There were no boos to be heard or jerseys to be seen on fire in a game that was expected to see Portland Trail Blazers icon Damian Lillard return to the Moda Center as a Milwaukee Buck. Instead, we heard a 63-second standing ovation and saw the franchise great respond to the applause by making his heart high with both hands. This event was not about hatred, but the mutual love shared between Lillard and the city.
It wasn't just at the arena, it was all over town, especially at vintage basketball shop Back to the Baskets in Hawthorne in southeast Portland.
Co-owners Troy Douglas, 34, and Jaylen Thomas, 29, kept the buy-sell shop open late Wednesday night, stocking the store with clothing and memorabilia collected from decades of basketball history. We held a watch party surrounded by items. As lifelong Blazers fans, or in Douglas' words, “from the womb to the grave,” the two understood the magnitude of the moment and wanted to share it with the community. It's a party!bring a friendsaid an email to customers announcing the event.
“Dame means everything to Portland Trail Blazers fans,” Douglas said. “He gave us hope during a dark time in Blazer history.”
Douglas and Thomas have built a basketball junkie's paradise at Back to the Basket since opening in late 2020. The left wall is lined with crisp sneakers wrapped in plastic wrap. Nostalgic hats are lined up on the right wall. In the center of the store are his four racks hung with hard-to-find T-shirts, shorts and jerseys. And every inch of the walls and shelves are filled with basketball accessories and novelty items. Without wasting space on the ceiling, you can hang sneakers with shoelaces, like a microphoneStyle and a cutout of Bugs Bunny wearing a Toon Squad jersey smiles at shoppers.
The longer you browse the store, the more you'll discover classic basketball Easter eggs, including a special-edition NBA Barbie still in the box, a Rasheed Wallace lunch pail, and an unforgettable bench chair from the 2005-2006 Blazers season. You can discover more. The store leans heavily toward the Blazers, but the owners are quick to remind you that back-to-the-basket is important. basketball A store for all fans and teams, including the NBA and colleges.
This inclusive design applies not only to the products, but also to the philosophy shared by Douglas and Thomas. They don't just want to build a basketball business, they want to build a community, a neighborhood hangout, where everyone can come together. The Dame event is one of the latest steps in that effort, which includes a goal of adding more in-store events into 2024.
The party's theme was a celebration of Lillard, but for the tight-knit group of 15 to 20 people who gathered, it was more of a celebration of Back to the Basket and supporting the community in which this small independent business works. It was an effort to do so. Raised in Hawthorne.
“I had a feeling from the crowd that maybe they weren't the biggest Blazers fans,” Douglas said. “But it was the people who were excited about 'Back to the Basket' and it felt really good.”
In the spring of 2014, around the time Lillard, in his second year, hit his iconic playoff buzzer-beater in Game 6 to eliminate the Houston Rockets and helped establish the myth of “Dame Time,” Douglas Garage sold T-shirts at the store. “
Douglas, who grew up in Lake Oswego, launched her clothing brand Cultural Blend in 2011 while a student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. During his magical 2013-14 season, the brand still didn't have its own domain name. , operated by e-commerce platform Big Cartel. Douglas had been trying to get a Blazer-themed hat into his center's Merchandise store, but to no avail. The stylish snapback with large numbers on the front read: 1977refers to Portland's first and only world championship.
And on May 4, 2014, two days after Lillard hit the historic shot that ended Portland's 14-year playoff series drought, the photo shows him flying the team to San Antonio for the second round of the series. The star was captured getting into the car.What he was wearing was none other than his blend of culture. 1977 hat. One of Douglas' friends had given Lillard a snapback during an autograph event earlier that year. Now, with the city buzzing with the Rip City spirit, Lillard wore it in a high-profile moment.
Douglas saw the photo and immediately started running in the Eastport Plaza parking lot. Business began to boom.
“It was a dream, but trying to make it happen on time was a nightmare…” Douglas said. “I couldn't sleep for about four weeks.”
