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Buck grabbed the rebound of a desperation three-pointer by Jeff Hornacek, threw the ball high into the air and became the pillar of a wall of Trail Blazer bodies diving on him in celebration of the championship.
It was an exciting playoff journey for the Blazers that season and Williams was a major reason for the success
The Blazers breezed through the opening round of the playoffs, sweeping Dallas, 3-0. But then they struggled somewhat against San Antonio, finally winning the seven-game series by downing the Spurs in two dramatic overtime victories at home.
Next came the Western Conference finals against Phoenix, a team that had beaten the Blazers twice in the regular season and had crushed Portland in two playoff games in the Valley of the Sun by the lopsided scores of 123-89 and 119-107.
By winning three games at friendly Memorial Coliseum by the narrowest of margins (100-98, 108-107 and 120-114), the Blazers faced the Suns, in that critical game six in Phoenix on May 31.
Nobody expected the Blazers to win Game 6. To this point in the playoffs, Portland was 1-5 in road games and had been outscored in those five losses by an average of 19 points a game.
So clinging to a 3-2 lead in a series in which the Suns had outscored them, 561 points to 424, the Blazers waltzed into Phoenix's Veterans' Memorial Coliseum and played the game of their young lives to win the Western Conference Championship.
This was a stunning turn-about from Portland's earlier road massacres at the hands of the Suns. The Blazers did it with defense and rebounding -- trademarks of Portland's title contending teams of the early 1990s and clearly their calling card that season. The calling card that Buck Williams had provided them.
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