Hey Guys! I Was Listening
Seems that Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells used the occasion of a recent interview on “Rip City Drive” to engage in a little hit-and-run action on my book, “Jail Blazers: How the Portland Trail Blazers Became the Bad Boys of Basketball.”
On Portland radio station Rip City Sports Radio 620, the afternoon radio show co-hosted by Chad Doing and Travis Demers, the former Jail Blazer co-captains took to the air for some revisionist history regarding their time with Portland’s NBA franchise.
The Bonzi and Sheed podcast logo.
(Wallace and Wells are teaming up to host a podcast called “Let’s Get Technical.” I’m here to tell you the show should be called “Let’s Get Technicals,” but that’s another matter.)
They were asked if there were any plans for a “docu-series” along the lines of the Chicago Bulls’ “The Last Dance.”
“It's going to come,” Wallace said. “We have to make sure we go through all the right procedures first, get permission from the NBA and the Blazers before we can document on how we feel.”
Later in the 25-minute radio spot, Wells added: “Our first step is to start this podcast and get the rhetoric going — getting a buzz going. Once we get that done, we can take the next step .... We have to make sure we get all the permission slips signed and everybody’s go-ahead so we won't get in any trouble releasing some footage or saying the wrong thing.”
Any comparison to the Bulls’ historic run and the Blazers’ achievements of that era is nonsensical, of course. Any interest — on a national level, at least — would come from the latter’s unprecedented misbehavior.
Wallace then segued into a denouncement of the reputation the team through the Jail Blazer era (roughly 1995-2005).
“There have been many books, and many specials about us being the, quote, unquote, Jail Blazers — how we did this, did that, we were bad for the city, thugs this, thugs that….” he began.
The reality is, there has only been one book. As for specials, there was supposed to be an ESPN 30 for 30 episode, but if it’s been released, I haven’t seen it.
Then Wallace addressed the players’ deportment.
“Truth be told, I don't think (the transgressions were) anything serious,” he said. “We had some run-ins with marijuana. That's about as serious as it gets. There was no guys beating on their kids or wives, lolling through the mall acting psycho, popping pills, hanging out downtown at the Lotus Club. We were just laid back. We had a couple of the spots we liked to hang out in.”
One of them was Exotica, the strip club where Zach Randolph spent a night while on bereavement leave as the Blazers beat Washington at the Rose Garden (Randolph departed in the wee hours without paying the tab). But I digress.
Yeah, the players of that era had their pot issues. Damon Stoudamire had three arrests in an 18-month period. Damon and Sheed had the famous I-5 incident in a yellow Hummer. I know possession is legal now in Oregon, but it wasn’t then, and it’s never a good idea to be smoking it in a car on the freeway.
But there was more than that — much more.
Two months before signing with the Blazers, Ruben Patterson was convicted of third-degree attempted rape by forcing his children’s nanny to perform oral sex on him. He was ordered to register as a sex offender and was suspended by the NBA for the first five games of the 2001-02 season. Later that season, he was arrested for felony domestic abuse charges against his wife. She later dropped the charges, but they divorced.
There was the practice facility incident between Patterson and Zach Randolph, where Randolph sucker-punched his teammate and gave him an orbital eye fracture. Ruben said even a year later that he wanted to “kill” Zach, but he couldn’t because they were teammates.
J.R. Rider had too many offenses to mention during his three years in a Blazer uniform. During the offseason before his trade to Portland, he had three arrests in less than two months. He was habitually late for practice, missed buses and planes, had several drug arrests, smoked pot on the team plane and was too often a miscreant to those he felt crossed him.
Gary Trent had two arrests for assault one season.
Then there was the on-court embarrassment provided by “Mr. T” himself. Wallace set a single-season record of 41 technical fouls in 2000-01, a mark that will never be challenged.
For more evidence, consult the “Jail Blazers” book.
Wallace said the fans’ reaction to the team at the time was “a 50-50 thing.”
“A lot of the people in Portland wanted us to be that Trail Blazers team that made it to the championship (series) a few years before (in 1990 and ’92),” he said. “They wanted us to be the clean-cut guys. It was a different era of basketball.
“We just wanted to go out and show what we could do. Half the fans loved us, half the fans hated us, but we just went out there to play ball.”
The Jail Blazers could have done worse than following the lead of the likes of Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Buck Williams and the rest of the early ‘90s group. “It was a different era of basketball” doesn’t excuse the shenanigans of the “Jail Blazers.” No other team had come even close to their rap sheet at the time. None will ever again.
Demers asked what Wallace and Wells had read about the “Jail Blazers.”
“Maybe read a chapter or two in the book that's supposed to be about us, but with no quotes from us,” Wallace said. “It's hard for me to understand that. I just sit back and laugh. Everybody wants to try to tell our story without us.”
Then Wells chimed in.
“What's that one guy's name -- Kerry Eggers?” He said. “I skimmed over that. I was like, man, how does this clown write this book without us? Totally third person, with him trying to put pieces together and speculating. How do books like that even sell? That's even more motivation for us to do the documentary or docu-series.”
Let me address those two issues.
1) Wells and Wallace had their opportunity to contribute to the book. I spoke with Bonzi via telephone from Indiana, where he is coaching a high school team. I could hear basketballs bouncing in the background. He was cordial enough, said he was busy now but to call him back the next day and we’d talk. I called him six times over the next two weeks with no response to my messages. I left a half-dozen messages on Wallace’s cell phone, too, with no response.
2) I wrote the book without current interviews with either Wallace or Wells, but I spoke with more than two-dozen Blazers of that era, with feedback from such as Trent, Randolph, Rod Strickland, Jermaine O'Neal, Derek Anderson, Brian Grant, Steve Kerr, Chris Dudley, Kenny Anderson, Dale Davis, Antonio Harvey, Walt Williams and Nick Van Exel. And I used much of what Wallace and Wells had to say about things at the time.
All four of Portland’s head coaches of and around the era — P.J. Carlesimo, Mike Dunleavy, Maurice Cheeks and Nate McMillan — helped tell the story along with a number of assistant coaches, broadcasters, front-office and basketball operations personnel of that era. There was inside perspective. The book was not “third person.”
All of the comments made during the “Rip City Drive” interview went unchallenged by the hosts. That’s a shame. It would have been nice, too, to hear them ask the ex-players if they had any regrets.
Was Wallace sorry for throwing a towel in the face of Arvydas Sabonis during a timeout in an important game against the Lakers? Does Sheed wish he could take back his post-game confrontation with referee Tim Donaghy on the Rose Garden loading dock, which resulted in a seven-game suspension by the NBA? All those T’s — the refs’ fault?
Does Wells regret throwing a piece of gum from his mouth into the stands, hitting a fan on the ear? Would he prefer to have not spit in Danny Ferry’s face or used a racial epithet against at least two white players from opposing teams?
Doing raved about the ex-players’ podcast and said he is glad they have an opportunity to “tell their side of the story.” Later on Twitter, he wrote the interview was “superb. Sheed and Bonzi crushed. Great to have them back in #ripcity.”
Source: Twitter account @ChadinRipCity
Sorry, I don’t share the sentiment.
