Deep in the bowels of the Rose Garden

Lays a mausoleum, a skeleton-less, mummy-free catacomb

Where memories and dreams are Laid to rest Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, Brandon Roy, Greg Oden

Their starched jerseys stretched across the walls in black, red and white, permanent defiance

Paul Allen and the sons and daughters of Portland weep when they remember

Clyde and Rick Adelman and Jack Ramsey are helpless to ease their pain

But what if hope landed in PDX in a

Lithe, lean, young point guard from Oakland

What if he was stolen out from under the inquisitive eyes of the analysts, the

Noses of the scouts who know

Talent when they see it

A sequence of events as fruitfully unexpected as prior tragedies had been unfairly unfortunate

Damian Lillard, not the flashy teenage prodigy or the

Entitled one and done junior maestro whose destiny is interwoven within NBA

No.

Damian, Dame, with his boyishly angelic face barely sprouting whiskers

Psalm 37 inked down his left arm in an expression of his faith

Reflected in his discipline and patience to

Wait it out in Ogden (to work it out in Ogden) while his peers bounded towards riches (?), professionalism, fame and the

Trappings that have become cliché

Dame waited

And waited in Ogden at the feet of hills and mountains, a cultural antithesis from the haunts of Oakland

While Portland languished through the inconceivability that Brandon Roy’s knees were without

Cartilage, just bone grinding on bone until the inevitability that Brandon’s knees couldn’t

Ever hold up

But that’s past now

Wearing number zero, zed, O—for Ogden, O-for Oakland,

O for the emptiness Portland can leave behind

Lillard is here with his mature pick-and-roll game, a generously balanced blending of inside-outside-all-inclusive

involvement that breathes anticipation and excitement into Portland’s sons and daughters

And for today and tomorrow allows Paul Allen the

Respite to forget and lock up the gates that provide entry to the

Dark, dank cemetery of dreams that sits in quiet and peace deeply forgotten beneath the Rose Garden