by: Wayne Thompson

The comparisons are striking: The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture the same year that the Trail Blazers, cellar dwellers in the Pacific Division, began their miraculous run to their first and only NBA title in their first-ever playoff appearance.

For movie-goers, the sight of a sweaty Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) charging up those stairs in front of Philadelphia's Art Museum was uplifting -- a personification of the American dream.

So, too, was the sight of the young Blazers, being doused with champagne in their lockerroom, after having achieved their own improbable dream -- a dramatic come-from-behind victory over the heavily favored Philadelphia 76ers for the NBA Championship.

That's getting ahead of the story.

The seeds of the Trail Blazer championship flower were planted long before the bloom.

The first move was the hiring of Jack Ramsay, who had guided Buffalo to the playoffs the previous three seasons, as head coach. Ramsay brought with him an able assistant in Jack McKinney. They had been longtime friends and colleagues in Philadelphia -- Rocky Balboa's Philly -- and they shared similar basketball philosophies. Next, Portland traded popular Geoff Petrie, the original Trail Blazer, and center Steve Hawes to Atlanta in exchange for the No. 2 pick in the American Basketball Association dispersal draft. That brought the Blazers the 24-year-old power forward, Maurice Lucas, who, on occasion, fought opponents like Rocky Balboa.

The ABA draft also brought to the team an undisciplined and raw 20-year-old named Moses Malone, the proverbial bull in a china shop. Malone remained a Blazer through the fall exhibition season, but was traded to Buffalo for a first round draft choice five days before the regular season opened.

Trading the Hall-of-Famer-to-be Malone, arguably, was the only mistake Portland made in its championship season. After Mo collected 24 points and 12 rebounds in a 129-114 pre-season victory over Seattle, Blazer center Bill Walton and Lucas lobbied management to keep him.

But the Blazer brass saw conflicts. Malone had been an emerging star in the ABA . He would command a larger salary than the budget-conscious Blazers were willing to spend. Moreover, he no doubt would demand playing time. Stu Inman, Portland's vice president of player personnel, reasoned that Ramsay would have a difficult time finding minutes for Malone behind Walton, Lloyd Neal and free agent Robin Jones, whom the Blazers had signed in August.

An unhappy Moses, it was argued, might not lead the Blazers out of the Pacific Division cellar, let alone to the promised land.

The liquidation of the ABA also gave Portland the chance to sign one of its former (1972) draft choices, Dave Twardzik, who had been a solid point guard with the Virginia Squires for four seasons.

In addition, with most of the new pieces in place, the Blazers drafted well, taking Wally Walker, a high-scoring small forward from Virginia, and Johnny Davis, a dazzling speedster from Dayton. And just before the regular season games began, the Blazers sold the high-scoring malcontent Sidney Wicks to Boston, purchased shooting guard Herm Gilliam from Seattle and signed defensive specialist Corky Calhoun, who had been released by the Lakers.

That was the new cast of players who joined veterans Walton, Lloyd Neal and Larry Steele and sophomores Lionel Hollins and Bobby Gross. Like the low-budget movie Rocky (made for less than $1 million), the Blazers of 1976-77 were a bunch of no names with the marquee power of a pre-Rocky actor named Sylvester Stallone.

Only Bill Walton had cover-story potential; ABA transplants Lucas and Twardzik got so little news coverage while playing in their defunct league that few NBA followers knew their true value.

Walton himself hadn't heard of some of these ABA people. For instance, the first day Twardzik showed up in the Blazer office in the summer of '76, he bumped into Walton, who was checking his mail.

Later, Walton asked a secretary, "Who's that?.

"Dave Twardzik from the ABA," was the reply.

"If he's been playing for four years in the ABA and I haven't heard of him, he can't be much," Walton said.

Yet once Walton saw the firebrand Twardzik play, with his fearless drives to the basket and his seeming disregard for his own well-being, Bill became one of Twardzik's biggest fans.

When this magical Blazer season got underway, none of the national publications gave them a chance to make the playoffs, or even post a winning season.

And the snub made sense. Who among the NBA's plentiful pundits would be so bold as to predict that the second youngest team in the league -- with a brand new coaching staff and seven new players -- would bolt from last place to the championship in a single season?

Even in a year when Seattle Slew, purchased at auction for a measly $17,500 , won thoroughbred horse racing's Triple Crown, you wouldn't find many takers for this 100-to-1 shot Blazers.

After surprising just about everyone, including themselves perhaps, with playoff wins over Chicago, Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers, the Blazers remained a darkhorse with the bookies.

Nevada sports books installed the Philadelphia 76ers as 13-10 favorites to claim the grand prize. Fans throughout the nation, looking at the star-studded Phiadelphia roster, figured that a Sixer sweep of the no-name Trail Blazers was likely, if not inevitable.

Remember, this all happened before ESPN's Sports Center, a medium that now allows fans throughout the country to discover the West Coast teams (Sonics, Blazers, Clippers, Kings and Warriors) that don't set their clocks to Eastern Standard Time.

Newsweek sports writer Pete Axhelm, an astute observer of the national sports scene, provided a good explanation of why the Blazers in 1977 were not getting the national respect they deserved. Just before the start of the Blazers-Sixers series, Axhelm wrote:
"The Trail Blazers are an intriguing team. Operating out of the Northwest far from the media glare of New York and California, they have performed many of their heroics too late to get them incfluded in most of the country's newspapers.

"So fast guards like Lionel Hollins and Dave Twardzik have settled for being legends in their own time zone, and mighty Maurice Lucas has scarcely drawn a headline as he quietly surpassed George McGinnis and Julius Erving of the Sixers as the most effective forward in basketball."

Frankly, the Blazers surprised themselves. Their regular season record of 49-33, was only third best in the Western Conference. And even that was padded by a 35-6 homecourt mark -- second best in the league. But they were a dismal 14-27 on the road.

Nevertheless, the playoffs, leading up to the finals, had been a great confidence builder for Portland.

The surprising four-game sweep of the Lakers, who had finished the regular season with the best record in the NBA, really jump started Blazermania in Portland.

It championship got the nation's attention as well. It was Cinderella meets Godzilla. It was David kicking Goliath in the groin. It was an out-of-body, out-of-mind kind of outcome -- the kind of stuff in which the dreams you can't remember are made of.

Even 30 years later, the Blazer championship is still recalled as the sports highlight of Oregon's 20th century and perhaps beyond.

Rocky Balboa in sneakers.