Portland Trail Blazers: Top Ten Worst Blazer Injuries of All Time

As a Trail Blazers fan, I get sick to my stomach if I think about one more injured patellar tendon or meniscus tear or any kind.

But let's be honest.  The Trail Blazers and injuries seem to go together like Lindsey Lohan and bad press.  No matter how hard they try, they just can't seem to get through a complete season without some key player suffering some sort of major injury.

I decided to make a list of what I feel are the ten most notable cases in team history, with the higher rankings being given to players whose injuries were the most impactful.  That's somewhat of a judgment call, since it is hard to judge the ceiling of what a certain player would have done if blessed with good health. 

Feel free to comment if you notice anyone notable missing or if you have any other feedback.

10. Travis Outlaw

We're gonna start off with the injuries that did have an impact on the overall success of the team, but to a lesser extent than some of the others that will be mentioned later.

Travis Outlaw was drafted straight out of high school by the Blazers, and spent much of his first three seasons on or near the end of the bench.  With time he became a trusted crunch-time scorer and important part of the Blazers offense, essentially taking over the sixth-man role by his fourth and fifth seasons with the team.

Just a few games into the 2009-10 season, Outlaw suffered a broken bone in his left foot, essentially keeping him in street clothes for the rest of his time with the team.  He was traded later on to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the deal that brought in Marcus Camby.

It's a shame that he went down, especially at a time when multiple other Blazers were also struggling with ongoing injuries.  He has really struggled with his shot since coming back, and it remains to be seen whether he can regain his confidence and justify the four years remaining on his current deal with the New Jersey Nets.

9. Joel Przybilla

Joel Przybilla has been a member of the Trail Blazers since 2004, and had figured prominently into the teams plans despite having a career-long history of missing significant time due to injuries.  He was the starting center for quite a while and provided invaluable depth once Greg Oden joined the team.

The injury bug bit again big time over the last two seasons, as Przybilla could hardly stay on the court.  He suffered a ruptured patella tendon in his knee in December of 2009, which was to cost him the rest of that season.

For good measure, he fell in the shower about three months later and aggravated the knee problem, requiring more surgery.  This prolonged absence caused him to miss the rest of the 2009-10 season, the entire offseason, and the first part of the 2010-11 season as well. 

When he came back this past season, he wasn't the same player as before, clearly rusty from the long layoff.  Przybilla has never been an offensive force, but all areas of his game were much weaker than before the injuries.  He was traded mid-season to the Charlotte Bobcats in the deal that brought Gerald Wallace to Portland.

8. Rudy Fernandez

Rudy Fernandez was an electrifying yet inconsistent member of the Blazers team over his first three years in the NBA.  The truth is that while he quickly became a fan favorite, in spite of recurring trade demands at various times during his NBA career, he never quite lived up to the hype associated with his arrival to the league.

The reason Fernandez is so high on this list is becuase we've seen both sides of the coin with him.  On the one hand, he is a tremendous athlete who has both competed in the NBA Slam Dunk contest and set what at the time was the record for three pointers made by an NBA rookie with 159.

After a strong rookie season he looked poised to become the teams sixth man and primary shooting guard behind Brandon Roy, but it was not to be.  He suffered a nasty fall during the 2009-10 season as a result of a hard foul from Trevor Ariza, and really hasn't been the same since. 

 That fall caused him to miss significant time last season as well, as he was required to undergo another surgery for lingering back issues that most likely resulted from the original fall.  His confidence wavered this past season and he was unable to take advantage of the increased playing time afforded him with the ongoing injury issues to Brandon Roy.

It's been a bit of a rough ride for Rudy in Portland.  I really hope he's able to take advantage of a fresh start in Dallas, where he was traded on draft night, and get back to where he was headed his rookie year. 

7. Zach Randolph

Zach Randolph was never the most beloved player during his years in Portland, but there has never been a doubt in anyone's mind that the guy can play.  He can be solid defensively and is an absolute beast in the paint - one of very few NBA players that can be counted on to give you 20 points and 10 rebounds a game, night in and night out.

Despite all that skill and potential, Randolph had a rough time in Portland.  Various incidents, on and off the court, certainly contributed to the realization by team management that it was time for the team to part ways and head in a different direction when they traded him to the New York Knicks.

Injury probably played a part as well.  He injured his hand and was lost for the season, in what turned out to be his final year with the Blazers.  It's doubtful that his injury was the primary reason for him being moved, but it certainly would have made it easier for the Blazers to talk themselves into trading away their best player at the time for far less than what he was worth.  If he hadn't been hurt, who knows?

6. Arvydas Sabonis

Some people might call it a bit of a stretch to put Sabonis here at no. 6, but the truth is that one of the biggest what-if questions in franchise history will always center on him and what could have been if he had spent his prime playing in Portland for the Trail Blazers.

Sabonis was drafted by the Blazers in 1986 but didn't arrive in Portland until 1995, when he was already 31, an age at which the majority of players, and especially players of his size, have already started to decline.  Injuries while in the NBA did not have a huge impact on his play, but those he suffered before he even got here were the biggest problem.

An article by The Oregonian gives more details on the kinds of foot and ankle problems that Sabonis was dealing with when he arrived in Portland, and which gave him trouble for the rest of his career.  He was still a force, being the size that he was, but apparently nothing near the kind of player that the Blazers originally thought they were getting when they drafted him ten years earlier.

It's entirely possible that had Sabonis come straight to the NBA after being drafted, he could have made the difference for those Blazers teams that came so close to an NBA title in the early 1990's.  No one can really know for sure, but I guess this is where video games come in handy.  NBA 2K11, anyone?

