The Portland Trailblazers lost an All-NBA caliber player to a tragically freak knee injury that cut Brandon Roy’s career much too short at the start of this season. They also drafted another potential franchise guy in Greg Oden who was officially released this season as well, after never being healthy enough to ever really play in Rip City. Portland passed up Kevin Durant to draft Oden too, just a few decades or so after they picked Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan.
All Star Forward LaMarcus Aldridge was hit with a season ending knee injury too by the way, that will have him out of commission for the next four months also.
Marcus Camby played as a member of the Portland Trailblazers during much of all that prior to being dealt at the trade deadline to Houston, sans the Sam Bowie part of course, and he caught up with the ESPN Truehoop guys to admit that his old team just might be actually cursed a little bit.
This from ESPN’s Marc Stein’s Weekend Dime Q+A:
Q: It sounds like you’re still following the Blazers pretty closely, so I’ve got to ask you now that it’s LaMarcus Aldridge facing hip surgery: How much more can these guys take?
A: The franchise has been going through a lot ever since training camp. First, Brandon Roy announced his retirement, then a month later Greg Oden is out again for the year. Then the trades. … [Aldridge’s] situation was kind of sad, because it was the end of the season and they weren’t going to make the playoffs. It’s something he should be able to bounce back from, but it sucks for him because he was going to play on the USA team this summer.
Q: You know those of us in the media throw around words like “curse.” But what about the players on that team? In the Blazers’ locker room, are guys asking: What next?
A: They might not want to admit it, but when I was there, my goodness, people were saying, “Are we really snake-bit? Are we really cursed?” Doubts and talks like that came about. Everybody just tried to brush it to one side and remain positive, but it was hard to escape because everybody was talking about it. It’s hard to argue when it keeps happening year after year after year.
I will continue to believe that the Blazers might actually be cursed all the way up until a series of good things actually start happening for them. They opened the season looking like they were the best team in the Western Conference for about 6 days before all that collapsed too, so I will need to see about two straight seasons of positive developments.
What is particularly rough about the Blazers curse situation as well, in comparison to other curses that is, is that it’s not a Bartman-esque type curse that plagued the Chicago Cubs for example. That was a freak thing that happened to team from outside their control during the actual game to help them lose on the field. The Blazers can’t even get their players healthy enough to all be in the game at the same time, which is pretty sad actually.
Hopefully one day that curse will end too. For now though, I’m just glad Marcus Camby is down in Houston where it’s safe.
