Six coaches, five general managers and dozens of different players cycled through the Portland Trail Blazers organization from 1983-2003. But one thing remained constant during the 21-season span:

Come April, there was always playoff basketball in Portland.

“The Portland franchise is one of the best in the league and our fans are terrific,” said Bucky Buckwalter, who spent 22 years working for the Blazers and was the team’s vice president of basketball operations from 1986-92. “We always felt like we wanted to put out the best product that we could on the floor and do the best we could every year without having to start all over.”

Up until two seasons ago, the Blazers held the record for consecutive playoff berths among NBA teams since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976.

The Gregg Popovich-led San Antonio Spurs surpassed the Blazers’ mark last spring when they earned their 22nd consecutive playoff berth, the longest active playoff streak in any major North American sports league. The Syracuse Nationals, who became the Philadelphia 76ers in 1963, made the playoffs in 22 consecutive seasons from 1950-71 as well. In the NHL, the Boston Bruins reached the playoffs in 29 consecutive seasons from 1968-96.

But decades-long playoff streaks remain rare in the NBA and across the major league sports in the United States. Atlanta holds the MLB record for consecutive playoff berths with 14, while the New England Patriots hold the NFL record, having made the playoffs in each of the last 11 seasons.

“The reality is it’s hard to win in the NBA,” said Jim Paxson, a two-time NBA All-Star who enjoyed a long and successful stint with the Blazers from 1979-88. “You got to be pretty good to advance and get far in the playoffs.”

The Blazers’ playoff streak began in 1983, but the team struggled to make the most of its postseason berths in the 1980s, exiting the playoffs in the first round five times and losing in the conference semifinals twice in a seven-year span. During that stretch, the Blazers were ousted three times by the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers, led by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“We were just good enough to lose to the Lakers in the first round most of the time,” Paxson said. “It was our reality that they were just that good. … We were six, seven players deep and we had some pretty good teams during that stretch and we always had a good home record."

When Buckwalter took over as vice president of basketball operations in 1986, he envisioned an athletic and high-octane Blazers team that could compete with the Lakers’ up-tempo style. The Blazers started to prioritize athleticism in the 1980s and took chances in the draft by selecting under-the-radar prospects, including Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey and Clifford Robinson, that they felt could develop within the organization.

They also became one of the first teams to look overseas, drafting Arvydas Sabonis from Lithuania and Drazen Petrovic from Croatia in 1986. Sabonis wasn’t able to join the Blazers until 1995. To this day, Buckwalter is convinced that the Blazers would have won a championship during their dominant run in the early 1990s if Sabonis had been on the roster.

By the 1988-89 season, the Blazers had put together a strong core that included Porter, Kersey, Kevin Duckworth and Clyde Drexler, who would go on to become arguably the greatest player in franchise history. But Buckwalter still felt that the team was missing a power forward. He spent nearly eight months trying to acquire Buck Williams from the New Jersey Nets. The Nets finally relented. In June 1989, the Blazers dealt Sam Bowie to the Nets for Williams.

“Buck was the guy that came in and solidified us,” Buckwalter said. “I was not surprised with the record that we had, the 50-plus win seasons that we had after that.”

Led by the dynamic backcourt of Drexler and Porter, the Blazers enjoyed arguably the best three-year run in franchise history in the early 1990s, reaching the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992 and finishing with a franchise-best record of 63-19 in 1991.

“We were all competitors,” said Porter, whose No. 30 is retired by the Blazers. “Three of us — myself, Jerome, Kevin Duckworth — had come from small schools, so we played with a chip, we played with an edge every night. We played with a toughness and a sharpness. Buck and Clyde were the same way, they loved to compete, they took on those challenges personally, they wanted to be successful.”

Despite all their success during that three-year span, the Blazers fell just short of bringing an NBA championship back to Portland.

They entered the 1989-90 season with modest expectations, but went on to post a surprising 59-23 record before making their first run to the NBA Finals since winning the title in 1977. There, they came up against the defending-NBA champion Detroit Pistons, who rolled past the Blazers in five games.

The Blazers held championship aspirations heading into the 1990-91 season and went on to win a franchise-record 63 games as Buckwalter was named the NBA executive of the year. But their season came to an end in Los Angeles as they lost to the Lakers by one point in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. A year later, the Blazers made a second run to the NBA Finals, but fell to the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls in six games, despite holding a 15-point lead heading into the fourth quarter of Game 6.

“We were able to achieve some great things, but we just came up short,” Porter said. “That was the one thing that came up missing during that opportunity that we had, those years that we had, we just weren’t able to finish really what we started and be able to get that championship.”

In 1994, coach Rick Adelman was fired. A year later, Drexler requested a trade and Porter left in free agency, ushering in a new era for the Blazers. The late 1990s and early 2000s would be remembered as the Jail Blazers era as arrests, fights at practice and run-ins with fans off the court overshadowed the play on the floor.

But the winning culture within the organization remained, even as the personnel changed.

With a loaded roster led by Rasheed Wallace, Damon Stoudamire and Scottie Pippen, the Blazers nearly made it back to the NBA Finals in 2000, but once again, they couldn’t get past the Lakers as they blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter of Game of 7 to suffer a heartbreaking loss in the Western Conference finals.

Jermaine O’Neal played a limited role on the Blazers team that reached the Western Conference finals in 2000 and didn’t become a star in the NBA until after leaving Portland for the Indiana Pacers, but he still looks back on his four years with the Blazers fondly. He was just 17 when the Blazers took a chance on him in the 1996 NBA draft, and he credits the organization for developing him into the player he would become.

“It was about winning,” O’Neal said. “They had some of the best talent here and I understood that. That’s a culture that you want to be raised in. You don’t want to be raised in a losing environment because you grow losing qualities. You want to be raised in a winning environment and a first-class environment that allows you to understand what the pros are really about.”

It wasn’t until 2004 that the Blazers finally missed the postseason amid roster turnover, ending their historic run of 21 consecutive playoffs berths. During the historic stretch, the team reached the Western Conference finals five times and the NBA Finals twice.

“That group was pretty special I think, for what they were able to do,” said Porter about his 10 seasons with the Blazers from 1985-95. “To be able to sustain it for a long period of time, for a good run, was pretty special. It’s something I’m very proud of, to have been a part of that organization and to have the legacy that we left on the court and in the community.”

Rip City 50

This story is part of The Oregonian/OregonLive’s ongoing series, Rip City 50: The moments, people and events that have shaped the Trail Blazers’ first 50 seasons.

MORE RIP CITY 50

• From humble beginnings to Blazermania: Portland Trail Blazers embark on 50th season

• Canzano: Coffee, a founding father, and a special Trail Blazers opener

• A powerful handshake: How Maurice Lucas’ gesture helped the Blazers win the 1977 NBA title

• ‘Original Trail Blazer’ Geoff Petrie became dynamic star

• In 1970-71, the Blazers were “the best expansion team”

• Best seat in the house: Mark Mason prepares for 1,000th game as Portland Trail Blazers’ PA announcer

• Trail Blazers franchise was born 50 years ago: ‘Congratulations, you are in the NBA’

• Damon Stoudamire reflects on Trail Blazers tenure with mixed emotions

• Canzano: Happy Anniversary, Rip City -- celebrating the birth of a catchphrase

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg

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