Strap on your helmets. It’s time for another round of “What if …”
You know, that speculative indulgence where we ponder what might have happened. Because, being sports fans, we recognize that the fantasy of what might have been is often more interesting than reality.
We played this game in a column a couple months ago, generating some thoughtful suggestions from helpful readers. Armed with that, we’ll try to get through another round of “What if …” without a single mention of Kevin Durant or Greg Oden. Sigh.
Not that we’ll leave out the Blazers entirely. Goodness knows they have been a veritable gold mine of “What if …” questions. Like this one:
• What if Arvydas Sabonis had joined the Blazers when he was drafted in 1986?
Sabonis didn’t arrive in Portland until nearly a decade later, when he was 30 years old. In “The Book of Basketball,” Bill Simmons writes, “By 1995, poor Sabonis ranked just behind Artis Gilmore on the Moving Like a Mummy Scale.”
Yet Sabonis still was an effective player, and in his prime, he was one of the great centers in basketball history. He was 7-foot-3, had 3-point range, and was a great passer.
The Blazers lost the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992, and won a league-high 63 games in 1991. With Sabonis at center, we’ll pencil in at least one title for that era — and two or three would not have been out of the question.
• What if Paul Allen had not saved the Seahawks?
In 1997, Allen bought the Seahawks from Ken Behring. How important was that? Well, Behring already had packed up the team’s offices and was moving the equipment to Southern California.
Without Allen, there would be no Seattle Seahawks. No Qwest Field. No Northwest memories of Super Bowl XL. And no Seattle Sounders. There might not even be any Octopus, Allen’s 416-foot yacht.
Hard to imagine a world without that.
• What if Danny Ainge had gone to college in the Northwest? What if he had gone to Oregon State?
Ainge came out of North Eugene High School in 1977, one of the best players in Oregon history. He went to Brigham Young and earned several national player of the year honors.
But what if he had been on that 1981 OSU team? Believe it or not, Oregon State used to be a power in men’s basketball. In 1981, the Beavers were ranked No. 1 in the nation for a time, but they were bounced from the NCAA Tournament in their first game.
Ainge, meanwhile, was driving through an entire defense to beat Notre Dame. If he had been at OSU, maybe the Beavers could have won a couple tournament games and altered the fortunes of the program.
Here’s a favorite Danny Ainge story. He once got into a scuffle with Michael Jordan, and Jordan said something like, “Quit fouling me.” Ainge retorted: “Yes, your Highness.”
• And finally, one of the epochal “What if …” questions in Northwest sports: What if Phil Knight hadn’t run track at the University of Oregon?
It was at Oregon where Knight met coach Bill Bowerman, who played a key role in the development of Nike.
Without that connection, there would be no Nike; Jordan’s commercial impact would have been significantly different; Oregon wouldn’t be benefitting nearly as much from Knight’s largesse; modern advertising would be altered; college coaches wouldn’t be paid $500,000 a year by shoe companies; athletic apparel would still consist of cotton T-shirts; Oregon wouldn’t have a multi-million dollar locker room and an expanded stadium; we wouldn’t be aware that “Bo Knows”; the swoosh wouldn’t be the most recognizable corporate logo in the world; we wouldn’t “Just do it”; and Wieden+Kennedy would be just another advertising agency.
Knight himself probably would still be wealthy. After all, he has an MBA from Stanford. But the world of sports would be completely altered, and that makes for one big “What if …” question.
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian and can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne
