Brian Wheeler ‘took over for a legend and became a legend himself’

Wheeler filling in with some pro wrestling color commentary with Don Coss (courtesy Rich Patterson)

Updated 11/16/2024 1:38 AM

A major figure in the history of the Trail Blazers has departed, but he left behind a career full of memories.

Brian Wheeler, who passed away Friday at the age of 62, will long be remembered for his contributions as a broadcaster, a friend and a unique member of the Portland community.

As play-by-play radio voice of the Blazers for 21 seasons (from 1998-2019), Wheeler called nearly 2,000 games and made a connection with the team’s fans that was deep and pure. He had a great voice and delivery, he entertained and he bled Blazer red.

Those who worked with “Wheels” admired his talents.

“As a broadcaster, he was one of the best to ever do it,” says Antonio Harvey, the former Blazer forward who worked for 12 years alongside Wheeler as radio analyst.

“If he had maintained his health, he could have been one of the all-time greats,” says Rich Patterson, the long-time Blazer Broadcasting producer who worked with Wheeler during his entire career with the Blazers.

“I’m biased, but when he was in his prime as a play-by-play guy, I felt like he was the best in the league,” says Jay Allen, a broadcaster who worked with Wheeler for 18 years in Portland.

“I listened to a lot of broadcasters through the years, and the one I ended up thinking had more talent than just about anybody was Brian,” says Mike Rice, who spent eight of his 26 years with the Blazers as Wheeler’s radio analyst.

Wheeler with broadcasters Mike Rice and Mike Barrett (courtesy Mike Barrett)

“The things you shoot for as a play-by-play broadcaster, radio especially — time, situation, score, flow of the game — he was incredible,” says Mike Barrett, the Blazers’ TV play-by-play voice from 2003-16.

Wheeler came to the Blazers in 1998 after broadcasting stints in Seattle and Sacramento for his first play-by-play job. He replaced Bill Schonely, who had been demoted to a lesser broadcasting role after calling play-by-play — mostly radio — for the first 28 years of the franchise. The fans were incensed at management’s treatment of the popular broadcaster, so Wheeler arrived to a somewhat hostile environment.

“But Wheels actually got a little lucky,” Patterson points out. “His first season was the lockout season. He didn’t start until January of ’99. He got about six months for fans to get to know him, which helped him a great deal to transition into the job. He did radio shows and spoke at some events and was able to meet people well before he called his first game.”

Gradually, Wheeler developed his own loyal legion of supporters, who appreciated his enthusiastic game calls and trademark catch phrases.

“Wheels took over for a legend and became a legend himself, which isn’t easy to do,” says Terry Stotts, the Blazers’ head coach for the last seven years Wheeler worked for the club.

“As much as people my age grew up with ‘Schonz,’ a whole another generation of Blazer fans will remember Wheels,” Patterson says. “He was their guy. I remember about two years into his run, I was walking my dog by a playground. I heard kids shooting baskets saying, ‘Boom Shakalaka!’ They were maybe 10 years old, the age I started listening to Schonz. I told Wheels, ‘You’ve broken through. They’re catching on to you.’ ”

Stotts, now an assistant coach with Golden State, took time to call me from Cleveland after the Warriors loss there Friday night. That’s how much he thought of Wheeler.

“He was an excellent broadcaster, an amazing play-by-play guy, and old-school announcer,” Stotts says. “He brought energy and enthusiasm. He brought a lot other than the game to his radio calls. He made people feel the energy of the building. I enjoyed our post-game interviews. He had a good sense of humor, and he and ‘Tone’ played off of each other.”

Many of Wheeler’s formative years were spent in Los Angeles, where he listened to, and idolized, the likes of Vin Scully and Chick Hearn. Along the way in his career, Wheeler developed his own style and traits that turned him into a complete broadcaster.

“He had such a good feel for how a game was going and a predictive type of situation,” says Barrett, now working as managing partner with the Portland Diamond Project. "He could feel a run for the other team coming. He would get frustrated during a lackluster stretch of play by the Blazers. He would take it up a beat when they were on a run. Listening, you want to feel the broadcast. Wheels made you do that.

“He was among the best in terms of capturing the mood of the building. He always paid attention to whether the fans were into the game. Some guys don’t have the awareness to read a building and the feel of the fan base. He always did. He was so good at that.”

Or as Allen puts it: “One of the true tests of a radio play-by-play announcer is the ability to paint the story for people listening on the air. He did it better than anybody.”

Wheeler took the time to do his preparation work.

“He worked hard at getting ready for every game,” says Rice, now 85, retired and living near Delray Beach, Fla. “For a guy who never played himself, he knew the game. He recognized who was talented and wasn’t. He could comment as a play-by-play guy on who was doing something right or wrong. Wheels got into it deep.

