Because it’s kind of hard to get through a Sunday paper these days for a lot of reasons, I thought I’d point out Jeff Baker’s Sunday review, which was kind of buried, of David Halberstam’s classic book about the Trail Blazers.

Baker is a one-time Blazer beat reporter and he gives the book high marks, which most people do. I believe if you want to call yourself a fan of the Trail Blazers you really need to slog through this book. It’s a must. But I say “slog” because I’m probably one of the few readers who isn’t a huge fan of Halberstam’s ponderous style — where paragraphs seem to go on for days.

But the decorated author had a lot of inside access during the season he followed the team and certainly chronicled a unique time in the Blazers’ history. It was basically the breaking apart of the championship team and Halberstam ended up buying into the players’ side of the whole thing — that former owner Larry Weinberg was a cheapskate who should have torn up player contracts and overpaid all his players to keep them around.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered. Most of them had played their best basketball in Portland or were habitually injured and it would have fallen apart just about as quickly if they’d stayed.

In summary, “The Breaks of the Game” is way too much of a book not to be in print. I hope a whole new generation of Trail Blazer fans will have a chance now to peruse it.

(And an added bonus on the same page is Matt Love’s review of Harry Glickman’s classic “Promoter Ain’t a Dirty Word” — a very fun book that is NOT still in print but you can find at assorted second-hand stores in the area. True Blazer fans will want that book, for sure — as well as this great book and this one, too, to complete your Trail Blazer library.)

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This is an uncomfortable conversation for me but enough people have asked me about it (this happens when you get old — people ask you a lot more historical questions and assume you were there calling “next” on the day Doc Naismith nailed the peach baskets to the wall).

The latest Blazer announcement that No. 30 is being retired for two players — Terry Porter and Bobby Gross — caught me a little off guard. I mean, everyone knew the Blazers were going to hang Porter’s number at some point. Gross, though, was a surprise because we’re talking about a player here who played in only 486 Trail Blazer games and averaged just 9.2 points in those games. Those stats don’t come close to matching up with another No. 30, Rasheed Wallace.

Don’t get me wrong, I would be the last person to suggest Wallace’s number should be retired. His biggest contribution to Blazer history was inscribed on a T-shirt I still wear that says, “Both teams played hard.”

I’m not here today to bury anyone. A lot of the people mentioned in this post are friends of mine. Bob Gross was a key player on a Portland team that won an NBA championship and stats certainly aren’t everything when it comes to evaluating a player’s contribution to a franchise.

But I’ve always wondered, what exactly is the criteria for retiring a number?

Portland has laundry in the rafters right now honoring its former owner, Larry Weinberg, its former broadcaster, Bill Schonely, its former general manager, Harry Glickman, a former coach, Jack Ramsay and former players Dave Twardzik, Lionel Hollins, Larry Steele, Maurice Lucas, Clyde Drexler, Bill Walton, Lloyd Neal and Geoff Petrie. Porter and Gross will soon join them.

That’s a lot of cloth hanging from the ceiling of a team that’s won just one championship, isn’t it?

One of the people who has a number retired told me several years ago that he thought the Blazers made a huge mistake in not putting one banner up for the championship team — with all the numbers or names of the players on that team — but not actually retiring all those numbers. You know, honor all those guys but don’t get carried away by putting their number away.

I agree with that. I think retiring numbers should be saved for Hall of Fame caliber players — or people who have been with the franchise for a long period of time, like Schonely. And I’d hope that when retiring a player’s number, that fans could look up there and see that number and know who the player is, without the name even being attached to it. Clyde? That’s No. 22, of course. It always will be. Walton? 32! Luke? 20! You know those, right? It would have been silly for anyone else to attempt to wear those numbers after those guys wore them.

Lloyd Neal? He was No. 36. Larry Steele was 15. Twardzik had lucky 13. I love those guys. Great people. Now I hate to play this game, but fans do it all the time – you could start comparing statistical contributions and ask where is Jim Paxson’s No. 4? Mychal Thompson’s 43? What about Buck Williams’ 52? Jerome Kersey’s No. 25?

Again, the point isn’t to diminish anyone’s role in the history of the Trail Blazers. Congratulations to all of them. But when you need one program to identify the players on the court and another one to sort out the jerseys in the rafters, that may be a little much.

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Fans, ex-teammates, media and friends gathered in Memorial Coliseum Saturday morning to bid a final farewell to Kevin Duckworth. And I want to publicly acknowledge what a terrific job the Trail Blazer organization did to make it a wonderful gathering, from the stage setting to the video, the music, the roster of speakers and the atmosphere.

It was an emotional two hours that brought home to me how fortunate I was to be a beat reporter covering those great Blazer teams of the early 1990s. Not because of how many games they won, but because of what terrific people they were. Harry Glickman, speaking at the memorial service, spoke about “winning with good people” and he was so right.

As I watched Buck Williams, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey and Clyde Drexler (via videotape from Taiwan) speak so lovingly and eloquently about their late friend and teammate, it reminded me what an outstanding group of men made up that team. These players of intelligence, integrity and great passion came together under a coach, Rick Adelman, who knew how to put what was a bit of an odd mix together into a winning team. Adelman, also at the Saturday service, built a tremendous pride within the team that was the cornerstone of its success. I was lucky to watch it up close and Portland was fortunate to call the team its own.

As far as I’m concerned, that was a championship team. That it didn’t win the big trophy really doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. It won the hearts of its city and still owns a lot of those hearts. It won the respect of us all to this day. And it was a blueprint, off and on the court, for how to operate a successful pro sports franchise.

And the encouraging thing, of course, is that the Blazers now seem to be going about their business in much the same way. Duckworth knew this and during his post-playing career I’d never seen him happier than I had the last 12 months. He was a Trail Blazer again, back in the family — thanks to Larry Miller, Mike Golub, Kevin Pritchard and all those who have brought a conscience and a heart back to the franchise. The Blazers were a family Duck could once again be proud of.

This can be such a special franchise and it can have such a huge impact on the city and even the entire state. We can thank Kevin Duckworth for reminding us what the very best of the Blazers looks and feels like.

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