After holding practices at their facility in Tualatin nearly every day since the start of training camp, the Trail Blazers took last Friday and Sunday off. The off days presented a last chance for players to spend time with their families, take care of outstanding chores and errands around the house and enjoy some time on their own before the regular season begins Wednesday night.
Instead, they chose to spend more time together.
Despite having spent the better part of the last three weeks working and the fact that they’ll see each other nearly every single day for at least the next six months, the team, from players to coaches to front office staffers, met up in downtown Portland for a surprise party for Rodney Hood, who turned 27 on Sunday. Though Hood thought that he was going to be spending a quiet evening alone with his family, Hood's wife, Richa, invited the team and a number of Rodney's friends and family from back home in Mississippi to celebrate, all to the astonishment of her husband.
"I was super surprised," recounted Hood. "Me and my wife were just going out for a birthday dinner -- I usually don’t do anything for my birthday other than spend time with my kids. We were walking to a bank across from El Gaucho and I thought it was weird. Somebody came out and met us, said it was private dining for two, so I still didn’t think anything. I walked in, I saw everybody, I almost broke down and cried. That was a special moment for me."
There was food, a cake, music, dancing, presents, all the typical accoutrement you'd find at a birthday party. But Hood seemed most touched by the job Richa did of keeping the event a secret and the level of support he got from a team he's only been a part of for roughly eight months.
"For all of my teammates to come, most of the people throughout the organization that’s here day-to-day came, it was an amazing feeling to see that," said Hood. "And then see my family and friends fly out and keep it a secret from me, that was amazing. But just the support, everybody coming out to have a good time. Usually when you get to my age, you’ve got kids, nobody really appreciates you anymore in that respect. It was memorable, I want to thank my wife again for that."
Obviously it's not uncommon for a basketball team to all end up at the same place. And the team does put on events for the players, be it making reservations for dinners, scheduling busses to take groups to the movies or the occasional shopping trip on the road, but those events, even if informal, still come off a bit different with the team's support staff coordinating. So for Hood's surprise party to draw a crowd, on the last weekend before the start of the season without it being a requirement says something about a team with six new players from the season prior.
"I think it’s cool because it’s something that the team isn’t setting up, it’s something that doesn’t have anything to do with basketball," said Damian Lillard, who was in attendance Saturday night. "That’s the brotherhood side of it and the friendship side of it that makes it all that much better. It’s like, okay, we’re teammates, we’ve got to win games, you’re gonna lose games and be criticized and we gonna go through all this stuff together, but it’s that personal time that really counts.
"(Richa) reached out to everybody and they told us when and where and nobody came in the locker room like ‘Alright, it’s mandatory and everybody has to be there.’ It was just like, be there by this time, he’s gonna be showing up at this time, we want to surprise him. One after the other, you just see everybody coming in, from Coach Stotts to me to our assistants to our video room guys to some of the guys in the front office. Top to bottom, you see everybody falling in one by one before he was there, ready for the surprise. And nobody came and showed face of 30 minutes and left. Everybody was there for four hours, eating, listening to music, just having a good time. I think that was a great thing that our team was a part of. "
While pulling off a surprise part can be difficult, getting an entire NBA team to show up at non-mandatory event might be even tougher. Between games, practices, meetings, treatment, mandatories and travel, players have cause to be protective of their personal time, and rightfully so. Even on teams in which the players all generally like and appreciate each other, getting everyone together outside of the walls of a practice facility or a team-mandated event is far more infrequent than people might realize.
So to have something like that happen on one of the last free nights before the NBA takes over almost the entirety of a players' schedule is a little different.
"You can play on a team with somebody and outside of the plane, practice, games and hotel meetings, you might never see them," said Lillard. "You could possibly never see them outside of a Trail Blazers’ environment, it’s very possible. But I think for our team, this early, to just have something like that where everybody showed up, and didn’t just show face and leave or make an excuse, everybody showed up, I think that says a lot about our group."
And it said a lot to Hood, who opted to sign as a free agent with the Blazers in part because of the comfort both he and his family found in Portland after being acquired via trade in February from the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"I think it was great, just to have everybody bond a little bit, get outside of the gym," said Hood. "People got to know each other’s families, I met guys’ wives or girlfriends and they met my family. It was just great to unwind and get to know each other. We have team dinners, but even in that setting you’re not really yourself. It was great, I think we should do a lot of things like that throughout the season, just to keep it fresh."