BLAZING INTO EXISTENCE BELOW THE PEAK OF MOUNT HOOD THE CITY OF PORTLAND IS SURROUNDED BY NATURE 8 BLAZING INTO EXISTENCE
MAURICE LUCAS A big part of America’s expansion in the 1800s involved taming the tantalizing yet dangerous wilds of the American West To do this brave explorers often called trailblazers set out on perilous journeys beset by rough terrain a lack of food and hostile natives unsympathetic to American-style civilization These explorers had to be fearless intelligent and above all else tenacious In the end these explorers trailblazing paved the way for new settlers In the 1840s some of those settlers forged a trading post on the banks of the Willamette River at the far reaches of the American West in a place called Oregon Country In 1845 two men from back East who shared a claim on the land Asa Lovejoy a lawyer from Boston Massachusetts and Francis Pettygrove a trader from Portland Maine decided to name the post Problem was 9
FORWARD MAURICE LUCAS POWERED TO THE RIM FOR 20 2 POINTS PER GAME IN HIS FIRST BLAZERS SEASON both men wanted to name it after their own hometown They finally agreed to flip a coin over the matter and Pettygrove won two out of three tosses giving name to the city now known as Portland Oregon The city grew from a population of 821 in 1850 to 90,000-some by 1900 From 1900 to 1910 the population more than doubled partly thanks to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition a world’s fair that celebrated the expedition of trailblazers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark America’s most famous western explorers The Expo brought in more than 2 5 million visitors and firmly entrenched Portland as a thriving city in the United States As Portland steadily grew to its present-day population of more than 600,000 residents something else was on the rise in the U S the game of basketball In a pioneering move of its own the rapidly expanding National Basketball Association NBA decided to plant a team in Portland in 1970 The league’s expansion to 17 teams at the time also included the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Buffalo Braves the latter of which became the present-day Los Angeles Clippers Scores of fans responded to a name the team contest and in the end nearly 200 10
INTRODUCING Geoff Petrie POSITION GUARD VICE PRESIDENT HEIGHT 6-FOOT-4 TRAIL BLAZERS SEASONS AS PLAYER 1970 76 AS VP 1990 94 Few people find that one single thing they can do really well Geoff Petrie found at least two as a player and vice president for the Portland Trail Blazers The lanky guard was the Blazers first-ever draft pick the NBA’s 1971 Co-Rookie of the Year along with Boston Celtics center Dave Cowens and the leader of Portland’s offense with a 21 8-points-per-game career scoring average in his 6 seasons Petrie’s playing career ended prematurely because of knee injuries and although he found retirement difficult he returned to the game as a savvy vice president who helped put together the great Blazers teams of the early 1990s Still many wonder what kind of mark Petrie could have left on the court if he had avoided injury I missed my prime and there were times when I thought This just isn’t right said Petrie Rick Adelman who played alongside Petrie as a Blazers guard and later on became Portland’s head coach said Geoff would have been one of the all-time great ones no question in my mind 11 Geoff Petrie
