In the staff workroom at Chenowith Elementary in The Dalles, my aunt Jan laminated posters of the Portland Trail Blazers to cover the walls of her fourth-grade classroom.
Every time Mom added modern pieces to her room, the ones she removed became hand-me-downs that adorned my bedroom on the Oregon coast. Only the Blazers had the longest wall. In addition to Bill and Luke, there were Terry, Clyde, Duck, and Kersey.
I memorized the names after looking at the official squad images from the 1980s and early 1990s.
Do you recall Ennis Whatley? Thanks to those posters, I do.
A large number of them were taken from a 1992 series in The Oregonian. This newspaper published opulent full-page spreads featuring statistics, biographies, and blueprints of go-to plays for individual players before there was an OregonLive or even the internet. as well as the player’s shoe outline.
Buck Williams was featured in my favorite of these.
My bedroom door now bears a specific location for that laminated sheet.
In the bedroom of sports columnist Bill Oram as a child, these laminated pages from The Oregonian in 1992 were displayed on the wall.With permission from the Oram family
Since I was a child, I acknowledge that his name was a major factor in the initial attractiveness, if not the only one.
His name was Williams. My name was William.
I was also interested in Alvin Williams when the Blazers selected him in the draft a few years later. and was heartbroken when, 41 games into his Blazers tenure, Bob Whitsitt traded him out. Thankfully, another Williams, the sharpshooting Walt, returned with the deal for Damon Stoudamire.
This procedure wasn’t precisely scientific.
Having written about the NBA for the most of my media career, I like to think that I’ve developed intellectually as a basketball observer. However, it now seems to me that earlier this year, I penned an article arguing that the Blazers’ most likeable player was the sour Robert Williams III, claiming that he was my new favorite Blazer.
I guess old habits die hard.
However, it was clear from a young age that Buck was my favorite player.
As much a part of who I was as the fact that I enjoyed ice cream and always damaged white sneakers, that fact became one of those basic truths of my life.
Even after leaving Portland some 29 years ago, Buck remains my favorite player. It’s just canon by now. All of these long-dormant memories resurfaced on Friday when he was named a finalist for this year’s class of inductees into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
My admiration grew over time, surpassing our onomatological association, and I came to value his remarkable resilience and tough rebounding. I appreciated that my favorite player, who was well-known for his defensive integrity, did the grunt labor while everyone else seemed to be drawn to Clyde Drexler and Jerome Kersey.
Buck was in charge of the outlet pass that started the Blazers’ renowned fast break, according to another of those laminated pages from The Oregonian.
On every telecast, I searched for Buck and his signature goggles. Even if I was still a bit too young to fully understand what was going on, the fact that they made him easy to spot on TV also contributed to the solidification of my fandom during those heydays. I hardly realized that he had already established himself as an All-Star in New Jersey, winning Rookie of the Year and making it to the Nets’ All-Star team three times.
In 1996, I went to my first Blazers game, which was the season finale against the Lakers. In his comeback after being diagnosed with HIV five years prior, Magic Johnson played his final regular-season game. But for Buck, I was there. I liked to imagine that I willed him to a double-double that night, and I shouted loudly when he made free throws at our end of the court.
On April 27, 1996, Buck Williams, 52, of the Trail Blazers, takes a shot against the Utah Jazz.Davis Joel/The Oregonian
I was too young to realize that Buck’s time in Portland was coming to an end. Buck ended his career with two seasons as a reserve with the Knicks after signing as a free agent in New York following the Blazers’ elimination by the Jazz in the first round of the playoffs.
Buck never left my side.
When selecting jersey numbers for my school teams, I went with number 52. I sipped my Blazers Kool-Aid from the cups of the Dairy Queen. I even asked my high school teammates to call me Buck for a short, unfortunate time.
Not a good idea for teens who believe they are smart.
When the Blazers last advanced to the Finals, I was six years old. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to state that I paid great attention to Buck’s game during his prime.
I can’t imagine evaluating the 1992 Blazers in the same manner that my profession forces me to evaluate the present Blazers in relation to the team’s trajectory. I have no idea what the salary cap for the team was like back then, and I have no idea how much pressure the front management was under to keep the team competitive in the Western Conference.
