Portland Trail Blazers

The Portland Trail Blazers were founded in 1970 after a public naming contest. “Trail Blazers” honoured the Oregon Trail and the pioneer spirit that shaped the state, a nod to families who crossed rivers, mountains and plains to start again in the far West. Fans soon shortened it to the Blazers, and the name stuck as a neat fit for a city that prizes independence and a forward-looking streak.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the Oregon Trail carried more than 400,000 people across some 2,000 miles from Missouri to the Willamette Valley. Travellers in ox-drawn wagons faced swollen rivers, steep passes, disease, hunger and hard weather. Many made it; many did not. Those who did found fertile valleys and a mild climate that promised a better life. Portland grew at the end of that road, at the meeting of the Willamette and Columbia, and became a natural gateway for timber, wheat and goods moving by river, rail and sea. The pioneer story has a second truth too: Native peoples — including the Kalapuya, Chinookan and others — were displaced by settlement, disease and treaty. Naming the team the Trail Blazers ties Portland’s basketball to both the grit of that journey and the complicated history beneath it.

Portland’s city story mirrors that mix of risk and reinvention. In the late nineteenth century it boomed on timber and shipping; a famous coin toss between Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove settled the city’s name. During the Second World War, Henry Kaiser’s shipyards in Portland and across the river in Vancouver turned out Liberty ships at pace, drawing workers from across the country. The 1948 Vanport Flood destroyed wartime housing and reshaped the area’s communities. In the later twentieth century the city leaned into planning, bridges and green space, earning the “City of Roses” nickname and a reputation for craft, books and bikes. Nike’s rise in nearby Beaverton added another strand to the region’s sporting culture.

The club’s badge is one of the NBA’s most distinctive. The red-and-black pinwheel was designed by team founder Harry Glickman’s cousin. Its ten lines stand for five offensive players and five defensive players in motion — two teams twisting around a shared axis. It looks modern even now: abstract, balanced, and instantly Portland.

On the court, the Blazers struck gold early. In only their seventh season they won the 1977 NBA Championship, with Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas and coach Jack Ramsay beating the 76ers and turning Memorial Coliseum into a cauldron. Broadcaster Bill Schonely’s off-the-cuff cry — “Rip City!” — became the club’s rallying call. The late 1980s and early 1990s brought another surge: Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter and Jerome Kersey reached the Finals in 1990 (losing to the Pistons) and 1992 (to Michael Jordan’s Bulls), cementing Portland as one of the league’s loudest, most loyal markets. The 2000s were choppy during the “Jail Blazers” stretch, but the club rebuilt around Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, then Damian Lillard, whose deep shooting and late-game nerve gave the city fresh magic — from the 2014 and 2019 series-winning daggers to a run to the Western Conference Finals in 2019.

The Portland Trail Blazers are more than a basketball team. They are wagon ruts and river docks, shipyard sparks and steel bridges, Rip City noise and Dame Time threes, Walton’s crown and Drexler’s glide. Their badge is a pinwheel in motion — the clash and union of two fives — and a tidy emblem for a city that still likes to blaze its own trail.