The Portland Trail Blazers brought Scottie Pippen to town to try and help their talented young crew develop into a championship contender. Pippen already had six rings with the Bulls.
After a disastrous season in Houston, he was looking for a bounce-back year, and there was no better way to do that than to turn the underachieving Blazers into contenders. Well, Scottie did that, but unconventionally. At least that's what he did to guard Bonzi Wells .
During a recent episode of the ' Sheed & Tyler' podcast , Bonzi recalled the time when Pip dropped by his crib and left something on his doorstep to motivate him for an upcoming playoff game against the Lakers.
"I heard a doorbell, my doorbell. I go to the door, but nobody there. And I kind of look down the driveway, and I see Pip, and he just like he's just waving at me. And I look down, he had a box of his six rings, and he left it on my door. And he like, 'Hey motherf****, I need you to put another one in there for me,' and he left them with me, and this is before camera phones and all that sh**, and I just remember looking at him, and it was a box, clear top, had six rings, all six in there man," narrated Wells.
Bonzi slept beside Pippen's rings
Wells was entering his second season in the NBA when the Blazers acquired Scottie. That season, Bonzi doubled his rookie scoring average of 4.4 ppg. He improved to 12.7 points per game during Pippen's second year in Portland and then put up a career-high 17.0 ppg during Pip's final year with the Blazers.
It's unclear which playoff run Scottie left his box of rings because the Blazers met the Lakers in the playoffs in each of Pippen's three seasons there. But as Bonzi remembers, he took the box inside his house and slept beside it that night.
"I took that mug into the crib. I sat it down. I just looked at it. I went to bed that night, my pillows here, the rings are right there. I'm sleeping next to that. I'm sleeping on that mug…And that's how I knew he trusted me. He loved me as a little brother, and I was like, 'Man, I got to get one more for this guy,'" added Wells.
The Blazers never got over the hump
Unfortunately for Wells, Pippen's tenure in Portland coincided with the rise of the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. They made the playoffs in each of Pip's four seasons there, but they ran into the Purple and Gold thrice and never got over the L.A. hump.
The Blazers won 59 games during Pippen's first season and were one quarter away from making the NBA Finals. But that was the game when Kobe and Shaq rallied the Lakers to an incredible Game 7 win. In the next two seasons, Portland met Los Angeles in the first round of the playoffs and was swept both times.
Pippen returned to the Bulls in 2003 to take on a similar role for the franchise, where he won six NBA titles. Without their veteran leader, the Blazers became the dysfunctional JailBlazers. Wells ended up getting traded during the 2003-04 season, and he never got close to an NBA championship ring again, literally.
Related: “They can boo us every day, but they’re still going to ask for our autographs” - Bonzi Wells once went all in against their own Portland fans
Most Popular
Comments / 0