The Season of Change
At the conclusion of the 1987-88 campaign, the team was purchased by (current owner) Paul Allen. The team quickly fell apart during the year, as the issue of who should start became paramount. In addition, many veterans were unhappy with Mike Schuler's coaching style; as a result the team limped to a 39–43 record and barely made the playoffs (where it was ousted by the Lakers 3–0 in the first round). Schuler was fired; assistant Rick Adelman was given the head coaching job on an interim basis.
That summer, Sam Bowie and a draft pick were traded to the New Jersey Nets for veteran forward Buck Williams, a respectable defensive and rebounding power forward. Vandeweghe was sent to the New York Knicks for a draft pick, and Johnson was taken by the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves in the expansion draft. DraÏen Petroviç was permitted by the Yugoslav authorities to come to Portland and join the team. For the second round of the draft, Portland selected a young forward from UConn, Clifford Robinson.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Portland Trail Blazers
Famous quotes containing the words season and/or change:
“The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairyland. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry ... like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The will to change begins in the body not in the mind
My politics is in my body, accruing and expanding with every act of resistance and each of my failures.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)