“He enjoyed sitting at practice with me and Barrett. The three of us would watch practice and discuss everything. That was a big part of his life — knowing what was going on with the Blazers. When he got on the air, he could bring that out to the fans — who was doing well and why they were doing well.”

When Rob Closs began a 10-year run as a TV analyst for Duck basketball on the Oregon Sports Network, he sought out Wheeler for guidance. He was only too happy to help.

“I would call him up and bounce ideas off him and learn about how he kept his game sheets for the Blazers and the opponents,” Closs says. “He was so good at helping me prep for games.”

Partisanship was part of Wheeler’s broadcasting realm. It came from the heart.

Allen describes it this way: “You could always tell how the Blazers were doing with the emotion and the tone of Wheels’ voice. He lived and died with that team. When they were struggling, he was struggling. When they were winning, you could hear the joy and happiness through the radio.”

For years, I sat in the row in front of Wheeler in the Moda Center press box. I would often hear a rumble behind me when things weren’t going well, or a bad call went against the Blazers.

“Any time the team was starting to get down, guys in the booth would start looking at each other like, ‘How long until we get a table slap?’ ” Harvey says.

During one game, I heard a boom. In a moment of fury, Wheeler had knocked the stats monitor from his perch, and it came crashing down to the floor behind me. I nearly met an early grave.

“Wheels and I, both of us were homers,” Rice says with a laugh. “He didn’t get talked to as much by the NBA as I did about criticizing officials. The thing about it, though; no matter how mad he got, his flow in calling a game never stopped.”

Man, could Wheeler talk.

“I never saw him at a loss for words — on or off the air,” Allen says. “There were times when I would call Wheels and would have to make sure I had 30 minutes free. It was going to be an extended visit. He could carry a conversation by himself for hours.”

Jay isn’t kidding. Brian and I had many phone calls where I could hardly get a word in edgewise. There were no periods in his sentences, only commas. He would have been great in a filibuster on a legislative floor.

“We had a running joke,” Harvey says. “It was, ‘If you look at caller ID and see it’s Wheels calling, either set aside 30 minutes or call him back later.’ That was just him. It was a part of his expression.”

“He would always ask good questions, though his questions were sometimes longer than my answers,” Stotts says with a laugh.

For several years, Wheeler was host of a radio talk show, produced by Allen. At first, it was called “Wheels after Work.” When he moved to a noon to 3 p.m. time slot, it became “Wheels at Work.” I was a guest many times. He was an excellent host. Like Stotts, I found it fun to be interviewed by Wheeler. He would ask off-beat questions, want to know my opinions on music and movies and other things besides sports. We would wind up laughing as the conversation went off on different tangents.

But his “Wheelhouse” was play-by-play, and he had fun with that, too. His broadcasts included plenty of shtick. “Boom Shakalaka” — which came from a line in “I Want to Take You Higher,” a 1969 song by Sly and the Family Stone — described a great play by the Blazers, usually a dunk. When Nicolas Batum played for the team, it became “Batum Shakalaka.”

Wheeler loved to poke fun at opposing coaches when things were going poorly for their team with alliterative triple-decker admonitions. “Gregg Popovich is discouraged, dejected and deflated,” he would say. Or something like: “Jerry Sloan is hammered, humbled and humiliated.”

“He had them alphabetized,” says Allen,    says. “He would go through the whole list over the course of a season. He also liked calling coaches by their given names to poke fun at them. Like with Doc Rivers, he’d say, ‘Glenn Rivers is so mad, he could bite through a rope.’ ”

If an opposing player was playing better than expected, Wheeler regarded it as a personal affront.

“And Bruce Bowen, who hasn’t hit a 3-pointer in a month, has hit two in this quarter,” he would say. “Or: “Johnson for 3 — What do you think?” in disgusted fashion. “He’d be an All-Star if he played against the Blazers every night.”

Barrett says there were a lot of things he took from Wheeler’s broadcasting style.

“Not so much catch phrases, but his pace of calling a game, his enthusiasm, his authenticity,” Barrett says. “He sometimes would be called a homer, but he didn’t care. That was his love for the team, for the fan base, for what we did. It was a beautiful passion.”

Wheeler loved calling the biggest moments. Three games loomed particularly large:

• Game 4 of the Blazers’ first-round playoff series with Dallas in 2011. A hobbled Brandon Roy, in his final season with Portland, scored 18 of his game-high 24 points in the fourth quarter, helping the Blazers overcome an 18-point deficit to win 84-82.

• Game 6 of their first-round playoff series with Houston in 2014. With .9 of a second on the clock, Damian Lillard took an in-bounds pass and bombed in a 3-pointer of a series-clinching 99-98 win.

