Portland Trail Blazers: The Top 5 Role Players of All Time

The Portland Trail Blazers have famously come close to tasting victory. Whether by luck or by lack of talent, Rip City has bemoaned the beleagured franchise's rotten luck while failing to enter the winner's circle. 

Talent in Portland hasn't been scarce, either. Seemingly, the role players which make up the nuts and bolts of great championship teams -- the secondary-level guys that carried the great Bulls, Lakers, Pistons and Knicks teams of yore -- have been in abundance in Portland.

Even while the thought may seem tongue-in-cheek, it serves Rip City well to say it's had its fair share of great role players; the glue that keeps great teams together.

Harvey Grant

Harvey Grant was a budding NBA star in 1990, averaging more than 18 PPG and earning recognition from his peers for being one of the most improved players starting the new decade. Grant's career petered out in the next five years, but not before helping the Trail Blazers off the bench to the tune of 9 PPG from 1993 to 1996.

What Grant made up for in the face of his 4-time NBA champion brother Horace was giving an aging, early '90s Trail Blazer team heart and fresh legs. The spark off the bench for the last few years of the Drexler-Kersey-Porter era in Portland, Harvey Grant brought something else to the table -- some really kickin' eye protection. 

Steve Blake

Steve Blake was the consummate professional while in Portland, even though the organization didn't always seem to show him much respect. Blake, a pass-first point guard, was overshadowed by the Blazer management's constant search for a "point guard of the future" all while dealing with the constant backlog at the SG and SF position (not to mention having myriad young PGs behind him).

Blake was the 3-pt specialist on a team that was glacier-slow on offense, and his ability to feed the rock to the open man was more than ample. It probably didn't help that he had a Chris Mullin haircut, but Blake was a fan favorite and it showed. 

Patty Mills

Patty Mills has played in just 84 regular season games as a Portland Trail Blazer but it's not what he does with the ball in his hand as what he does when he's away from the roundball. That is, when he's on the bench.

Mills is constantly pep-talking teammates, rushing out to midcourt to give them high-fives, slapping them on the butt and leading the rest of the bench crew in cheers, towel-waving and Brian Scalabrine-esque levels of sideline support. Really, it's amazing he's been able to make such a large impact in such a small amount of time.

Joel Przybilla

Pryzbilla was the rock in the middle of the Blazers lineup for years, fulfulling his role as a massive, foul-absorbing, defensive rebounding big man with poor footwork and a midwestern drawl that made him seem very out-of-place in a hip, flashy and fast league.

Despite this, Joel was the veteran leader on a Blazer team that has been young for most of the last decade, acting as a big brother through voice as well as on-court production. While he was traded in the effort for Gerald Wallace last season, Pryzbilla will and always will be a Portland Trail Blazer to the fans in Rip City.

Lloyd Neal

Lloyd Neal was an undersized banger on one of the greatest Trail Blazer teams of all-time: the 1977 championship squad.

Although he played the PF at just 6'7" and 225 lbs., Neal averaged the toughest 11 PPG and 7.7 RPG anyone in this league has ever seen. Fans loved Neal for his voracious play, willingness to act as a member of the team and ability to defend some of the most elite players of his day including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Neal's No. 36 jersey was the first to be retired and hung in the Rose Garden and in a town like Portland, where sports history doesn't go untaught, Neal still stands as a fan-favorite.