Okay Portland, Now Your Insanity Has Crossed The Line

the hater are coming for you now!

and a reason the rest of us call it a dirt rag. I wouldn’t take any article or comment too seriously there.

Sticking up for Blazer fans, I think part of our passion is pride in our team, and unadulterated adoration for our hometown team. That crosses the line often times because they’re the only game in town; Portland is dying to become a major sports town. We’re larger than a lot of NFL, MLB, and NHL cities and have teams in none of those sports. In fact our next professional sports team is in MLS (consider our MINOR LEAGUE SOCCER team averages 15k or so in attendance) and most of us are praying for an MLB franchise to move here.

As such, the Blazers are the only thing we can really feel passionate about. A lot of people who live here are transplants who adopt the hometown team (myself included), or we don’t follow college sports (so we don’t get as much into the whole Ducks-Beavers thing) and cheering for Seattle’s team in NFL and MLB is not good enough, since we’re pretty different cities and like to distinguish ourselves as such… Portlanders especially have that complex, and the Blazers are what a lot of people know us by.

That said, a lot of us are not happy and probably a little bit surprised to see the Suns come out and play us as physical as they have, and so we’re interpreting that as “tough” play. We also know the Suns have been around in the postseason for a long time now and so they’re getting the benefit of a lot of calls and aggressive play that we’re not getting, and it’s frustrating to watch. As many NBA fans are likely aware of, Portland in particular has struggled with a lot of adversity this year with injuries and playing shorthanded, and trying out new line-ups just to see if they work.. and somehow it was good enough to get a 6 seed. A lot of us want to see us continue to push past that adversity and thought Dallas or Phoenix would be easy opponents because they were seen as finesse, offense-oriented squads.

All I’m saying is, look at it from our perspective. The national media likes to hit us over the head often with how we made a second Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan pick with Oden over Durant, and believe it or not a lot of us are still happy with Oden, even if watching Durant score in bunches and make runs at the MVP award is rough while Greg is rehabbing. All year people have been writing us off because of the injuries (some Blazer fans included in this, admittedly) and lack of offense, and we’ve hung in there while the other teams in the West get a lot more attention for doing as much or less. Small market teams usually get shafted with that unless you have a Lebron-caliber player. That’s just how it is. We feel disrespected because we are so oft-ignored by the national media, although it’s certainly not representative of what I’ve seen from SBN. Until Portland gets a little more love (not from SBN but elsewhere) beyond, “Oh yeah that Brandon Roy kid’s pretty good” that’s probably just the way it’ll be.

Also, it’s funny that I came by here and saw Seth Pollack being the first person to leave a comment. I just spent a while reading through a thread on BEdge about how Seth has supposedly said that we’re not welcome on his blog. Talk about how the hater are coming, indeed.

Is that the same Suns team with Steve Nash? Robin Lopez? Jared Dudley? Grant Hill? Channing Frye and Barbosa? Literally, the Phoenix Suns have five or six of the most likable players in the entire league.

Excuse me but someone being likable is purely subjective. I can’t stand Nash, Frye, or Dudley.

That’s a quote from John Canzano, He says stuff all the time just for attention and many Blazer fans hate the guy with a passion. Me, I don’t read him and I’m sorry you provided a link to his page; I hate the idea of giving him hits.

(Wouldn’t you know it — Cabby’s post appeared just as I was typing this.)

We don’t have much in the way of professional sports and guys like Canzano tend to sensationalize everything. We know we’ve got a little chip on our shoulder, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

Along with the crazy passion comes some good stuff though. Some of the best basketball related posts I’ve ever read have come from posters on BlazersEdge. I don’t know of another fanbase that is more into advanced stats and things of that nature. It sort of makes us come across as smug nerds sometimes, dorks with a calculator, pace adjusting numbers every time a Suns fan says something about Roy being overrated.

We don’t mean any harm. Sorry if it comes across that way.

Please. I beg you. The average Blazer fan HATES this guy. His writing is crap. He spends most of the time trying to tie articles to himself. We cannot WAIT until he gets a national sports gig. ( Which he will. No one can deny his penchant for controversy and drama, which sells. )

They are quite internet proficient when compared to most NBA fan bases and have an extremely well run blog which centralizes their fervor.

Its sad that this causes them to act so arrogant—they commonly go onto other blogs to give everyone a lesson on the opposite team or spread their “pritch-slap” nonsense. It would seem that you have just stumbled upon their gross oversensitivity and have become the target of their projective antagonism.

Any Blazers fan arguing that they do not have an obnoxious internet presence is fooling themselves; and the whole, “its a minority” thing, only exonerates one from complicity. Earlier a poster referred to Blazer’s fans as “the read headed step child” of the NBA. In what way is this true? If even the reasonable posters believe this kind nonsense, how will the more dogmatic fans react. Imagine being a fan of the Bucks, Pistons or Pacers, that is true step-child status.

This isn’t to say that any of it really matters, or that any of it is a real problem, per say. Its really only basketball discussion and as far as generating intelligent basketball conversation, Blazers fans are some of the best—especially in their own territory. But there is no other NBA fan base that can make the opposing team so uncomfortable and incensed over the internet.