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jersey into the crowd. The box office num-bers would be fair; cable syndication wouldbe excellent. The Academy would, rightly,ignore it, but youth league coaches wouldpoint and nod. People would be inspired.But three seasons later, I suppose, thatsource material becomes a bit problem-atic—my hypothetical script a bit com-plicated. By the time David Halberstamembeds himself in the 1980 Blazers to write

The Breaks of the Game

(a departurefrom his political writings and war corre-spondence and, to my mind, the greatestbook ever written about basketball), thestars of that movie are hardly recognizable.Walton, the literal and figurative center of the team, has cut his hair, rebranded him-self a “born-again capitalist,” signed withthe Clippers, and moved to Southern Cali-fornia. Power forward Maurice Lucas, theteam’s enforcer and spark plug—the player who got himself kicked out of game two of the ’77 championship for picking a fight onhis teammates’ behalf—has refocused hisscrap and aggression on contract negotia-tions. Dr. Jack, in his plaids and patternedsuits, seems on the verge of a nervousbreakdown and can no longer control theplay, or soul, of his team. “Portland,” Hal-berstam writes, “in its short ten-year his-tory had known mostly the frustration of defeat and then in one magic year, briefly,the absolute joy of championship. Thatchampionship had come, and then almostas quickly been lost again.”To comprehend why a single championship would mean so much, and why the squan-

ON DAVID HALBERSTAM’S

The Breaks of the Game

TONY PEREZ

Why Disney has not turned the 1977 Port-land Trail Blazers’ championship seasoninto one of its inspirational sports mov-ies is beyond me. David Anspaugh woulddirect, Jerry Bruckheimer would produce,and Alan Alda would give a spirited per-formance as hard-assed coach “Dr. Jack”Ramsay. Obstacles would be overcome,egos put aside, race relations glossed over. A shaggy redheaded center would espouseleftist politics and listen to the GratefulDead, and players from And1 mix tapes would sign on to depict the rival 76ers.Guards Lionel Hollins and Dave Twardzik would cut down the nets to an uplifting and very Forest-Gumpian Alan Silvestriscore while Bill Walton tossed his massive

TONY PEREZ136

gerated—allegations. Walton had accusedthe Blazer management and medical staff of pushing him toward the needle andthereby causing long-term damage to hischronically injured foot for their short-term needs. Having considered Waltonone of his closest friends, Culp quickly grew jaded: “He realized that he had been wrong—that what he thought he had beena part of, and had not, simply did not exist. . . . He was not, as he had once believed,part of some spiritual community.”With Walton gone, the center couldnot hold. Or rebound. Only one team inthe league averaged fewer points per game.The driving concern wasn’t advancing inthe playoffs, but advancing individualcareers. Lucas endlessly speculated about where he’d be playing next—he wanted a large market, a stage to increase his fame.He obsessed over publicity (what he called“the pub”). Older players worried about where they’d retire. Mychal Thompson,after a promising rookie year, sat out the whole season with a broken leg. Hollinsspent a good portion of the year on thebench nursing a knee injury, its degree of seriousness a point of contention betweencoach and player. Ramsay’s famous struc-ture and discipline ceased to provide a winning framework.Halberstam, of course, sets his sights higherthan providing color commentary to a disap-pointing season. The real subject, thank God, is something greater. The Blazers’problems are a microcosm of a certain break-down in the NBA, and the NBA stands indering of that talent would feel so devastat-ing, a rough understanding of the region isessential. Northwesterners, of my genera-tion anyway, have grown accustomed tominor victories among more prevalentdefeat. We have a nuanced view of accom-plishment. Our successes and celebrities, by major-market standards, are B-list or lower. And on the brink of superstardom, our localheroes—those who don’t move themselvesto New York or LA—blow out a knee ortheir brains. We resent them and we adorethem. We are, Halberstam writes, “accus-tomed to losing and accustomed as well toloving [our] losers.”Reared on the franchises and col-lege teams of Oregon and Washington,this has been my burden to carry. Bornhalf a decade after our one, true shining moment, I’ve never had the privilege of a victory parade. Close calls have come—Super Bowl XL, the 2001 ALCS, the Blaz-ers in ’90 and ’92—but I own no com-memorative mug.“A spiritual crusade,” Ron Culp, the team’strainer, called the ’77 season. “Unselfishplayers playing with great generosity andmoral conviction, who were close off thecourt as well as on and who . . . seemed tosymbolize athletic and racial togetherness.”For Culp, that team transcended meresport. Halberstam tells us that “he didnot merely minister to these athletes, he

believed

in them, not just their victories,but in their larger purpose.” But whereHalberstam picks the story up, Culp is atthe center of serious—though likely exag-