Celebrating Our Heritage: Clyde Drexler
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Honoring our rich heritage this Tue, Nov 13 vs Pistons. Celebrate the 1990 &1992 teams with special guests Drexler, Porter, Kersey, Duckwork.
Tickets are available now 
click here.
by Wayne Thompson
Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever to lace up a pair of sneakers, and Clyde Drexler had something special in common:
Themselves.
Roll the clock back to Nov. 29, 1991 for a game between the defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls and the upstart Blazers at Memorial Coliseum.
Chicago won that game in overtime, 116-114, but Jordan, with 40 points, and Drexler, with 38, put on an offensive show that made the highlight reels on sports shows across America.
After the game, an exhausted Jordan, staring down at a stats sheet, noticed Drexler's line: 15 of 27 from the floor, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 steals, 38 points.
"Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I see Clyde Drexler," Jordan said.
It was the ultimate compliment that Jordan could ever give to the one player in the NBA who had the ability to keep pace with him.
And while Drexler never really claimed to want to be like Mike, he was, on the basketball court, a mirror image of the great Jordan.
No doubt about that among Portland fans. Clyde the Glide, arguably, was the greatest Blazer of them all.
In a Portland career that spanned 12 seasons, Drexler remains Portland's all-time leading scorer, rebounder and steals leader.
He led his team to two NBA Finals. He was a starter in three NBA all-star games and played in seven others. And he was fifth in scoring and fourth in assists on the first USA Dream team, which earned a gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
But unless you were able to see him play regularly, as Blazer fans did, it was hard to fully appreciate his game. He was one of the NBA's all-time great open court players, a slasher, a great leaper and an outstanding passer on the fastbreak or in traffic.
One of his greatest attributes was foot speed from a standing start. He would have made a great sprinter and broad jumper in track. His raw speed and long stride allowed him to track down a loose ball from 10 feet away, even though opponents might be closer to it.
His vertical jumping ability from a standing start also gave Clyde an edge over players three or four inches taller than his 6-foot-7 frame.
In the summer of 1989, Drexler won the Blazer Slam Dunk competition held outdoors at Portland Civic Stadium. He broke a record by dunking on a basket set at 11-feet-1-inch. Like Jordan at Chicago, Drexler had to acquire his outside game through hard work and practice. He developed a reliable jump shot from 18 feet in the early '90s and became a dangerous three-point shooter in later years.
P.J. Carlesimo remembers being surprised at his first close look at Drexler during the 1992 Olympics, when Carlesimo was a Dream Team assistant coach.
"The thing that struck me was what a great passer he is," said Carlesimo, who coached Drexler in his last two seasons in Portland. "I'd never realized how intuitive he is, how well he sees people on the floor and creates things for other guys." Carlesimo also noted how similar Jordan and Drexler were in athleticism, knowledge of the game and overall skill level.
"Both of them can just take over a game. Clyde's quicker. Jordan has better hands. They're both unstoppable," Carlesimo, now coach of the Seattle Sonics, said at the time.
Clyde never liked to talk about comparions with Jordan or deal with the "what ifs" of his life, but in his final season as a Blazer (1994-95), he seemed to discover the fountain of youth.
Opening the 1994 season in Japan against the Los Angeles Clippers, Drexler scored 26 points in the opener and 41 points in the second game to fuel a pair of lop-sided Blazer victories`
In Yokohama, Japan on the night of Nov. 6, 1994, after scoring 41 points and adding seven rebounds, six assists and five steals to demolish the Clippers, he didn't mind comparing himself, at age 32, with the 45-year-old prize fighter George Foreman.
Foreman had shocked the sports world hours earlier by reclaiming the heavyweight title he held 20 years before. Clyde was pumped. "George and I are from the same hometown, so I root for him all the time," said Drexler, a Houston native.
"He's one of my favorite people of all time. It just proves a point -- regardless of your age, if you're able to produce, you can be the best in the world," Drexler said at the time. Clyde's emphasis on age had more to do with his own pre-season press clippings not Foreman's reclamation. Street & Smith's basketball magazine, acknowledging Drexler's diminished production over the two previous years, had called him, "Clyde the Slide." That hurt.
