Laker Game On Saturday Marks 'Official' 40th Birthday Of Trail Blazers Franchise

02/04/10

Written by: trailblazers

Saturday marks another Trail Blazers historical milestone, the ‘official’ 40th birthday of the franchise.
 
It was on February 6, 1970, that team founder Harry Glickman’s diligence was rewarded and the Trail Blazers were granted a franchise by the NBA’s expansion committee and the league’s Board of Governors.  In recognition of this milestone, we’ve transcribed an excerpt from the foreword of 1995’s “Rip City!” coffee table book, where Glickman provided a first-hand account of the origin of the Trail Blazers.
 
“Rip City! A Quarter Century with the Portland Trail Blazers”
Excerpted from the book’s foreword
 
By Harry Glickman
 
Let me begin by reconstructing some of the events that led to Portland joining professional sports’ big leagues. Back in 1954, following a campaign called, “Big League or Sad Sack City,” voters approved funds for the construction of a new coliseum – along with other expenditures, including remodeling our zoo. Once that issue passed, I immediately began seeking an NBA franchise.

At that time, the league only had nine teams and was based almost exclusively in the East. Commissioner Maurice Podoloff’s mentality was, more or less, that anything west of Brooklyn was foreign territory.

But in the 1960s, under new commissioner Walter Kennedy, the NBA embarked on an aggressive expansion campaign that put teams in Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle. The Lakers and Warriors had moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco, so the West was open.  From our standpoint, all these cities were natural rivals of Portland from our days in baseball’s old Pacific Coast League and the Western Hockey League.

I had known Kennedy from his days running the New York office of the Harlem Globetrotters, so we had a friend on our side when we applied for a franchise.

Our original intention was to put together a local group and then conduct a public stock offering, but that plan fell through when we couldn’t obtain interim financing. And the truth is that I was getting desperate by the time the NBA Board of Governors scheduled a meeting for February 5, 1970, in Los Angeles.

Dick Vertlieb, the former general manager of the SuperSonics, called about that time to say that someone in Seattle might be interested in a Portland franchise. I invited Dick to bring the gentleman to Portland, and you can imagine my surprise when the man turned out to be Herman Sarkowsky – my wife’s former brother-in-law.

Herman let us know he wasn’t keen on any interim financing arrangement, but that he would be interested in buying the franchise if he could get two other partners involved. As it turned out, I was leaving the next day to meet the league’s expansion committee in Los Angeles. So Herman told me he’d try to get in touch with his prospective partners and he’d phone me when he heard from them.

The bottom line, though, was that I didn’t have much to work with at the expansion meeting, which was held in the hotel suite of Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin. I hadn’t heard from Herman, so I presented my plan for a public stock offering – and was promptly told that somebody would have to come up with a substantial part of the down payment on the $3.7 million expansion price.

I left Abe’s suite, heading for my own hotel and some bad-news calls to the investors back in Portland. But then I remembered that I’d left my raincoat in Abe’s bedroom – and when I went to retrieve it, Sarkowsky called. He told me that his partners, Larry Weinberg and Bob Schmertz, were prepared to jump in and buy the franchise.

That misplaced raincoat and subsequent telephone call changed the history of sports in Oregon forever.

I returned to the expansion meeting and told everyone that I had solid investors who were ready to put up the entire purchase price. What we needed, they said, was a letter of credit for $750,000 that had to be presented to a governors’ meeting by noon the next day.

Sarkowsky made arrangements with his bank in Tacoma for a sister bank to issue me the letter of credit. But that bank was located in downtown Los Angeles, and when I went to pick up the precious letter the following morning, I ran into a monumental traffic jam. I finally retrieved the letter and raced to the meeting, which was being held at the offices of the National General Corporation.

When I didn’t arrive on time, Pollin excused himself to go to the bathroom and remained there until I came dashing in 20 minutes late. I’ve often kidded Abe that it was the longest bathroom visit on record.

Along with representatives from Cleveland and Buffalo, we were told to return to the meeting at 3 p.m., when we’d be informed of the league’s decision. When I got back, along with Nick Mileti from Cleveland, Ray Patterson told us to look surprised when the commissioner appeared, but that we were now members of the NBA.
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