THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Meanwhile, woe are the Blazers and the Jazz

So I’m watching the NBA Finals, where the gritty, gutty underdog Knicks (yeah, right!) are halfway to a sweep of the San Antonio Wembys. 

Meanwhile, a few thoughts run through my mind. 

First, why am I not seeing the Oklahoma City Thunder on my TV screen? I thought they were supposed to win the next 10 NBA titles? 

Seattle SuperSonics fans are probably giddy to see OKC not in the Finals. The Thunder are a constant reminder of what Seattle once had, and Sonics fans want no part of OKC. 

Meanwhile, Sonics fans get teased every now and then that the NBA might soon be returning to Seattle, which has not been a part of the Association since the Sonics left town and became the Thunder in 2008. 

Folks in North Idaho would love that. Seattle is an easy drive from here. Well, getting TO Seattle is an easy drive. Once you get to the actual Seattle, well, good luck. 

(For some reason, Portland, which apparently still houses an NBA franchise, seems to be 12,000 miles away from here, even though the Rose City is only 74 miles farther from Coeur d’Alene than the Emerald City is.)  

Anyway ... 

MY OTHER question, after watching the NBA playoffs, concerns the two cities in our region which actually are home to NBA teams: 

Will the Portland Trail Blazers or Utah Jazz ever be good enough to compete for an NBA title again? 

Seriously.

We were lucky that Bill Walton stayed healthy long enough, and Maurice Lucas came to Portland in the ABA dispersal draft, and Jack Ramsay was there to coach the Blazers, who won the NBA title in 1977. 

(Portland was actually better the following year, before Walton and others got hurt, and that budding dynasty crumbled). 

There was the Clyde Drexler/Terry Porter/Jerome Kersey run in the 1980s and early 90s, but the Blazers couldn’t get past the Bad Boys and the Jordan Bulls. 

Years later, the Blazers tried the Rent-An-Aging-Star route, like Scottie Pippen from the Bulls’ dynasty, but couldn’t beat the Shaq/Kobe (or Kobe/Shaq) Lakers in the conference finals. 

Since then?  

Not much. 

Damian Lillard was (is?) a great Blazer, but most of his teams couldn’t make it past the first round of the playoffs. 

Portland missed the playoffs four straight years before slipping in this year, losing 4-1 in the first round to the Wembys. 

Next season, it will have been 50 years since the Blazers’ first and only title. 

LOCAL FANS will forever have a tie to the Utah Jazz, and not only because Salt Lake City is only 688 miles away. 

The Jazz found gold in 1984 when they took an unheralded point guard named John Stockton with the 16th pick.  

We all know how that turned out. 

It got even better the next year, when the Jazz took an unheralded power forward named Karl Malone with the 13th pick. 

Even better, Stockton and Malone seemed to like playing in Utah, staying with the Jazz for 19 and 18 seasons, respectively. 

Had the Jordan Bulls not stood in their way in 1997 and ‘98, the Jazz may have been two-time NBA champs. 

Now? Those close calls are just fading memories. 

If you want a championship memory from Salt Lake City, you have to go back to Zelmo Beaty and Willie Wise and the Utah Stars of the ABA in 1971. 

These days? If the Jazz draft somebody good, they either lose them to free agency, or have to trade them out of pity. 

The Jazz last made the playoffs in 2022. They’ve lost 221 of 328 games since. 

Even stinking hasn’t helped either franchise in recent years. 

San Antonio successfully tanked and wound up with Wemby in 2024. Portland and Utah haven’t been so fortunate. Besides, with the Blazers’ catastrophic injury history with high draft picks, perhaps the NBA gods didn’t want Wemby to end up in Portland. 

Meanwhile, the Knicks have assembled a championship team out of spare parts. The Spurs benefited from the right ping-pong balls, but also have brought in some other players you may not have heard of, but are actually pretty good. 

Closer to home, the Trail Blazers and the Jazz just seem to be ambling along aimlessly, with no real direction (other than the rumblings that the Blazers could move away), instilling very little confidence in their fan bases that things will ever get better again. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.