Pointing to the box score, Drexler insisted that he still was in the prime of his career and that injuries, not age, were responsible for his two sub-par years.
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click here.by Wayne Thompson
Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever to lace up a pair of sneakers, and Clyde Drexler had something special in common:
Themselves.
Roll the clock back to Nov. 29, 1991 for a game between the defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls and the upstart Blazers at Memorial Coliseum.
Chicago won that game in overtime, 116-114, but Jordan, with 40 points, and Drexler, with 38, put on an offensive show that made the highlight reels on sports shows across America.
After the game, an exhausted Jordan, staring down at a stats sheet, noticed Drexler's line: 15 of 27 from the floor, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 steals, 38 points.
"Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I see Clyde Drexler," Jordan said.
It was the ultimate compliment that Jordan could ever give to the one player in the NBA who had the ability to keep pace with him.
And while Drexler never really claimed to want to be like Mike, he was, on the basketball court, a mirror image of the great Jordan.
No doubt about that among Portland fans. Clyde the Glide, arguably, was the greatest Blazer of them all.
In a Portland career that spanned 12 seasons, Drexler remains Portland's all-time leading scorer, rebounder and steals leader.
He led his team to two NBA Finals. He was a starter in three NBA all-star games and played in seven others. And he was fifth in scoring and fourth in assists on the first USA Dream team, which earned a gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
But unless you were able to see him play regularly, as Blazer fans did, it was hard to fully appreciate his game. He was one of the NBA's all-time great open court players, a slasher, a great leaper and an outstanding passer on the fastbreak or in traffic.
One of his greatest attributes was foot speed from a standing start. He would have made a great sprinter and broad jumper in track. His raw speed and long stride allowed him to track down a loose ball from 10 feet away, even though opponents might be closer to it.
His vertical jumping ability from a standing start also gave Clyde an edge over players three or four inches taller than his 6-foot-7 frame.
In the summer of 1989, Drexler won the Blazer Slam Dunk competition held outdoors at Portland Civic Stadium. He broke a record by dunking on a basket set at 11-feet-1-inch. Like Jordan at Chicago, Drexler had to acquire his outside game through hard work and practice. He developed a reliable jump shot from 18 feet in the early '90s and became a dangerous three-point shooter in later years.
P.J. Carlesimo remembers being surprised at his first close look at Drexler during the 1992 Olympics, when Carlesimo was a Dream Team assistant coach.
"The thing that struck me was what a great passer he is," said Carlesimo, who coached Drexler in his last two seasons in Portland. "I'd never realized how intuitive he is, how well he sees people on the floor and creates things for other guys." Carlesimo also noted how similar Jordan and Drexler were in athleticism, knowledge of the game and overall skill level.
"Both of them can just take over a game. Clyde's quicker. Jordan has better hands. They're both unstoppable," Carlesimo, now coach of the Seattle Sonics, said at the time.
Clyde never liked to talk about comparions with Jordan or deal with the "what ifs" of his life, but in his final season as a Blazer (1994-95), he seemed to discover the fountain of youth.
Opening the 1994 season in Japan against the Los Angeles Clippers, Drexler scored 26 points in the opener and 41 points in the second game to fuel a pair of lop-sided Blazer victories`
In Yokohama, Japan on the night of Nov. 6, 1994, after scoring 41 points and adding seven rebounds, six assists and five steals to demolish the Clippers, he didn't mind comparing himself, at age 32, with the 45-year-old prize fighter George Foreman.
Foreman had shocked the sports world hours earlier by reclaiming the heavyweight title he held 20 years before. Clyde was pumped. "George and I are from the same hometown, so I root for him all the time," said Drexler, a Houston native.
"He's one of my favorite people of all time. It just proves a point -- regardless of your age, if you're able to produce, you can be the best in the world," Drexler said at the time. Clyde's emphasis on age had more to do with his own pre-season press clippings not Foreman's reclamation. Street & Smith's basketball magazine, acknowledging Drexler's diminished production over the two previous years, had called him, "Clyde the Slide." That hurt.
Pointing to the box score, Drexler insisted that he still was in the prime of his career and that injuries, not age, were responsible for his two sub-par years.
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