Team Dreams 2K19: Night of the Living Trail Blazers
One of us gobble gobble
It started off innocently enough: Carmelo Anthony was joining the Blazers. Melo announced it himself with an Instagram post, captioned: “Blessed that the Blazers picked me. Plus, I hear that Portland has a cool goth bar.”
As expected, the ecosystem of NBA Twitter, blogs, and podcasts reacted with the requisite combination of shock, “this league!”-style glee, and obnoxiously pedantic assessments of the on-court and salary cap impact of Melo joining the Blazers.
Melo and his new teammates were seen working out and socializing together all around Portland. Everything seemed to be going well. Except for the fact that the Blazers front office had remained conspicuously silent about the whole situation.
The team had not officially announced the Melo signing. In fact, the team had been completely silent ever since the day before Melo’s Instagram post. The team website had not been updated and all of its social media accounts had been silent. GM Neil Olshey was not answering any attempts to contact him. Several members of the local sports media went to the team’s headquarters and found it seemingly empty.
Melo called a press conference, appearing with the full Trail Blazers roster at a local gym. He said, “I understand that there is some skepticism about this but I assure you, I am a Blazer,” while his teammates nodded in assent. He continued, “And so are these guys,” at which point LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Chris Paul walked onstage from behind a curtain.
The whole scene descended into pandemonium — reporters shouting questions over each other, players trying and failing to hear them, and some guy on a scooter riding around in circles, blasting one of those reggaetón airhorns. Nobody was able to really get a clear answer from the new players as to why and how they were joining the team but, on the way out of the gym, LeBron was heard to say, “So we’re going to that goth club, right?”
The reaction from the NBA-viewing public was swift, angry, and incoherent. Twitter was apocalyptic, with some fans angry about the effect on competitive balance while others — Lakers fans, primarily — confused as to what it meant for their teams. But the vast majority of responses were sheer confusion. LeBron and his friends joining the Blazers was clearly a violation of the CBA, invalidating their existing contracts with the Lakers and Thunder to join a Blazers team whose roster was already full and whose payroll was already over the salary cap. Nobody seemed to be able to understand how this was possible.
Emergency podcasts were recorded, hundreds of articles were published, an uncountable number of Tweet threads were threaded. Nate Duncan posted a long, apoplectic rant that was so profane and disturbing that his Twitter account was briefly suspended. Danny Leroux simply disappeared. A friend of mine swears he encountered Leroux hitchhiking on highway 1 just outside of Pacifica, holding out his thumb and a cardboard sign that simply read, “SOUTH”.
But amidst this outpouring of anger and incredulity were two conspicuous phenomena: 1) there was no official reaction from the teams or the NBA itself. As had previously happened with the Blazers, all the Lakers, Thunder, and NBA employees in any position to answer questions about this situation seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth; 2) There was no condemnation from other players. The social media reaction from other NBA players was universal praise. In fact, some other players expressed a desire to join the team as well.
Steph Curry posted a video to his Instagram story where he threw a Warriors hat into the bay, put on a Blazers hat, and said, “I’m in.” Giannis released what appeared to be a handwritten press release where he enthusiastically announced his desire to become a Blazer. Kawhi revived his long-dormant Twitter account to change his avatar to the Blazers’ familiar pinwheel logo and post, “Board man goes to the goth club.”
It wasn’t just stars joining the Blazers, either. Within a day, the new Blazers included aging former stars (Vince Carter, Joakim Noah), role-playing rim runners (Khem Birch, Willie Cauley-Stein), bench shooters (Seth Curry, Malik Beasley), the most (Zion Williamson) and least (Jayson Tatum) exciting young forwards in the league, and Mike Scott (Mike Scott). By the end of the week, it seemed like nearly the entire NBA had left their teams to join Portland. The only exceptions were the defending champion Toronto Raptors.
Without any teams besides the Blazers and Raptors having enough players to field a team, the season was cancelled. Acting as Portland’s spokesperson, Melo announced that the Blazers wished to show respect for the Raptors and would play an exhibition game in Toronto, allowing the champs to have a ring and banner ceremony.
The exhibition was played at a sold-out Scotiabank Arena on Halloween. Despite the total absence of all team officials, the Raptors conducted a lovely ceremony before their raucous fans, raising a championship banner and handing out rings to all the players from the 2018–19 championship team.
The Blazers roster had swollen to include hundreds of players. It now included every active, non-Raptor in the NBA, dozens of NCAA players, a few long-retired players (Shaq, Kareem, Bimbo Coles, among others), most of the WNBA, at least a dozen unidentifiable individuals, and a golden retriever in a Blazers jersey (ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball). Their uniformed, active roster filled nearly a fifth of the lower bowl.
The Raptors did their best and kept it close throughout the first quarter thanks to Pascal Siakam’s multifaceted brilliance and a couple of truly balls-out plays by Kyle Lowry. But the Blazers staggering talent advantage proved too much. The first half closed with a demoralizing series of plays for the champs: a Kawhi strip leading to a fastbreak dunk for Giannis, an alley oop from LeBron to Zion, and a (Steph) Curry 50 footer at the buzzer.
In the second half, things got very strange. The Blazers took the court with seven players and when the Raptors tried to protest, the refs — who were now hearing Blazers hats — told them just to deal with it. After a couple of minutes of ugly, 7-on-5 ball, three more Blazers joined the game, bringing two extra balls with them. The champs tried to play through the chaos but soon there were over a hundred of Blazers dribbling, passing, and shooting dozens of balls, choking the Raptors off the court and ending the game prematurely. ESPN continued to broadcast this anarchy but the announcers had gone silent at halftime, explaining nothing.
The next day, regular people started joining the Blazers. Bernie Sanders became a Portland Trail Blazer. So did my mom. Adam Silver resurfaced, wearing a throwback Blazers uniform, riding a bike around Portland. All across across the country, people announced to their friends and family that they were joining the Portland Trail Blazers. Millions didn’t announce anything but simply donned Blazers uniforms and began dribbling basketballs everywhere they went. Most of the new Blazers did not move to Portland, but millions did, clogging the city’s streets and filling that goth bar. Others just roamed the American continent in packs or alone, wearing their Blazers uniforms, dribbling their basketballs, aimlessly making their way from town to town.
Being a member of the Portland Trail Blazers spread like a pandemic and, by Thanksgiving, nearly all Americans had joined. There was word of large groups of new Trail Blazers appearing around the globe. For the most part, it seemed benign. Life for most Americans continued apace, with the usual conflicts and challenges, the normal distribution of joy and loss. Except everybody wore Blazer uniforms and dribbled basketballs whenever possible.
As I type this, I am hiding in the cellar of a house in an undisclosed location, clinging to my “The City” Warriors t-shirt, pretending that I can retain an allegiance to anything other than the swarming Blazers. I suspect that I am one of the few remaining holdouts. I don’t imagine that I will manage to remain this way for much longer. Fandom is meaningless concept. I can hear the approaching sound of basketballs being dribbled. I am who I am in this moment and when I become something else, that is what I will be. Nothing more.
