Eleventh in a series of installments documenting my failed political ambitions, my warped sensibilities, and my Portland Trail Blazers.
Ah yes, the Ides of March: they came and went, and by the silhouette of Great Caesar’s Ghost, the Trail Blazers were mired in a depressing, bloated funk. The sunny optimism of the early season’s 7-2 start had quickly been chipped away with a dirty, congealed mass of infighting and petty bickering. Raymond Felton and Jamal Crawford, the team’s prized off-season catches, were disappointments of a massive degree – Felton especially. Felton, who arrived via trade, arrived at training camp overweight and emotionally detached. He quickly butted heads with head coach Nate McMillan, and his sloppy play was indicative of the devil-may-care attitude that seemed to be his go-to defense mechanism in times of adversity. The desperate fanbase, who mostly hailed his arrival as a welcome addition to the team, quickly soured on his late-game lack of poise and professionalism (Felton was notorious for dribbling the basketball off his foot and out of bounds at the tail end of close games). He lashed out at the city like a spurned lover, locking himself inside his luxury apartment in the Pearl district, shoving Funyuns by the handful into his gob, never contributing towards the team and the city one iota of passion and effort greater than was contractually required.
Beyond the disappointing record and the slowly dissipating season, however, lurked some dark, slimy vibrations, of which my frontal lobe was not prepared for. Larry Miller was clearly losing control of his team, and, most notably, his sanity. By this point in the season I was privy, through my close friendship with Gerald Wallace, to an increasing amount of bizarre behind-the-scenes incidents involving Miller that were simply too mortifying to ignore.
The first such incident occurred in early February, over a month earlier, when Gerald Wallace entered the seemingly empty locker room at the Rose Garden on an off-day to pick up the iPad that he forgot in his locker. He heard some faint whimpering noises coming from the adjacent spa room, and peeked his head around the corner to find Larry Miller curled up on his left side on the wet tiles, next to the hot tub, sobbing silently. He was naked and covered in bodily fluids.
Gerald quickly pulled his head back, grabbed his things, covered his nose, and snuck out the front door of the locker room, pulling the door back ever so slowly, so as not to interrupt Larry Miller’s meltdown. This guy was a vengeful prick with a screw loose, Gerald assumed, and he had no clue whether Miller would hold it against him if he confronted him about this whole scene. Who knows? Maybe Miller would ship him out of town, and that’s not something that Gerald Wallace wanted to risk. He liked it in Portland, and so did his family. He saw himself living in Portland for many years.
But playing for management filled with these types of unpredictable characters? He wasn’t too keen on the idea, and he was unimpressed with the moral backbone of the organization’s personnel, to say the least.
Gerald told me later that he wanted badly to immediately tell me about finding Larry Miller lying naked in a pool of his own excrement, but held off because there was a part of him that actually felt bad for the guy. He was obviously battling his demons, and he didn’t want to be a part of anything that would lead him down a more destructive path.
Thankfully, for journalism’s sake, my involvement wasn’t required for the situation to escalate. A week later, on Valentine’s Day, as Gerald Wallace arrived at the Rose Garden to prepare for an evening matchup with the woeful Washington Wizards, he noticed a commotion outside the locker room. Some players were mingling around outside the opened locker room door, and Gerald approached Jamal Crawford and asked what was up.
“Look for yourself,” said Crawford, tilting his head towards the locker room, his face full of apprehension. Gerald walked in to find a severed goat’s head on the far wall. A railroad spike had been driven through the skull, affixing it to the dry-erase board, which was filled with diagrammed plays that were used during the previous home game. The beige carpet was stained a deep red, and blood was still slowly dripping from the spinal cord that hung loose below the freshly cut neck.
“Oh, shit!” Gerald exclaimed, as Crawford, Nolan Smith, and Marcus Camby nervously paced back and forth. There was sheer panic in the air, Gerald recounted to me later. They just stood around, not knowing how to act or what to do. Nobody was willing to take charge of the situation. As more players arrived, the confusion increased, and the press had to be barricaded from the locker room and the surrounding areas by Camby himself. McMillan finally arrived, and upon seeing the goat’s head nailed to the dry-erase board, unleashed an impressive barrage of cursing and destruction, kicking chairs and video monitors and eventually picking up a metal garbage can and tossing it into the large bathroom mirror, cracking it into a million pieces. He wouldn’t go near the goat, however, and demanded to know, in a blind rage, who was responsible for the ridiculous prank.
In strolled Larry Miller, dressed in a pinstripe-grey Armani suit, cool as a cucumber. “Prank?” he asked McMillan with nonchalance as he strode purposefully towards the goat. He turned around and faced his team, who huddled around him like kindergartners. Camby quickly reversed back to slam the doors shut, cutting off the view from an ogling security guard who had wandered in from the loading dock.
“You’re responsible for this?” McMillan asked Miller, his voice straining.
Ignoring McMillan, Miller launched into a brief explanation.
“Listen up, guys. I’ve noticed lately a disturbing lack of cohesion and focus among our ball club. We need to settle our differences and devote our attention back to basketball, to making this team work and continue to fight for a championship.”
Fair enough, thought Gerald.
Miller motioned towards the goat. “This is Professor Thad Farrington, director of divinity at Holy Cross University in Massachusetts. I’ve brought him in specifically so you can have an unbiased third party to talk to.”
Dead silence.
“He’ll help you. Trust me, he’s helped me in more ways than you can imagine. Ain’t that right, Thad?”
Raymond Felton stifled a laugh.
“SHUT UP!” Miller bellowed. Pointing a finger at Felton, he approached him slowly. “You CLEAN up your act, GODDAMMIT! Have a little respect for the professor!”
“Larry, leave him alone,” McMillan said. “This is ridiculous. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. We need to start preparing for this game.”
“Very well. Good luck tonight, boys!” Miller exclaimed as he parted through the middle of the throng of Blazers, exiting the locker room as casually as he strolled in. A quick nod to the security guard and he was gone.
Gerald sidled up to McMillan and asked him what they should do about the head. A group discussion resulted in the decision to move a rolling television in front of the goat, and a pile of towels were strewn about the area to cover up the blood on the carpet. The team then started to prepare for the game against the Wizards, which they would eventually lose handily.
—
I wasn’t at the game that night – it was Valentine’s Day after all, and I had taken Lala to see Gary Clark Jr. at the Doug Fir. It was a pleasant evening, and we had successfully managed to temporarily escape from the escalating drama that was surrounding our lives.
Late that night, around 1am, came a call from Gerald, who filled me in on that evening’s events. I was still a bit drunk, so we made plans to get together in the morning, before the team left for San Francisco to play the Warriors that night. He told me everything, and after some lighthearted prodding, finally agreed to be my unidentified, unnamable source from the Trail Blazers. I used him extensively in a series of exposés for Oregon Sports News, which eventually garnered national recognition – much to the delight of my editor, whose initial reluctance to post some of my more controversial pieces was tempered by his desire to raise the profile of Oregon Sports News and attract sponsors with deeper pockets.
Although the Trail Blazers were slowly going off the rails, my career as a sportswriter was off to a spectacular start. I had an editor who was clearly on my side, I was making a bit of cash from national papers excerpting my work, I had a trusted Deep Throat source in Gerald Wallace, and, to top things off, I had the love of a beautiful woman.
I ask you this:
What could possibly go wrong?
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