THE OREGONIAN

The long summer, the bumptious off-season, the roster detonation, the insecure seasons to come, we can handle.

It’s the 48 more minutes that seem unbearable.

Through a cruel NBA scheduling quirk, we must endure 48 more playing minutes of one of North American sports’ all-time abominations, the April 2001 Trail Blazers.

Remember when the NBA playoffs started with best-of-three series? Who changed that? Why? Is it too late to rescind?

Somehow we have to get through this last haunt. I suggest we all inhale and visualize serene thoughts like Italian lakes and amber waves of grain and David Stern granting Rasheed Wallace a five-year suspension from the NBA. Take up yoga.

Forty-eight more minutes, the potential for added embarrassment curdling inside each next minute. It isn’t the losing. It’s the Trail Blazers’ uncanny combination of villainousness and gutlessness. At least, growing up, our story villains had guts.

They’re putting Game 3 on national TV today, but we shall fumble around for solace. Maybe it might placate some Oregon localists. Might keep more people from moving in.

“Hey George, where’s that team from?” “Oregon, Martha.” “Wow, what’d those people do to deserve that?”

Breathe, people. Breathe.

You know the fear as the world’s thorniest Rose Garden flings open its doors once more. You know that once the April 2001 Trail Blazers create a remarkable nadir, that does not mean they can’t create another. You could sit through three quarters Thursday night, think they’re just not good enough, think General Manager Bob Whitsitt a buffoon, when that atrocious fourth quarter met your gut with a sucker punch you could’ve seen coming from Kalamazoo.

Yeoman human Steve Smith gets a technical. Commendable stand-up Damon Stoudamire gets a technical. Venerable pro Dale Davis gets a very flagrant.

Then, just as your heart might spend a few pangs for Scottie Pippen, he commits a technical.

No, wait, it’s worse. He commits a thoroughly base poke at Kobe Bryant’s sore ribs.

It’s a quarter for the ages, fit for a public-square videotape burning or burial under a stone marked “EMBARRASSMENT”--enough, on its own, to make a reasonable city volunteer for the NBA’s much-needed contraction process. At least many American children probably slept through it. At least TV ratings are down.

At last, there are four more quarters. They sit ahead today, all-menacing, like a job interview or an unpleasant confrontation with a friend or intricate dental work. It’s amazing the practice of sports-watching, all rooted in Dad taking your hand to cross the street to the ballpark, could brook this level of dread, where it seems the worst-case Game 3 scenario would be, well, overtime.