5. Brandon Roy

Brandon Roy has been the Trail Blazers best player over the past five seasons, with the exception of this last year, when LaMarcus Aldridge took over the role of go-to guy and crunch time scorer for much of the season.  It's especially hard for fans like me to see the difficult situation he finds himself in right now because we are used to Brandon being able to play at a very high level and to do it consistently.  At this point, no one really seems to be expecting him to be able to return to that former level of play.

 No one else in a Blazers uniform right now is able to electrify a home crowd the way Roy can.  His 18-point explosion in the fourth quarter of the Blazers' first round series against the Mavericks this past year was a reminder that, even with his knees having basically no cartilidge left, he can still put the team on his back for long stretches of a game.

Recurring knee problems, which have existed since his college days, are nothing new for Roy.  Two seasons ago, he came back from knee surgery with a little over week to recover to try and help his team finally win a first round series against Phoenix.  No one will ever question his heart.  But what about the rest of his body?  What would the Blazers be able to do if he was healthy?  What can be expected from him going forward?

Roy can still succeed in the NBA for several more years, but he will have to adapt.  Barring some incredible new advances in medicine that can totally repair his knees, he's not going to be able to bring it every night.  He's going to have to pick his times carefully because it clearly takes a lot out of him at this point.  Injuries may prevent him from future appearances at the All-Star Game, but that doesn't mean he can't continue to be a big part of the Blazers' plans moving forward.

4. Greg Oden

So much has been said and written about Greg Oden's injury woes that it almost feels wrong to really say too much about it at this point.  He gets the no. 4 spot, ahead of Roy, for the following reasons:

1) His status as a former no.1 draft pick; when you get the first choice out of all the players in a given draft, you normally expect someone who is going to become a franchise player and give you several quality years, at the very least peaking with two or three all-star selections.  Oden has not been able to stay on the court long enough for us to even know if he is a true franchise cornerstone, although he has shown glimpses of brilliance.

2) The success of the no. 2 pick in that draft, Kevin Durant.  Oden will always be remembered as the guy drafted ahead of Kevin Durant, who is now one of the top 10 players in the league and probably MVP candidate every season for the next decade.  Blazer fans don't expect Oden to be Durant, they just want Oden to play.  But most others will see him in this light.

3) Injury history of Blazer big men. Fair or not, people look at Oden and see a continuation of what has always seemed to be the biggest obstacle against whoever is lining up at the 5 spot in Portland.  Obviously one case has nothing to do with another, but it has definitely taken a mental toll on Oden, as people have branded him as just another Blazer big man with bad legs.

4) No memorable moments to date.  This one is the killer.  Oden doesn't have a defining game, a big playoff moment, or anything really even close to it.  If he never comes back healthy, he won't have the positive memories that guys like Roy have to balance out the negative.

Hope still remains for Oden though, as does the thought of what is possible for this team if he does find a way to stay healthy, even if only for a season or two. 

3. Geoff Petrie

Geoff Petrie is probably least familiar one on this list to younger Blazer fans such as myself, but his is another unfortunate case of an extremely promising young players career being cut way too short due to early and consistent injury problems.

He was the first player drafted by the original Trail Blazers team, back in 1970, and thus became the early face of the franchise.  He averaged 21.8 points per game and 4.8 assists per game while with the team, over a period of six seasons.  Check this article to find more information about his accomplishments as a Blazer. 

His NBA career was dampened and then cut short by a series of surgeries on his knees, as outlined in this article by the Oregonian.  He still had a very productive run in Portland, similar to what Brandon Roy has had in his first five seasons, but ultimately had to give it up right as he should have been entering his prime.

The Blazers were a very good team in the latter part of the 1970's, until Bill Walton got hurt.  It's possible that if Petrie had been healthy he would have been enough to keep them from tanking so quickly once Walton went down.

2. Sam Bowie

Michael Jordan.  Hakeem Olajuwon.

Good company, right?

Not if your name is Sam Bowie.  Not if you are the "other" member of the top three players chosen in the 1984 NBA Draft.  

I'm sure that Sam is a good guy, but for NBA fans he will always be remembered as the one the Blazers chose instead of Michael Jordan.

The truth is that is some other drafts, Bowie wouldn't have been considered nearly as much of a bust.  He went on to have career averages of 10.9 points per game and 7.5 rebounds per game over the course of 10 seasons, and he played at least 62 games in six of those seasons.

In his four seasons with Portland he only had one good year, his rookie season, but was kept out by leg injuries for much of the other three.  He couldn't ever shake the stigma of not living up to the hype and was eventually traded to the New Jersey Nets.  

He earns the no. 2 spot in this ranking not only because of what he wasn't able to accomplish, but also because of what the other players that the Blazers passed on to take him were able to accomplish; that list also includes Charles Barkley and John Stockton.

1. Bill Walton

Here we are.  The worst injury related story in the history of the Trail Blazers franchise.

Bill Walton takes the top spot because he was quite possibly the best player ever to wear a Blazers uniform, yet had such a short window of opportunity in which to showcase his dominant play.

He is the only Trail Blazer ever to win a regular season or an NBA Finals MVP Award, and he also was the only star player on the sole championship team in Blazers history.  He was the best big man of his era, and almost certainly would have led the team to at least one more championship if his feet hadn't given out.

Walton was never able to play more than 65 regular season games in a given season for the Blazers, and that number came during the magical championship season of 1976-77, when he averaged 18.2 points per game and 15.2 rebounds per game while somehow managing to stay healthy over 19 postseason games.  

The following year, the Blazers streaked to the best record in the league before Walton got knocked out and they never recovered from that.  The loss of an almost certain 2nd championship and possible dynasty makes this no. 1 on the list.