Trail Blazers Tales: The life and times of covering the volatile Rasheed Wallace
(Top Photo: Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
By Jason Quick
Mar 20, 2020
When I started covering the Trail Blazers, my first interaction with Rasheed Wallace was not a good one.
It was 1999, during the NBA playoffs, and the Trail Blazers were in Salt Lake City to play Utah in the second round. I had not covered the team all season, but I was brought in to beef up the playoff coverage for The Oregonian, and I was writing the fourth- or fifth-most important story of the day or game. Low-guy-on-the-totem-pole stuff.
On this day, we were at a practice, and when the media was allowed into the locker room, I sidled up to J.R. Rider for an interview about something mundane like pick-and-roll defense.
As I sat next to Rider, I started into my questions, and it wasn’t long into my topics when I paused, distracted.
Whizzzzzzzz.
Rider chuckled.
I proceeded with my next question, but there was that sound again, right by my ear … whizzzzzzz.
This time, my eye caught something landing in front of Rider. It was a rubber band.
Another question. Another whizzzzzzz. Then another whizzz. Now, the rubber bands were coming so frequently that it was impossible to focus on the interview, especially with how entertained Rider was becoming at the development.
When I turned to my left, I saw the source of the ambush: It was Rasheed Wallace, sitting six feet away with a pile of rubber bands. I don’t believe he was trying to hit me, but I think he was trying to get them as close to my ear as possible.
I remember being equally confused, irritated and intimidated. But even as I turned to him and gave a “What the hell?” look, Wallace kept reloading and shooting. What struck me was the stone-faced, lack of emotion he showed while he kept shooting.
Keep in mind, I had never met Wallace. Never written about him. Probably never been this close to him. So his actions weren’t anything personal or grudge related.
Over the next five years, my interactions would only get worse.
It is a conflicted legacy Rasheed Wallace left in Portland, where he played for 7 1/2 seasons.
He has a cult-like following among fans, who loved his combination of skill and sass. He had an untouchable turnaround jumper, dunked with emotion, was an elite defender and was considered among the most intelligent and savvy players in the game at the time. Add that with his hardline, anti-authority stance against coaches, referees, management and media and he appealed to a large swath of fans. He was a rebel. A bad boy who gave zero fucks what anybody thought.
Some in recent years have attempted to reshape Wallace’s era here as him being misunderstood, or unfairly labeled by an older, white media in Portland that was bitter about his refusal to give interviews. That’s a neat theory, but it conveniently leaves out the turmoil Wallace created within teams.
It doesn’t take much to show that Wallace could be an ass. He was as rude and as crass as any other player I’ve dealt with in two decades, and there are examples of it all over the internet, including him throwing a towel in the face of a referee, throwing a towel in the face of teammate Arvydas Sabonis, and there’s accounts of him charging at coach Mike Dunleavy in the locker room in Los Angeles (Dunleavy, I’m told, wanted all that smoke, but teammates prevented Wallace from reaching the then-47-year-old coach).
But what often isn’t revealed is how much he frustrated his teammates, who couldn’t rely on him to stay in games — either mentally losing his focus because of refs, or outright getting ejected. (In the 2000-01 season, he was booted seven times, suspended twice by Dunleavy and amassed an NBA-record 41 technicals.)
In fact, to this day, players from those teams told me they still have debates about Wallace. Some argue that this player should have done more to control him, or that player should have tried more to rein him in. The inability to get the most out of Wallace torments that 2000-01 team to this day because the players felt they were talented enough to be NBA champions.
See, because on top of Wallace being unreliable, he also was an unwilling star. He was the team’s highest-paid player, its go-to-guy, but he rarely wanted to take the big shot, and he shied away from being a high-volume shooter, even if it was the best for the team.
For much of the time I covered Wallace, one of the major storylines around the team was his reluctance to assume that go-to-guy role. It was a storyline because the players were constantly talking about it behind closed doors.
Point guard Damon Stoudamire was the teammate closest to Wallace. He had Wallace’s ear and he best understood the mercurial power forward. As a result, coaches and teammates leaned heavily on Stoudamire to reach Wallace, but Stoudamire said it was futile because the organization couldn’t view Wallace through the right lens.
“Everybody here wanted to make Sheed the guy, but we needed to let Sheed be the guy in his own way,” Stoudamire said last month. “We got so hellbent trying to force-feed him, but he didn’t want to be that 20-point guy. And now, all you (media) are asking if Sheed is being aggressive enough blah-blah-blah and it’s like, no man, look at his history: He went to North Carolina. Dudes at Carolina just play the right way. So why couldn’t we do it another way?”
