There’s a poster in a friend’s house that commemorates the 2007 Oregon men’s basketball team’s run to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament that year. In the corners are slick cutouts of Maarty Leunen, Bryce Taylor, Tajuan Porter and Ernie Kent.
And there, in the center of it all, is a picture of Aaron Brooks driving to the hoop.
We cheered for Brooks when he did it for the Ducks. When he hit the game-winning jumper from the baseline against No. 1 UCLA, we stormed the court.
But now, as he’s slicing through the Trail Blazers’ defense in the first round of the 2009 NBA Playoffs, what do we do now?
Do we cheer for Brooks’ emergence as a clutch performer in the NBA, or do we curse him for likely ending the Blazers’ season? Is it OK to cheer for him if it is a blowout?
I am writing, of course, from the perspective of someone who wants the Blazers to advance through the playoffs. Their 54-win season this year has been chronicled many times in these pages as one for the record books; the feel good coda after the awful “Jail Blazers” era. It’s nice to see Oregon’s only major professional sport (MLS isn’t here yet) do well for itself.
We know that story by now. What we didn’t know was that one of our own, Brooks, was going to come up this big in the playoffs.
Personally, I haven’t seen any outright cheering for Brooks from Blazer fans. Instead, it’s been more of the how-did-he-do-that-oh-lord-he-scored-again variety. Shock that a second-year player from Oregon is doing this, followed by silent awe.
Brooks hasn’t just hit shots at big times, he’s made it look easy, averaging 16.5 points per game. Twenty-seven points in game one, and 23 in the Blazers’ game two win, which included three three-pointers on the game’s final three possessions that continually kept the Rockets within a basket of winning and Portland fans waiting to exhale.
“I watched him a lot when he was at Oregon, and I watched him have huge games against the best teams,” Houston coach Rick Adelman said. “He has always responded. He’s got a real toughness about him and we’ve seen it in two years that he can get down on himself and have a tough game, but very rarely does that extend beyond that one game.”
Last night he only had three points entering the fourth quarter, but it was his two free throws in the final 30 seconds that kept the Rockets ahead for the win.
Perfect timing, right?
For Brooks it is.
“I know there’s going to be rocky times,” Brooks said. “I mean, it’s been like that all through my life; in high school and college you have bad times, but things get better and it’s all about growth.”
And that’s something you have to applaud even if he is burying your team’s playoff run. He signed a three-year contract after being drafted, meaning he is fully on any team who needs a point guard’s radar. Play like this next season, and he’ll likely start a bidding war for his services after his contract runs out.
His success is the kind of thing that was expected from first round picks Freddie Jones and Luke Jackson. Jones won an NBA slam dunk title but is more of a journeyman than a hot commodity in the NBA six years into his career. Back problems pushed Jackson from being the No. 10 pick in 2005 to playing with the Idaho Stampede of the NBDL.
Luke Ridnour is the only former Oregon player who compares with Brooks. He, like Brooks a Washington native, spurned his hometown Huskies to play for Oregon. Ridnour, though, came back to Seattle for the first five years of his career.
Instead of pleasing the hometown fans in Seattle, Brooks has resorted to putting a dagger through the heart of Portland’s fairy tale story.
If it’s against Portland that Brooks has his playoff coming-of-age debut against, so be it. He dropped No. 1 UCLA much the same way.
And truthfully, I’d rather it be Brooks to end the Blazers season than anybody.
Who else would you want, Kobe?
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