Popularity
According to Oregon sportswriter Kerry Eggers, Schonely is considered by fans "the one constant link with Oregon's only major-league team."
NBA trainer Ron Culp said of Schonely in 1990, "Bill Schonely is the symbol of the love affair the fans have with the Trail Blazers. ... He's part of their immediate family. Everything else with the Blazers have changed over the past 20 years, but you just don't mess with the Schonz."
Schonely is often compared to legendary announcers Chick Hearn and Johnny Most, of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, respectively. At Schonely's induction to the 2002 Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, former Blazers center Bill Walton said: "Bill Schonely is as important to sports in the Northwest as Chick Hearn was to sports in Southern California. There are very few people in the history of Western Civilization who have had that kind of an impact." Walton also said: "Bill Schonely is the most important figure in the history of Oregon sports, with all due respect to Phil Knight and Maurice Lucas. Bill Schonely is the man who convinced people that sports are worthwhile."
A restaurant in the Rose Garden is named in his honor, the Pyramid Taproom at Schonely's Place.
The Trail Blazers organization retired Schonely's microphone on November 3, 2003.
The 1992 Public Enemy album, Greatest Misses features the voice of Schonely calling Trail Blazer games on the track "Air Hoodlum."
Read more about this topic: Bill Schonely
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“In everything from athletic ability to popularity to looks, brains, and clothes, children rank themselves against others. At this age [7 and 8], children can tell you with amazing accuracy who has the coolest clothes, who tells the biggest lies, who is the best reader, who runs the fastest, and who is the most popular boy in the third grade.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)