Blazermania never dies, it turns out, although it did have to go into hiding for all those years while the Portland Trail Blazers tried to find it and kill it.
Talk about retro. Remember the birth of the adoring folk movement in 1977 when the team won its title and a headband-wearing Bill Walton pedaled his bike to the victory parade?
Remember someone stealing Walton's bike?
For years, the Lakers' most feared rival wasn't in San Antonio but Portland, before the Trail Blazers turned into the wild bunch known as the "Jail Blazers" and started terrorizing the town.
It's still early for Greg Oden, 20; Brandon Roy, 24; LaMarcus Aldridge, 23, and today's young Trail Blazers, but the place once known as Rip City pulses with the old fervor.
"[Coach] Nate McMillan and I talk about this all the time," General Manager Kevin Pritchard said. "We know we have a young team. We want to get better every single month and hopefully by April, we'll see where these young guys are."
In the best part, the young players aren't just good, they're nice, so fans can again watch the news without fear of heartbreak of embarrassment.
"It's huge what's going on up there with the Blazers," Lakers announcer and former Trail Blazer Mychal Thompson said. "You combine all that with the second deepest team in basketball behind the Lakers, they've got something special going on up there.
"For the next 10 years, it's going to be the Blazers and Lakers battling it out for the Western Conference."
Or maybe with reserves such as Channing Frye, Rudy Fernandez and Travis Outlaw -- and no salary-cap problems that mean someone has to go -- the Trail Blazers are the deepest team.
In any case, with the teams in tonight's opener on national TV and Oden facing the other great young center, Andrew Bynum, it's like Old Times, Day One.
--
Bad times, worse times
The fans really don't matter to us. They can boo us every day, but they're still going to ask for our autographs if they see us on the street. That's why they're fans and we're NBA players.
-- Portland's Bonzi Wells,
Sports Illustrated, 2001
If the perception was that an innocent town was set upon by ill-mannered basketball players, it was actually a team effort with a white-collar component.
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and cashed out to enjoy his billions, had arrived in 1988 as a dream owner, building the Rose Garden by himself, forgoing profits with a payroll that approached $100 million.