Wheeler: “You gotta pinch me! I must be dreaming!” Harvey: “I’ll pinch you.”

Says Allen: “That was the signature call of Wheels’ career.”

Says Harvey: “Even today, listening to the broadcast of those two games send chills down my spine. He was great for a long time, but that was his best work. Those were the two that stand out to me. He was so good, all I had to do was play off the stuff he did.”

• Game 5 of their 2019 playoff series with Oklahoma City in 2019. Lillard nailed a long 3 at the buzzer of a series-clinching 118-115 win. Wheeler: “My eyes don’t deceive, so I have to believe.”

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Nearly everyone who worked with Wheeler with the Blazers liked him.

“He was one of the best human beings I have been around,” says Harvey, who runs a cannabis business in Portland and says he is soon to start a podcast series. “We all know he had his flaws, but he was the nicest, most giving, most caring person.”

Many co-workers became close friends. Many considered him part of their family. At different times through the years, Brian — who never married or had children — celebrated holidays with the Barretts, the Allens, the Closses and especially with his closest friend, Bobby Medina, and his wife LeeAnn.

“Brian was like family,” says Medina, the Blazers’ strength and conditioning coach from 1997-2013. “I loved him. I thought of him as a brother. He was in our wedding. He was part of everything we did. Family vacations. He spent holidays with us.”

The Medinas have four children.

“Every year, Brian was honorary judge in our kids’ Easter egg coloring contest,” says Bobby, now living near Provo, Utah, and coaching and teaching at a local high school. “Even when we moved away from Portland, we did it on FaceTime. He would make a five-minute contest into an hour-long deal.”

“Brian emceed our wedding reception,” says Allen, now working as director of development at Lynden (Wash.) Christian, a private school. “I loved him like a brother.”

“Wheels read some scripture at our wedding,” Barrett says. “He drove us in his BMW from the church to our reception. He was at the hospital for the birth of both of my kids. I have pictures of him holding them as infants.”

“He spent time with our family,” Patterson says. “He was great with my son, Sammie. He came to some of his birthday parties.”

Wheeler was adopted and an only child. He was not close to his adoptive father and spoke of an abusive relationship. Both adoptive parents died young. In 2012, when he turned 50, Wheeler sought out his birth mother and found her. He also found his birth father and learned he had a sister. They enjoyed a reunion in Illinois and kept in touch for at least a few years. It was a happy occurrence.

“He longed for that family thing,” Medina says. “That was a missing piece of his life.”

“He always wanted a family,” Barrett says. “He always wanted to find a wife. In a positive way, he envied those who had that. For some of us who were close to him, it was hard to see him not have that. I was pained for him in many ways because he didn’t have a family. It hurt me. I was happy to open our home to him and have him there for holidays.”

Wheeler very much enjoyed being around people. He loved doing things with friends.

“He liked being around groups of people at concerts and parties and dinners and movies — the more, the merrier,” Medina says. “He liked organizing things. He loved to be part of those things. He and I went to so many concerts and sporting events together, to Wrestlemania.”

Patterson says he got to know Wheeler “extremely well.”

Blazer broadcasting producer Rich Patterson with Wheeler (courtesy Rich Patterson)

“What Wheels and I had in common were a love for old-time TV, music and pro wrestling,” Patterson says. “Those were things we would do together. When Portland Wrestling came back in 2010, we would go to that. We hung out with Rowdy Roddy Piper. One night they brought Wheels in to do color with (TV announcer) Don Coss. Wheels got a kick out of that.

“For awhile, a group of us would get together and watch trilogies of movies. All the ‘Godfather’ series on consecutive weekends, or ‘Back to the Future.’ We had fun doing that.”

“The one thing we had in common, we were both fanatics for the original Batman TV series,” Barrett says. “Several times when DVDs were a thing, he bought me different episodes for Christmas. On the road, we would watch them. We would exchange movie quotes, cartoon quotes.”

“He loved going to a concert, to a show,” Allen says. “One year in Las Vegas Summer League, we were there for nine days and went to 10 shows. He was up for any kind of entertainment.”

Often, Wheeler would pick up the tab. When Paul McCartney did a concert at Moda Center, Wheeler bought four tickets so three friends could accompany him.

“One of the last times we got together for dinner, he insisted on buying our drinks, our food — it was all on him,” Patterson says. “He loved to do that kind of stuff.”

Closs and Wheeler attended several concerts together.

“Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger,” Closs says. “He would never let me pay for those tickets. He would buy dinner.”

When the Blazers were on the road and had a day off, Wheeler would look for a sporting event to attend. Rice would often accompany him.

“It was fun being with him,” Rice says. “If the opponent was playing the first of back-to-back games at home, we’d go see it. If we were in L.A. in the spring and the Dodgers were playing, he would arrange for tickets. He would get a big bowl of popcorn and a hot dog. To him, that was heaven.”