The Trail Blazers were superheroes to a kid in the early 1990s. Even without the success, I guess the present Blazers are also, to a child today.
Despite my negative writing of Deandre Ayton, my kid brought home Ayton’s autograph on the underside of his ballcap from a Blazers game he attended with my mom, my Blazer-loving aunt Jan, and his Blazer-loving sister during the previous season.
He still searches for the large man who was gracious enough to pause and sign during broadcasts.
I haven’t regarded myself as a Blazers fan in a long time. The sight of those red, white, and black stripes in my living room used to make me jump with delight. When I was 13, I waited in line to get tickets to Game 6 of the 2000 Western Conference finals and wore face paint to games.
I was scheduled to be at a doctor s appointment that June morning, but my mom and, yes, Aunt Jan took me to the Rose Garden instead. The individual in front of me had her number drawn among the plaza’s over 20,000 supporters. I purchased tickets second. When I made my debut in Oregon, reporter Abby Haight wrote about me! as exclaiming, “This is beautiful,” while jumping all the way to the box office.
That joy and love could be traced back to Buck Williams.
When the Hall of Fame class is announced at the Final Four this year, Buck is far from a shoo-in like Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and Sue Bird. His career averages of 12.8 points and 10 rebounds don t exactly beg for enshrinement nearly three decades after his playing career ended.
I m sure there are those who think the Hall of Fame has widened its doors too far and risks becoming the Hall of Really Quite Good. Basketball-Reference.com, the modern-day bible of stat-keeping, gives Williams a Hall of Fame probability of 8%.
But to focus on numbers misses the extent of Buck s impact.
When I covered the Lakers, Michael Cooper was named a finalist for the Hall of Fame in 2021 and 2022. His Hall of Fame teammates, Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, vocalized support for their defensive-minded teammate, extolling his value on five championship teams. The lobbying worked. Last year, Cooper was inducted.
Could ex-Blazers like Drexler have a similar effect? I d love to hear from him.
That Oregonian page that I so admired as a kid also featured a quote from head coach Rick Adelman, a Hall of Fame inductee in 2021.
He doesn t worry about statistics, Adelman said. The only thing he worries about is doing everything he can to help us win.
And he did.
The Blazers won 50 games four times in Williams seven season as a Blazer.
I would submit that he was as essential to the Blazers reaching the two Finals as any member of those teams.
He was never an All-Star in Portland as he embraced a blue-collar role next to the Blazers flashier stars. But over the first 10 seasons of his career, he averaged 16.1 points and 11.7 rebounds per game. Only 10 players have posted those numbers over careers at least that long and each of them is enshrined in Springfield.
He missed all of 26 games through the first 14 years of his career, and only five in his first six seasons in Portland.
It s a level of durability that no modern player can approach.
After Williams was announced as a finalist on Friday, I texted with a former Blazers employee to contemplate Buck s case for the class.
Did we retire his number? the longtime staffer asked. I can t remember.
The Blazers have retired the numbers of 10 former players. The 90s Finals teams are well-represented.
Without thinking, I responded, Yeah, it s up there.
Except it isn t.
I thought I remembered watching Buck s jersey retirement ceremony. Seeing that No. 52 up in the rafters at Moda Center just like it is at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, honoring his spectacular run with the then-New Jersey Nets.
I was wrong.
It was my own personal Mandela Effect.
The Blazers have often gotten knocked for being too liberal when it comes to jersey retirement. And retiring Williams number opens the question of retiring Kersey s 25 and Kevin Duckworth s 00. And perhaps they should all be up there.
But the fact the Hall is finally acknowledging Buck s impact on the game tells me the Blazers probably should, too.
I don t know whether voters will ultimately decide Buck belongs in the Class of 2025 or a later one or if this is as far in the process as he ll ever get.
But to me, the question of Buck Williams in the Hall of Fame has the same answer as the one the former Blazers employee asked about whether Buck is memorialized in the Moda Center rafters.
In my mind, he s already there.
–Bill Oramis the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Stories by
Bill Oram
-
Bill Oram: Can Dylan Harper or Ace Bailey really save the Trail Blazers if they can t even save Rutgers?
-
What we ve learned about the red-hot Blazers amid their stunning turnaround
-
Bill Oram: Should the Blazers really be thinking playoffs? At this point, they might as well
