Portland Trail Blazers fans are getting kind of bored with the team's current roster, purged over the past months of many of the bad characters that had alienated its loyal fan base and led to the team being referred to as the "Jail Blazers."
"I guess most of us felt that it couldn't get any worse with the old team of Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells and everybody," said Larry McMurtle, a longtime season ticketholder, "but these guys are friggin' lifeless. There's nothing to talk about, no character whatsoever."
"I don't like athletes who are criminals, but this is awful," said Jim Meier, another ticketholder. "Before the Trail Blazers had a national identify, but now we're nothing, vanilla. What are we fans supposed to get excited over and talk about with each other: Ôhey, did you see that turnaround jumper that Shareef Abdur-Rahim made last night in the 11-point loss to the Sonics?' No way. That's boring."
Portland management admits the city has not rallied around the new roster as it hoped it would.
"There's absolutely no buzz around this team right now in Portland," said team president Steve Patterson. "If attendance doesn't pick up we're going to have to stir things up a bit, like planting some weed on Damon Stoudamire or maybe seeing if we can get Zach Randolph to get another DUI or something. We still have some criminals on our team, so we have options."
