As many of us do, I feel a kinship to the Blazers. Not just the team, or the fans, or the city (all of which I dearly love) but the players themselves. Call it weird if you like, but I root for them not just to serve my own selfish need to fulfill some childhood dream of being "the fan with a championship" but as if they were friends and family I'm rooting for. I love to see them succeed, no matter who it is. If they are on this team, they are part of my family. And when the individuals succeed in unselfish ways, the team prospers, and we all reap the joy from a hard fought win, whether earned physically, or vicariously.

And even when they leave the team, I wish them the best. I even want to see them have a record night when we play (just so long as we win. Or at least have an amazing game of it).

While I feel this way from LA to Alaa Abdelnaby, there are no two members of the Blazers family I feel a deeper kinship with than Brandon Roy and Greg Oden.

You see, I was once an athlete myself. Nothing on the level of the NBA of course. Not even basketball, although its a true love of mine instilled in me by my own family and their connection to this state and team. I was a martial artist. I owned a successful school. I was active in the community. I was a point away from fighting for the gold medal in the ITC national championships in the year 2000. And all of that went away when a freak misstep during a routine exercise, tore my ACL.

Running the school was my fulltime job. Making that work was complicated by the fact that I was raising twin babies alone at the time. The school didn't bring in enough to support our family, so my wife had to work a retail job two hours away just to make ends meet. In fact, due to the economic hard times, most of our students were on free scholarships just so they'd have a place to go. Because providing this safe haven for kids with ADD and OCD and whatever other affliction had gotten them kicked out of school or other extra-curricular activities was SO IMPORTANT to us, my wife quit her job, put back on her instructor's collar, and took over the school while I recuperated.

Even though I was insured through her work and the accident clearly happened while insured, the insurance company wrapped us up in red tape and backed out of paying for the bill and for the rehabilitation, so the surgery never healed right. Many of our paying students had contracts that just happened to end around the same time, and figured they'd come back when I was healthy. Some of the male students couldn't deal with a female instructor. Some just couldn't handle seeing their instructor wasn't indestructible (as so many movies had taught them). Our student count went from 75 to 15 over the course of three months. One little slip, and we lost EVERYTHING...

We were forced to sell the school to another instructor. The money he paid was for the equipment mainly, and was just enough to feed us for the next three months. Rather than bolting, like many people do when such a radical and seemingly negative life change happens, I remained dedicated to helping build that school up again. I couldn't do the moves, but I could still teach, and together, we built that school back up to 75 students before I relinquished it.

We had to move in with my parents for several years. It could have been humiliating, but we bore it with whatever grace life had taught us, and worked hard to move on to the next step. I became a writer (so that I could create animated shows that would teach kids the same values I tried to instill through martial arts instruction). I moved to LA, and after several years of hard work I have a handful of shows I created and wrote being released this year on the web. I've built up my network, and spread my philosophies of hard work through good deeds and self sacrifice wherever I go. I like to think in my own way, if I haven't changed the world, I've changed the world immediately around me.

Little by little, I finally let go of my dream of being a martial arts champion, and let reality sink in until I was at peace with it. And the more I let go of my old dreams and worked on making the dreams of kids around me come true, and inspired them to their own dreams based on my experiences, the more at peace I felt.

This year, the martial arts organization I helped found (the Saenghwal Taekwondo Organization) has invited me back to be an inspirational speaker, and teach the new generation about the power of grace, compassion and tenacity. I've been working myself back into shape in the meantime, and amazingly, after seven years of limping and agony, my knee pain is almost gone. I was so happy, I jumped and touched the ceiling. :D

So, I know a little bit about what Greg and Brandon are going through. I can only imagine what it would be like to add the burden of the world stage and all the expectations that come with that to the pressure of trying to heal a part of your body you depend on so much. I understand the utter frustration of KNOWING your body can and HAS done something a million times before, and not being able to make it happen. I know the HURT of feeling all the eyes on you. Even the sympathy is a burden, much less the ones who let you know you let them down.

But the beauty is, for all the tragedy a simple misstep caused, I had to give it up, before I can get it back. And if a simple martial arts instructor (and former janitor) can do it, and not only survive but thrive to reclaim all the old dreams, I have no doubt in my mind that my brothers of the wounded knee, Brother Brandon and Brother Oden, can do the same. Whatever their futures hold, they are always a part of my extended family (and so are the rest of you).

So it's the morning after BIG win, obviously the biggest of the season thus far (hopefully the first in a series of wins of exponentially increasing importance).  How are we all feeling, hmm?  Elated?  Relieved?  Is this the kind of thing that will make things awkward at the workplace between us and the Blazers?

