost a little composure. It was a little disappointing that we did it, because for the most part we’ve been pretty good all year long and in the first game.

“Had we not lost our composure ... because we made an incredible run to get back into the game....

“It’s just something that had to be addressed and it was addressed.”

A year ago, the Trail Blazers squabbled among themselves so badly, they may not have noticed the playoffs had started. They now have a new coach, Cheeks, whom they like ... which, of course, just gives them one less thing to complain about.

As was the case with Mike Dunleavy a year ago, Cheeks seems less like a basketball coach and more like a juggler ... on a log floating on the river ... surrounded by alligators.

The hits just keep happening--Ts, ejections, distractions. Damon Stoudamire, the Portland native who is one of their most personable and popular players, next week will go before a grand jury that will vote on whether to indict him on felony drug charges. The case is scheduled to be heard May 2--the day between Games 4 and 5 of this series, should they be needed.

Stoudamire went one for eight from the floor in Game 1, scoring four points, and all but admitted later his court case is getting to him.

“I have too many things going on inside my mind right now,” he said.

Said co-captain Scottie Pippen between games, in what didn’t seem a suggestion of perfect confidence:

“I hope our mind-set is fine. I don’t know what everybody is going through in their personal lives--I’m sure we all have our different issues--but we can’t bring them onto the basketball court.

“That’s all I can say. We have to try to focus on what we have to do in our job and whatever is going wrong, you can deal with after the season or after the game is over with.

“I’m talking about everybody in general. We can’t bring our personal problems on the court with us.”

Thursday, Stoudamire went one for seven from the floor, scoring two points, with or without his personal problems.

For the Lakers, this was like ordering out for pizza, or in this case pigeons.

The Lakers, you may remember, weren’t red-hot coming into the postseason, nor were they overwhelming in Game 1, but they looked better in Game 2 and now are feeling better about themselves.

The Blazers are checking availability at resorts in the Caribbean and South Pacific.

“I think L.A. right now with Shaq leaves you thinking night in, night out whether or not you’re really going to be able to contain him,” Pippen said before the game. “And when you are able to contain him, can you keep the other guys from having big, big games?

“I’m sure that a lot of teams had better ways of figuring us [the Michael Jordan-Pippen Bulls, who won six titles] than we’re able to figure out Shaq....

“I still feel good about our chances in the series. It’s a fun series. It’s one that, you know you’re playing against the best team out there right now. If you can just compete with them and get a game away from them....

“That’s what our goal is, to try to get a game. Then we can feel real good about ourselves going home with the series tied.”

Instead, they’re going home 0-2. You can’t win them all, or in the Blazers’ case in this rivalry recently, very many of them.