Blaze Is The Worst Mascot In The NBA

Imagine your friend from another state is visiting Oregon. Your friend likes basketball, so you take him to a Portland Trail Blazer game.

“What’s that?” your friend asks, gesturing to the gray, catlike figure roaming around the Rose Garden arena.

“That’s Blaze. He’s the Blazers’ mascot,” you tell him.

“Why is it a cat?”

Pause.

“Great question,” you say.

Because really, what does a trail cat have to do with the Portland Trail Blazers?

Blaze the cat belongs with the Trail Blazers about as much as the gorilla belonged in Phoenix or the chicken belonged in San Diego.

There’s one difference though: Those two mascots brought something to the table.

Fans – for whatever reason – loved the chicken. He’s toured stadium after stadium and everybody knows and loves the San Diego Chicken.

The gorilla revolutionized the mascot position in the NBA with his trampoline somersault dunks.

Blaze tries those same dunks. But it’s not the same. He’s not the original. He’s a follower – an imposter.

What the Trail Blazers need for a mascot is pretty simple: Trail Blazers.

Explorers in fur coats and triangle hats. With muskets. You could look at the West Virginia Mountaineers for inspiration.

It’s smarter than a cat.

You take Lewis and Clark characters. You know, those two guys who blazed a trail across the United States. One that came to be known as the Oregon Trail. You know the two – one of the all-time great video games is named after their expedition.

And they have a professional basketball team named in their honor.

Anyone who has studied Lewis and Clark – and what product of Oregon public schools hasn’t? – knows they wouldn’t have made it without Sacagawea.

Of course, it being professional sports in 2012, Sacagawea would have to be sexed up a little. Nothing more than the Blazer Dancers already do. In fact, Sacagawea would be a Blazer Dancer.

Put her in an elk-hide pair of booty shorts and tube top with some moccasins and she’s the perfect complement to your gun-toting explorers.

Then, the next time you take your out-of-state friend to a Blazer game, he’ll say, “Hey where’s the cat? What are those dudes?”

You’ll tell him, “That’s Meriwether Lewis. That’s William Clark. They killed the cat because they were running low on rations. And that’s Sacagawea. They’re the new Blazers mascots.”

“Oh,” he’ll say. “That makes a lot more sense.”