Photograph Source: Portland’s Hoosegow Hoopers – CC BY-SA 3.0
Untold: Jail Blazers is a documentary streaming on Netflix now that captures the lives of talented and tainted NBA players on and off the court in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The documentary is based on Kerry Eggers’ book Jail Blazers: How the Portland Trail Blazers Became the Bad Boys of Basketball.
Damon Stoudamire, Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells, former top Portland players, get the most screen time. In brief, they drew acclaim and ire from fans in Portland and NBA management.
The documentary explores why this was the case in the framework of a love-hate relationship. At one point, hometown fans cheer when the Trail Blazers win games, then turn on the same players as they face headwinds.
High points for the Trail Blazers are challenging the LA Lakers and nearly beating the team in the Western Conference playoffs. Low points are multiple law enforcement encounters.
Culture shock in part captures the era of this trio of elite black hoopers in Portland, a majority white city in the Pacific Northwest. Allow me to explain.
Jail Blazers allows Stoudamire, Wallace and Wells to tell their side of the story. For that reason the documentary is educational, since the winners write the history books, and the trio of former Trail Blazers do much winning on the court in contrast to their defeats off the hardwood.
It isn’t every day that pro athletes who get arrested on marijuana charges have a Netflix platform that humanizes them in their trials and triumphs. This documentary does that.
Recall that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the War on Drugs continued to cast a long shadow on the black population in the U.S.
The documentary doesn’t contextualize this dynamic, yet to deny the Drug War’s impact culturally and legally is short sided.
As Wallace, who still holds a league record for technical fouls in a season, recounts, the players’ fondness for “bling” cars, clothes and music created a negative atmosphere for them. He is, like Jack Johnson, the deceased former heavyweight boxing champ, unapologetically black.
White America exacts a price for being black, pro athlete or otherwise. For example, Stoudamire shares his experience of three police stops in a single day in Portland.
Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft with Bill Gates, hired Bob Whitsitt to be the general manager of the Trail Blazers in 1994. Dubbed “Trader Bob,” Whitsitt’s player acquisitions come under no small scrutiny.
Allen’s deep pockets created their own rules for building an NBA team. His money didn’t talk, it screamed.
Winning was everything. That holds true then and now.
Whitsitt obeyed his boss. That was and is the corporate rule.
Employees obey. Or they exit from the employer.
Amid the drama on and off the court, Wells gets villainized for a quote in a Sports Illustrated story. As he shares in the documentary, the quote has taken him 20 years to live down.
Wells’ candid comments about the fans in Portland reflects his lived experience there. Apparently, such personal honesty crossed a line of acceptability, and delivered him into villainy.
There’s a history of black athletes in America taking controversial stands here. Recall heavyweight champion boxer Muhammad Ali refusing induction into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, and facing a whirlwind of reaction when he said that no Vietcong ever called him the N-word.
The NBA was a big business in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but not the global enterprise that it is now. Then and currently; however, capital rules the roost.
The growth of investment capital in the NBA brand creates its own momentum. For players who move outside their assigned lanes, this can mean collateral damage to them, despite or because of their victories against opponents.
