Pooh Jeter returns: ‘I’m going to do what I can to help things’
Want to hear from somebody who is grateful to be able to live in the City of Roses?
Schonz calls it a career: ‘Good night, everybody!’
As would be expected, Bill Schonely did not have the most restful night of sleep on Sunday.
Pros vs. Joes No. 3: Neil Everett on his rookie season with Trail Blazers: ‘I’ve loved it’
Neil Everett was on the way out of his home in Mar Vista, Calif., for a late afternoon walk with the family dog.
With Neil Everett and Dewayne Hankins, talking Blazer broadcasting for 2021-22
Summing up the Blazer broadcasting scene for the upcoming season — and there are plenty of changes …
• Neil Everett sounded like a kid in a candy store when I caught up with him via phone while he was at his vacation cottage in Seaside.
“I just found a vintage Trail Blazers jacket at an antique store in town,” Everett told me. “I don’t know what year it’s from, but it has to be 30 to 40 years old and it looks like it’s never been worn. I’m so fired up.”
Everett paid $300 for the jacket.
On Kevin Calabro and Jordan Kent, the sports broadcasting scene in Portland, Ime Udoka, James Allen, the Cambia Portland Classic and much more …
Knocking it around on a potpourri of sports topics …
• Kevin Calabro’s return to the broadcasting booth with the Trail Blazers is not a done deal.
The Blazers, who let Jordan Kent go last week as their TV play-by-play announcer, have extended an offer in principle to Calabro, who served as their TV play-by-play man from 2016-20 but gave up his job during the COVID-19-interrupted 2020 campaign.
Pondering what’s happening with Damian Lillard, Ethan Thompson, Chris Duarte and Terry Porter …
Ruminations on roundball heading into the weekend …
• There is plenty of consternation in Rip City over the NBA’s “snub” of Damian Lillard as a starter in the upcoming All-Star Game. You fans who are up in arms: Sit down right now. You still have a chance to win the “Biofreeze Hoop With Dame” contest, where you can shoot it out with Lillard and win up to $100,000. (Personally, I’d rather have it out with Brooke Olzendam in ping pong.).
I’m no fan of no fans at Moda, and neither is Damian Lillard
Having left the newspaper business in April after 45 years, I’d not been to a Trail Blazer game at Moda Center until Sunday’s date with the New York Knicks.
Portland PR honchos Jim Taylor and Jake Gifford were good enough to credential me and allow me to experience first-hand what it’s like to be in an NBA arena without fans due to COVID-19.
Watch a replay of Trail Blazers Courtside
I’ll be a guest on Trail Blazers Courtside Monday night from 7:15-7:45 pm with Jordan Kent and Michael Holton on NBC Sports Northwest and simulcast on Rip City Radio 620.