The problem with doing it another way, Stoudamire later conceded, was that Wallace so easily enticed you into thinking he could be the guy. He was so dang talented he could be that dominant force … when he wanted to.
“He brought a lot of that shit on himself when he would come out and score 40 points on Antonio McDyess in three quarters, like that shit was easy,” Stoudamire said. “You do that, you got people salivating.”
In the five seasons I was around him, I never had a conversation with Wallace. Not one.
When I was first assigned to the beat full-time, I approached Wallace at his locker and introduced myself. He never turned his back or acknowledged me.
In fact, the only time Rasheed Wallace ever acknowledged me, it was in a fit of rage.
We were in the Alamodome in San Antonio, and it was the first game between the Blazers and Spurs since Portland sent Steve Smith to San Antonio for Derek Anderson and Steve Kerr.
After the game, Smith came to the Blazers locker room to visit with former teammates, and when he walked in, I was standing in the general vicinity of Wallace’s locker. Smith got a big smile and said, “Still trying to get a quote from Sheed, Quick?”
By then, I had mostly given up trying to coax a quote from the team’s best player. If he was particularly outstanding in a game I would be obligated to ask him a question so I could put the required “Wallace declined to comment” in my story, but for the most part, I left him alone.
So when Smith made the quip about getting a quote from Sheed, I harrumphed a loud raspberry (perhaps too loudly) and said I had given up long ago.
It must have been the raspberry, or maybe he was just in one of his moods, but Wallace immediately whipped around from his locker and snapped his towel down from his shoulder.
“WHY WOULD I TALK TO YOU CATS? ALL YOU DO IS TEAR US DOWN …” Wallace roared as he turned.
As he was erupting, it was clear he was headed straight toward me. I started some kind of rebuttal, but before I got much out I felt hands on me from behind and to my side. It was Kerr and guard Rick Brunson. They got between the charging Wallace and me and back-pedaled me out of the locker room.
The next game, back in Portland, Brunson was warming up and he stopped shooting to approach me. He said he hoped I didn’t take his escorting me out of the locker room in the wrong way.
“You just never know what is going to happen with him,” Brunson told me. “I was trying to protect you.”
As the years have passed, I have grown to appreciate Wallace more as a player, particularly his defense. If I had one regret of my coverage of Wallace, it would be that I didn’t focus more on his defense and what an attribute it was for those Blazers teams.
Dunleavy would say he always felt the Blazers had an advantage in the West because they rarely, if ever, had to double team power forwards because of Wallace’s defense. And think about that, the West at that time was an incredible collection of power forwards: Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Karl Malone, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Webber, McDyess … and Wallace could hold his own, one-on-one.
But I have to admit, the way he treated the media, and the way he acted to others, it clouded my view of him. That may not be the right thing to say, but it’s human nature. From the first day on the job, I tried to connect with him, to no avail.
The most insight into Wallace came from observation. Before many games he would sit in front of his locker with a black Sharpie. He would use the pen to meticulously color in the Jerry West silhouette on the NBA logo on his socks. One time I heard somebody ask him why.
“It’s a black man’s league,” Wallace said.
I don’t know Wallace well enough to know where he stood on race. I have a sense it mattered to him, and he carried himself as if there wasn’t much anybody could do to change his mind — on anything. That was the thing about Wallace. There was no gray area with him. He was either with you, or against you … he was either in, or he was out. There was no straddling a topic, no waffling on a situation.
It’s why I find it ironic that today Wallace has somewhat of a conflicted reputation in Portland, one that hangs in the gray area of legacies.
There are fans who loved him for his talent because, in their eyes, he was real and raw. There are teammates who wondered what could have happened had he better controlled his emotions. And there are those like me, who will never understand how a guy can be so rude and disrespectful to people he doesn’t even know.
So yes, it’s a complicated legacy for a player who was so talented, so volatile and so brash. The beauty of sports is we all get to choose what matters to us, and how we remember a player. Whichever way you lean, or decide on Wallace, I can assure you one thing: He doesn’t care.
Previous Trail Blazers Tales: Scottie Pippen | Damon Stoudamire
Jason Quick is a senior writer for The Athletic. Based in Portland, he writes about personalties and trends of the NBA, with a focus on human connections. He has been named Oregon sportswriter of the year four times and has won awards from APSE, SPJ, and Pro Basketball Writers Association. Follow Jason on Twitter @jwquick
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