A sad day for all Blazermaniacs across the globe as the man responsible for putting together the lone NBA Championship title team from the city of Portland has passed away at the age of 80 at his home in Lake Oswego, OR.
In addition to the Red Hot And Rollin' Blazers of the 1976-77 season, he was also responsible for assembling the Blazer team that had perhaps the most popular players of all time, in terms of appeal to the local community, which would be the teams that played in the 1990 and 1992 NBA Finals with players such as Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, and Jerome Kersey. Those teams were also aided with some shrewd trades as well, getting the veteran Buck Williams from New Jersey and Kevin Duckworth from San Antonio, the latter coming in exchange for the disgruntled College Player Of The Year Walter "The Truth" Berry, who wouldn't work that hard upon joining and then found himself at the end of the bench wondering why he wasn't getting more playing time than Kersey.
Of course, to the general sports fan at large, he's still best known as the man who passed over Micheal Jordan to grab the fragile Sam Bowie, and it is not our place here to revisit the reasons for the decision. The rest of Inman's draft record in Portland will show that he had a good eye for spotting talent, starting off with having back to back Rookie Of The Year winners in Geoff Petrie, from the first Blazer team on 1970-12, and Sidney Wicks in 71-72. In the Wicks draft, he also selected the hard working fan favourite Larry Steele in the third round, the same round he would also select Lloyd Neal the next year, and these two players were extremely valuable components on the championship team that would be assembled in the next couple of years.
Also, he was keen enough to make sure that the Blazers got ahold of power forward Maurice Lucas and guard David Twardzik in the ABA dispersal draft of 1976, the final pieces of the championship puzzle that was coached by Jack Ramsay. Interestingly, Twardzik himself had been drafter by Inman and the Blazers back in 1972, but since Twardzik had attended college at Old Dominion, that was the reason that he stayed close to home to play for the Virgina Squires of the ABA instead of flying across the country to play for a new expansion team that wasn't very good at all. Oh yeah, I do believe that a gentlemen named Julius Erving was playing for the Squires at the time, not a bad teammate to be with I'd say.
It was sad that the championship team that Inman assembled fell apart in a haze of injuries and bad feelings in the wake of the 1977-78 season collapse, where the Blazers had blasted off to a 50-10 start, serious contenders to best the Lakers single season victory total of 69, only to be eliminated in the first round by the Seattle Supersonics in a 4-2 series.
I can still hear people going "LaRue WHO?" when Inman picked the Loyola (Chicago) center of North Carolina's Bob McAdoo in 72-73, which is still a pick that Blazer fans have puzzled over for years.
Through the good and the bad, rooting for the Blazers was always fun (at least until the Jail Blazers showed up :rolleyes: ), and Stu Inman was largely responsible for many of the excellent memories that I have today, especially in the way that being a Blazermaniac really was a communal-type activity; I know of people who normally wouldn't give much thought of sports becoming enamored of the team and quality of people who played for the franchise. Thank you for you work Stu....it was really appreciated.
STU
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