Sally Layton If you say the 1977 Blazers were the best team in franchise history, you’re either seventy years old or you’re lying to yourself for the sake of a history book. I get it. They won the ring. Bill Walton was a ginger mountain of fundamentals and outlet passes. Maurice Lucas was the enforcer every city dreams of. But if we’re being honest—actually honest—that team wouldn’t stand a chance against the 1990-1991 squad. Not a chance.
We have this obsession with championships as the only metric of greatness. It’s a binary way of looking at sports that ignores how much better the league got in the fourteen years between Walton’s peak and Clyde Drexler’s prime. The 1977 team won 49 games. Forty-nine! In 1991, the Blazers won 63. They were a buzzsaw that ran into the beginning of the Michael Jordan era, which is basically the basketball equivalent of running into a natural disaster. You don’t blame the house for falling down during a Category 5 hurricane.
The 1991 squad was a statistical monster
I spent a rainy Tuesday last month—typical Portland—digging through old basketball-reference pages because I’m a nerd who can’t let things go. I tracked the 1991 season stats versus the 1977 championship run. The 1991 team had a Net Rating of +8.9. They were top five in offense and top five in defense. That’s elite. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. They were the most complete basketball team to ever wear a pinwheel on their chest. They had Terry Porter shooting 41% from deep, Clyde gliding (metaphor #1: his transition game was like a freight train that somehow learned to dance), and Kevin Duckworth taking up space in the middle.
People forget how deep that bench was. Cliff Robinson coming off the pine? That’s a luxury most teams would kill for today. I actually think Rick Adelman was a better coach than Jack Ramsay, too. I know people will disagree with that, and Ramsay is a god in this town, but Adelman’s system allowed for a fluidity that was years ahead of its time. Ramsay just had Walton. When Walton’s feet turned into glass, the whole thing shattered. Adelman’s system worked even when stars were out.
The 1991 Blazers won 63 games and had a +8.9 Net Rating. They didn’t need a miracle; they just ran into MJ.
Anyway, I once tried to explain this to a guy at a bar in Slabtown and he almost threw a coaster at me. People are protective of ’77 because it’s all we have in terms of hardware. But hardware isn’t the same as quality.
The 2000 “Jail Blazers” were better than you remember
I’m going to say something that would get me fired if I worked for the team’s PR department: I loved the 2000 Blazers more than the 2019 Dame-led team that made the Western Conference Finals. There. I said it.
That 2000 roster was absurd. Scottie Pippen, Rasheed Wallace, Steve Smith, Arvydas Sabonis, and Damon Stoudamire. On paper, that is a video game roster. They were deep, they were mean, and they were incredibly talented. I know the chemistry was a disaster and half the guys were getting pulled over for various things, but man, when they clicked? It was beautiful chaos. (Metaphor #2: Watching that team was like driving a Ferrari with no brakes—exhilarating until you hit the wall in the fourth quarter of Game 7 against the Lakers.)
I used to think the 2019 team was special. I was completely wrong. They were a fluke that got a lucky draw against a hobbled OKC and a young Denver. The 2000 team would have swept the 2019 team. They were bigger, stronger, and significantly more skilled at every position except point guard.
The 2000 team failed because of mental toughness, not talent.
A very expensive lesson in Beaverton
Speaking of the Blazers, I have a confession. In 2014, I was feeling particularly nostalgic and decided I needed an authentic, vintage Bill Walton jersey. I found a guy on a local forum who said he had one from the late 70s. We met in a parking lot in Beaverton, near the Nike campus, which should have been my first red flag. I paid $450 in cash. I was so excited I didn’t even look at the tag. When I got home, I realized the “Champion” logo was literally attached with a hot glue gun. It wasn’t even the right shade of red. It was like a weird, salmon-pink. I wore it to the Rose Garden anyway, and a kid who couldn’t have been older than twelve pointed out it was a fake within five minutes of me sitting down. I felt like a total idiot. I still have it in the back of my closet as a reminder that my passion for this team usually outweighs my common sense.
Why the Dame era doesn’t make the cut
I love Damian Lillard. I really do. But the “Best Team” conversation isn’t about the best player. It’s about the best five-man unit and the depth behind them. The front office failed Dame for a decade. They never gave him a secondary star that actually fit. CJ McCollum was great, but he was just a smaller version of Dame. It was redundant.
I refuse to rank the 2019 team in the top three because their defense was atrocious. You can’t be the “best” anything if you can’t stop a nosebleed. They gave up 110 points a night like it was their job. I actively tell my friends to stop romanticizing that WCF run. We got swept by a Warriors team that didn’t even have Kevin Durant for half the series. It was embarrassing.
Here is my definitive, non-negotiable ranking of the best Blazers teams based on pure basketball ability:
- 1990-1991: The absolute peak. 63 wins. Pure dominance.
- 1999-2000: The most talented roster to ever exist in Oregon.
- 1976-1977: The champions, but benefitted from a weird post-merger league.
- 1991-1992: The Finals run was great, but they were slightly worse than the year before.
I know people will scream about the 1977 chemistry. Fine. Chemistry is great for locker rooms, but I’ll take 1991 Clyde Drexler on a fast break over 1977 Lionel Hollins any day of the week.
I honestly don’t know if we’ll ever see a 60-win Blazers team again. The way the league is structured now, small markets have to get perfect lottery luck just to stay relevant. We’re currently in the “Scoot Henderson hope phase,” which feels a lot like the “Sebastian Telfair hope phase” if I’m being pessimistic. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But being a Blazers fan usually means waiting for a miracle that happened forty-seven years ago to happen again.
Does anyone actually believe we’ll win another one before 2030?