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From left, Brian Wheeler, Lamar Hurd, Brooke Olzendam, Jordan Kent, Kevin Calabro and Michael Holton of the Blazer Broadcasting team (courtesy Rich Patterson)

These should have been the salad years of Wheeler’s broadcasting career. Team play-by-play men often go into their 70s before retirement. Phoenix Suns broadcaster Al McCoy retired after the 2022-23 season at age 90.

“Brian was at the peak of his career, and then it was over,” Medina says.

Wheeler didn’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. He didn’t use drugs. He had one major vice.

“Food was his Kryptonite,” Barrett says.

“There was nothing bad you could ever say about Wheels,” Harvey says, “except the bad stuff.”

“When you think of an addiction, you think of alcohol, drugs or sex,” Medina says. “Food was Brian’s addiction. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t help himself with that. It shortened his career and, unfortunately, it ended up taking his life.”

Wheeler, who stood about 5-8, had a weight problem from a young age. It yo-yoed through the years, but it got out of hand near the end. “At one point, he hit the scales at more than 450 pounds,” one reporter wrote in a piece in 2019.

The Blazers did what they could. At least once, they sent him to the Duke University Lifestyle and Weight Management Center. They paid costs for what insurance didn’t cover for gastric band surgery, which worked for awhile.

“There were times when he lost a lot of weight,” Barrett says. “I remember one summer (after the surgery), his expressions and his energy and alertness had changed so much. We were so happy for him that he had finally gotten on the right track.”

Gradually, Wheeler put back on the weight he had lost.

“He tried everything, from hypnosis to liquid diets to surgery to weight-loss clinics,” Medina says. “He had done it all. So many people wanted to help him.”

“Barrett and I worked so hard to try to help him out with his weight,” Rice says. “He was always trying something but would never stick with it. He enjoyed eating so much. Wheels would talk about exercise, but never got around to doing it.

“Early on, it didn’t affect his broadcasting. But toward the end, he couldn’t get around well enough to do his job.”

It got to where just walking was a chore. He developed scrotal lymphedema, a condition exacerbated by the excessive weight. He had increasing trouble getting around — climbing stairs, getting onto the team plane and so on. During his last season, he worked mostly home games. Travis Demers, who would become his successor, filled in behind the mic on road trips.

The Blazers let him go, and it began a downward spiral. In his last years, he was in and out of hospitals. His friends still tried to help.

“We had many conversations (about losing weight),” Allen says. “I would go visit him in the hospital. A lot of people tried to encourage him to try to get healthy. I shed tears with Wheels talking to him about his health. I loved him so much, I didn’t want his career being ended prematurely.

“That’s the part that makes this super sad. It was never a question of talent with Wheels. But he could never beat the demons of his health.”

“We knew that there were demons,” Harvey says. “With some people, you don’t put up with them. We accepted the demon’s beast, because the other parts of Wheels were so great — his personality, his caring manner. We loved everything else about him.”

But Harvey backed away near the end.

“That’s the part of the conversation that is so tough,” he says. “There became a point where I had to stop caring as much because we couldn’t get him to change. We knew this was coming if it stayed on the same path. We knew how much it was going to hurt.

“About three years ago, I pulled back. I thought, ‘I can’t do it anymore. I know it is going to be painful. I am going to insulate.’ And I did. But it still hurts.”

Wheeler badly missed the limelight. He began work on an autobiography but never finished. He worked a little with “Cameo,” which offered personalized video messages from celebrities. He tried to keep a brave face about his health. In a story I did with him two years ago, he said, “Everything is coming together pretty well. Nothing is as fast as you’d like it to be, but I’m quite confident my 60’s are going to be healthier than my 50’s.”

That, of course, was not to happen.

“As talented as he was, he was a bit of a tortured soul away from the game,” Barrett says. “His identity became what he did for a living. When his health started to go downhill, it cost him not only his job but his identity. His family was not only the broadcast crew and his analysts but the Blazer fan base. Those people who appreciated him so much, he had so much love for them.”

Medina recalls a very serious conversation he had with Wheeler in 2013, Medina’s final season with the Blazers.

“Brian, what do you want me to tell people when you pass away?” Medina asked him. “They’re going to ask, ‘How come you didn’t help him?’ What am I supposed to say?”

“Ah well, that’s not going to happen,” Wheeler told him.

“If you don’t do something, this is not going to end well,” Medina told Wheeler.

Medina pauses while reliving that memory, a portent of what was to come, albeit more than a decade later.

“I just feel so bad,” Medina says finally. “He had all the resources. So many people wanted to help him.

“It goes to show you, it’s like any addiction. You have to find a way to get past it. At some point, you either beat it, or it beats you.”

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