Dear Greg,
How dare you sir.
This town did nothing but put you on a pedestal, and you spit in our faces for it.
Your recent Grantland interview with Mark Titus was the low blow a franchise and the city it dwells in did not need.
Throughout the interview, you name the city, its basketball franchise, and the lack of guidance for your shortcomings as a man.
You name Portland for being a poor town for a young African-American male with lots of money. What are you getting at here Greg? Are you saying that there are other towns where irresponsible people might thrive? You are not the first young person regardless of race or gender or profession for that matter to dump too much money and place too much trust in the wrong people, and you will not be the last.
Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, and countless other young men have lived and played here, why didn’t they have the same problems Greg?! And as far as needing a veteran influence on and off of the court, I am not sure how Joel Przybilla or Channing Frye did not fit that particular billing. Roy and Aldridge, who were young players at the same time that you were, had even been in the league for at least a year and could have provided help and feedback.
Even if you did know what you were doing, did you seriously think it would be easy to handle being on your own in an unfamiliar town away from everyone and everything you had ever known?
Let’s say you had played that first year, would things have been different? The article basically shouts that you hate being around people and prefer quiet down-time, so the odds are that you would have struggled whether you were moping or not. There would have been even more pressure and even more women throwing themselves at you if you were successful, this is just what happened while you were waiting for things to get on track. Imagine how much adversity you would have had to deal with if things had gone well.
On the other hand, perhaps if you had been consistently healthy, you would have had a one-track basketball mind, and I would hope so. This city and its professional basketball franchise invested more than enough in you to warrant such dedication.
You name Kevin Durant and Al Horford and their recent success as essentially reasons to feel sorry for yourself. You state that things would be different if you could have just stayed healthy, but that it is tough when you are not in control.
In control of what exactly Greg? Your health? Your willingness to rehab? Staying off of your knees long enough for them to heal? YOU ARE! Who the hell else would be?
I have personally gone through an injury to both knees. I know first hand how much it sucks, how it hurts to sit, hurts to walk, hurts to stand, and worst of all, you never really know if you’re going to be ok again. I rode the ups and downs of that particular roller-coaster, and no, I did not have a city watching my every move as it happened. I can understand that even if the medical and coaching staff put zero pressure on you, you probably would have felt like Atlas anyway. I can see how that might feel. I can empathize with the fact that you probably just wanted to do normal things and feel normal Greg, but you also should have realized that we invested too much in you. We invested too much in you…
And perhaps there’s the rub here. We put too much in you. We put too much on you. We spoke of greatness and championships and this town being the envy of the other 29 basketball teams in the league, well before you had ever played one minute in one game of professional basketball.
We wanted you to be the next great NBA center, an ilk that just one or perhaps two men from each decade will join. Not can, but will.
Will. Will is the message here. For all of your talents, strengths, and capabilities, you lacked the one thing that would make it all worth.
Heart.
You could have been an all-time great. You could have dedicated yourself to your rehab, instead of playing pick-up games on a healing knee, being a kid in a man’s world.
You should have seen the forest for the trees my man. After all of the talk about being Bowie 2.0, and being sorry that you were letting down a franchise, and a town… that’s all it really was. Just talk.
Mere words without even a shred of action behind them.
Sure, you had a pretty good run at the start of your third season as a result of a renewed vigor and dedicated rehab/diet plan, and if things had kept on, who knows, none of this might have happened. Maybe there wouldn’t be all of this bitterness between you and I. Maybe you would have lived up to the expectations.
As of right now, you are exactly the opposite of where you were when you arrived in 2007. Back then, it seemed as though anything were possible. You were the next great player, and we were the next great NBA city. Legend was knocking on your door, and all you had to do was answer the call.
The sad fact is that not all of us become the men we once set out to be. I know that you didn’t want things to turn out this way, yet they did, all the same. And a large part of the blame is on us, and a large part of the blame is on you.
Bill Walton, for all of his faults, at least gave us the 1977 championship, and was well on his way to providing another one before hurting his foot, losing his mind, and breaking this city. Sam Bowie could not stay healthy, and while a lackluster disappointment, he did give us Buck Williams, one of the greatest Blazers ever, so it is hard to be truly upset with him.
You, on the other hand, merely took hope away. You brought nothing but despair to a franchise and a town in need of anything but. And now all you talk about is going elsewhere, like we never mattered. Like that day in 2007 when you were welcomed to this city as a beloved relative, never really happened.
But it did. The moment was here, and so were we. We will still be here.
You might go to Miami or LA or wherever, and you might even win a title or two. I hope you do. I also hope you find balance, the same balance you couldn’t find here. I don’t know if I will be rooting for you, but I will never be rooting against you.
Perhaps we are all to blame. Perhaps we invest too much in a kid’s game played by men. Perhaps we all should have known better.
Your knee quit on you, and you quit on us. We never quit on you.
We were with you during all of this, all the way up to the bitter end.
We are still on your side Greg. Even through all of the bitterness, we all want to see you do well. While it may sting to see you hoist a trophy in another uniform, we will know that your smile and your pride over that same title would have been better here.
We wanted that title. Boy did we ever.
Boy, this is a man’s game. And we had our hopes riding on a 19 year old boy.
Boy did we learn our lesson.
So long Greg. Good luck out there in the real world.
Sincerely,
Casey Mabbott
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