After the last win, I started work on a portrait series, hoping to immortalize our 2009 starting five, the first of which was Przy, who I posted in the game day junk drawer, foolishly, against my better judgment.  Of course, we went on to lose that game in heartbreaking just too short come back bid (and then the next in even more soul tearing fashion) so I both haven't really felt like salting the wounds of those losses by being forced to stare for hours at those what treated me bad. ;)

But I've been busy nonetheless on them, and have just been waiting for a non game day to post, so I can avoid any possibility of being the goat in this series. ;)

So, next in line is LaMarcus.  Based on some of the feedback from the Przy portrait, I decided to improvise a bit and stray from the "eyes on the prize" sort of deer in the headlight look that the photographs have taken.  I can't say how successful I was, but the goal was a more intense and focused LMA, instead of a doe eyed one.

The next one is the one I'm most nervous about, given the potential disaster it will be if I've nerfed even a hair of sexiness from the French one.  This one's for the ladies (or lady) so I'll let them be the judge.  No intense soul devouring focus here, just straight up voulez vous couchez avec moi.

And a slightly reworked Przybilla for those who found his ogreishness lacking in the first iteration:

So, B. Roy's up next, and while I don't want to get ahead of myself (after all, if we lose one of these next two, it might be mid-Summer before I feel up to finishing the starters) I wanted to throw the reins to you guys as to what my next portrait will be in celebration if we make it to round 2 (think of it as a cosmic incentive for the fates to be kind.  An offering to the basketball gods, rather than an arrogant assumption).  Take your pick below.  You can check out my other portrait work here.

As with many others, this is my first attempt at a Junk Drawer, so flagellate accordingly if I blow the poll.

Hey fellow Blazers faithful.  Much like most of you, I'm still riding a wave of anxious euphoria as our first playoff game in what seems like ages.  One of the things I do is portrait painting (mostly glamor and fantasy style.  You can take a look at my gallery, here if you're so inclined).  To commemorate this incredible season (hopefully the beginning of a new tradition of post season glory) I want to paint a series of Blazer portraits.

Over at blazers.com they've put up some badass images of the starting lineup matchups (on the left side).  These are the best shots I think I've seen of our guys, with excellent lighting that will play really well with my style.  If anyone knows how to extract these from flash, or of another place I can download the same images, I'd be much obliged.

With all this talk recently of how many championships our fair team will or will not win in the next decade (so nice to be having these discussions with a straight face now, by the way) I've noticed the resurgence of one of my least favorite insinuations of the athletic world.  That being the concept that only the championship team matters, and all other teams are also-rans.  Pathetic losers to the utter superiority of the champion.

This is, IMO, a touch of old world thinking.  We instill it into our children because we want them to succeed, and we don't want them to be satisfied with anything less than their best.  The problem with this type of thinking is that it breeds within us the idea that unless we're the ultimate winner of any game, be it athletic or financial, all of our efforts are wasted.

Now, perhaps part of my contrary feelings on the subject are due to the fact that I'm a martial arts instructor.  In the martial arts, the competition is most often with oneself and not necessarily against an opponent, (unless you're in the ring, or something has gone very wrong).  Too often, kids come in and don't even want to try, because they're so afraid to get even 2nd place and be a disappointment to their parents, or worse; themselves. 

When it came time for tournaments, I always taught my students that while the ultimate goal is of course to be the best in every event, and come away with the gold, the reality is there are dozens of other people, all training hard and vying for that same singular prize.  Sometimes, the skillset of two individuals is a wash, and other completely random factors come into play, like a judge blinking at the wrong moment.  Are the efforts of the other dozen or so competitors completely pointless simply because they didn't walk away with a plastic trophy?  If you're the winner, that's a fairly arrogant (and potentially dangerous) way to look at things.  And if you're not, well, that can be damaging too.

I always told my students that there were three things they needed to do at a tournament for it to be a success. Have fun.  Meet someone new.  And learn something.  If you take 2nd, but learn as much as you can about what you did wrong and what the other guy did right, you've improved.  And that is the essence of martial arts.

So, before I get called on the carpet for digressing too much, how does this apply to the Blazers?  I remember with great pride and fondness the Clyde Drexler team, even though they never quite got over the hump.  Those years were still magical to me, and I still have loads of great memories from them.  The same with the Rasheed/Grant years, even though those came with a healthy dose of frustration.  Even the doldrum years in between, I was still proud of my club for consistently fighting their way tooth and nail into the playoffs, even if the talent may not have been enough to get past the first round.

Should we as fans roll our eyes and scoff at the Drexler Blazers, marking them as a failure simply because they beat out every team BUT one, not once, but twice?

The more pertinent question I have to ask myself, and everyone else here:

If, fates forfend, this amazing new team, the Roy Oden Aldridge Blazers, consistently perform well, become perennial visitors to the WCF and occasional WCF champs... but never get that championship... will we look at them as failures, and complain about their shortcomings, railing and moaning about who should have been traded?  Or will we bask in the glory of a new dawning dynasty?  One perhaps without the benefit of the final crown, but a dynasty nonetheless.

Clyde and his compatriots were only WCF contenders for a scant few years, yet we look upon those days as the days of glory.  Will we grant our new team the same honor?

Oh, and btw, long time lurker, fairly new poster and all that. :)