{"id":365274,"date":"2025-12-23T09:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365274\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T09:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:19:07","slug":"trail-blazers-honor-2000-western-conference-finals-team-we-were-revered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365274\/","title":{"rendered":"Trail Blazers honor 2000 Western Conference Finals team: \u2018We were revered\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The interview session didn\u2019t last one question before Damon Stoudamire<\/a> stopped things cold with a surprising declaration. <\/p>\n

\u201cHold on,\u201d Stoudamire said. \u201cI\u2019ve got something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man who used to go by Mighty Mouse sat at a dais in front of a throng of cameras and microphones, flanked by Steve Smith<\/a>, Bonzi Wells<\/a> and Mike Dunleavy<\/a> at the Moda Center. The group had gathered for a reunion to commemorate the team that reached the 2000 Western Conference Finals, and was taking part in a question-and-answer session with local reporters. <\/p>\n

But the first question was nixed before it could be uttered. Stoudamire interrupted, held the room in suspense for five seconds, then blurted out:<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth teams played hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoudamire smirked and the room erupted into a collective laugh in recognition of Rasheed Wallace\u2019s iconic old postgame refrain. <\/p>\n

Wallace wasn\u2019t in Portland on Monday, but eight of his old teammates were as the organization honored a chapter of its storied past during a game against the Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n

Players, coaches and staff arrived Sunday and took part in two days of memories, sharing stories, reliving old games and reconnecting about a snapshot in time that came a quarter century ago. <\/p>\n

There was a Sunday dinner. There was a Monday visit to the practice facility in Tualatin, where they chatted with general manager Joe Cronin, All-Star point guard Damian Lillard and acting coach Tiago Splitter, among others. There was a pregame chat with reporters. And there was a halftime gathering near center court at the Moda Center, where each person was announced, honored and serenaded with an ovation.<\/p>\n

The biggest cheers were saved for Brian Grant<\/a>, the heart-and-soul of the team who remains one of the most revered players in franchise history, and Stoudamire, the local boy who blossomed from a Portland Interscholastic League star into an NBA Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody understands how special this group was,\u201d Stoudamire said during a brief halftime address to a sellout crowd. \u201cObviously we\u2019re missing a couple people, but we\u2019ve been sharing so many stories over the last 24 hours \u2026 (reminding) each other how much we meant to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few need reminding of that team\u2019s success. The Blazers won 59 regular season games that season, second-most in franchise history, and breezed to the Western Conference finals with dominant series victories over the Minnesota Timberwolves and Utah Jazz, setting up a made-for-television date with the hated Los Angeles Lakers and their stars, Shaquille O\u2019Neal and Kobe Bryant. <\/p>\n

The Lakers took a decisive 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, but the Blazers rallied with victories in Games 5 and 6. Then, in Game 7, they entered the fourth quarter with an improbable 13-point lead, putting them on the doorstep of the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

But everything fell apart.<\/p>\n

The Blazers missed 13 shots in a row, going 7 minutes, 30 seconds without scoring. The Lakers pounced, completing the largest comeback even in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, punctuating the stunning turnaround with a Kobe-to-Shaq alley-oop that still haunts Blazers fans \u2014 and the players who starred in the collapse \u2014 25 years later.<\/p>\n

It remains so painful, Stoudamire said, he has never rewatched the game. Smith forced himself to do so, but only once, many years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad memories,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d Stoudamire added. \u201cMost of the fellas that I\u2019ve talked to, they haven\u2019t watched it. If I see it on television, I turn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunleavy, meanwhile, apparently doesn\u2019t need to watch it. The Blazers old coach dissected the worst fourth quarter in franchise history from memory, with vivid detail, recounting gory play after gory play.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were up 13 and the first play went to Steve,\u201d Dunleavy said. \u201cHe scored down in the post. We were up 15. And then we went through that stretch where we missed 13 straight shots. And of those 13 shots, 11 of them were great. Two of them were good. One of them, when I say good, it was a wide open long-range shot by Scottie (Pippen). He could make one. We had one turnover and we had one missed defensive assignment. When I brought Sheed back in the game, he was late getting down to the post on a rotation to the corner for Brian Shaw. Other than that, we played a great game. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got great memories about the team and that series. We felt like (we were) going to the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while there was plenty of talk about what ifs, Monday\u2019s reunion was more about reconnecting and reliving the good times for those who attended, which included Stoudamire, Smith, Dunleavy, Wells, Grant, Greg Anthony, Stacey Augmon, Antonio Harvey, Joe Kleine, general manager Bob Whitsitt and athletic trainer Geoff Clark.<\/p>\n

The team was part of a complicated period in Blazers history that later became more widely known for its off-the-court transgressions than its on-the-court success.<\/p>\n

But as the saying goes, time heals all wounds, and the hope among those that gathered Monday is that time will ultimately look back on the 1999-2000 team favorably.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it\u2019s good things,\u201d Wells said, when asked what the team should be most remembered for. \u201cI know what the narrative was. But I just hope people understand where our heart was when we (were) here, how hard we wanted to play for the city and how bad we wanted to win. I\u2019m just super excited to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

When someone asked Stoudamire if he realized how much that team was beloved by fans, he demurred. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never got that feeling,\u201d Stoudamire said. \u201cJust from me, being here and being a native and seeing the other teams, I think that you can, at times, become a prisoner of the moment of what\u2019s going on. I think the frustrating thing as a basketball player, what I\u2019ve seen over the years \u2026 as you go around the country, man, we were revered. But then you come here and it\u2019s like, sometimes you didn\u2019t feel that way. Just being honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Monday\u2019s visit will soften some of those old hard feelings.<\/p>\n

The Blazers may have fallen one quarter short of reaching the NBA Finals in 2000, but they still delivered one of the best runs in franchise history.<\/p>\n

And Stoudamire was happy that it was finally honored. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to remember and be recognized,\u201d Stoudamire said. \u201cAs a guy from Portland, Oregon, I would say this: I think that it\u2019s long overdue. We did not win a championship. We did not go to the finals. But aside from those couple of Clyde Drexler teams, I think this was the best team. I really do. I think that had we been able to achieve a little bit more, we would have been the best group that this organization\u2019s ever had.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for me, I\u2019m happy to be here. I\u2019m glad I came and I wouldn\u2019t have missed it for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The interview session didn\u2019t last one question before Damon Stoudamire stopped things cold with a surprising declaration. \u201cHold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-365274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}