Cultural Blend only had about eight hats in stock, but over the next 24 hours, orders came in on Big Cartel's site about every 1.5 seconds, Douglas said. The Blazers called and asked if I could get a bunch to sell at Moda Center for the upcoming Spurs series. Douglas and his mother created an assembly line for packing boxes. His embroiderers worked overtime. It took some time, but all orders were fulfilled. When about 244 hats arrived at the Moda Center for Game 4 of the upcoming series, they were sold out by halftime, Douglas said.
“If it wasn't for that hat, 'Back to the Basket' probably wouldn't exist, to say the least,” he said.
In 2018, with the help of a grant from the Native American Youth and Family Center (Douglas is an enrolled tribal member of Grand Ronde), Cultural Blend moved into its first brick-and-mortar location in the Lloyd Center. Shortly after the Lloyd Center store opened, Mr. Douglas connected with Mr. Thomas through his Facebook Marketplace for a sneaker deal on his Yeezy 350s.
“I just remember it being a really genuine experience. I got good vibes from him,” Douglas said.
At the time, Thomas was on his own journey to success as a professional basketball player. The Hillsboro native and Liberty High School graduate played baseball in junior college before relentlessly pursuing his NBA dreams in the second division professional leagues of El Salvador and Armenia. Some Blazers fans wrote about Thomas when Sean Hikin of the Rose Garden Report reported on his tryout for Portland's new G League affiliate, the Rip City Remix, in 2023. Some people may know about Thomas from his profile.
During a sneaker meeting, Douglas told Thomas about his vision for a vintage basketball store. The two continued to keep in touch. The two then opened Back to the Basket in September 2020 after Thomas' basketball activities were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The name was originally called “Ball Was Life,'' but it was changed after receiving a cancellation notice from the sports website “Ballislife.''
In the more than three years since its grand opening, Back to the Basket has firmly established itself in Portland's basketball culture. It has to do with the product's uniqueness, but it also has to do with its community-oriented and friendly atmosphere. This is obviously a small business cliche, but it applies to this store. Douglas is quick to call people with a smile.Brawl Starman!At a homecoming party, he asks his 2 1/2-year-old son Taj, who is tottering around in a Lillard jersey, to continue calling various friends in attendance “uncle,” including this reporter. He continued to give instructions.
Thomas, along with store employee Keyshawn Vogt, 24, are the faces of the store's creative and active social media content, which has helped the store develop an impressive following. This store's TikTok account has over 250,000 followers of his, and the Instagram account has over 20,400 followers. This video includes light editing, graphics, and many skits (Thomas is the “OG” and Vogt plays a salesman in the video below).
As a popular basketball store in Portland, Dame's departure had ripple effects that extended to Back to the Basket. Thomas noted that some business is down, especially on Blazers game days, because fans aren't as excited about going to games.
“We had a really young, talented group, but our mainstay wasn't good,” Thomas said of the rebuilding Blazers.
Still, Thomas agreed, whether the Blazers are having a down year or hoisting a Larry O'Brien trophy, this store is bigger than one player or one team.
So on Wednesday, Back to the Basket members gathered around a 48-inch TV behind the cash register for the bizarre but “fun” experience of watching Lillard return to Portland in green and white. I had an experience.
Although the attendance was smaller than previous events, it was true family, friends, and fans of the store who came together. Along with Taj, Douglas' partner Sidney was also there wearing a rare Blazers jacket (Douglas was wearing a '90s Blazers practice jersey). Thomas' mother Angela and his siblings Jada and Dante were in attendance.Please support the family! ” As Angela said.
Old colleagues and friends from my days at the Douglas Lloyd Center showed up. Xander Lyons, 24, is a friend of Douglas and said that as a fellow Indigenous business owner, he looked to him as a mentor. Lyons is a British citizen of the Shuswap First Nation from Columbia who sells vintage clothing through his online clothing store Kséles Supply. Perhaps the person who best embodies the owner's vision is Megan McLuren, 27, who stopped by on her way home from work. Although McLuren, a circus performer, is a Celtics fan rather than a Blazers fan, he loves sports and is looking for more people in the community who share that interest.
“It already has a hangout feel,” she said of Back to the Basket.
After a close game, most people at the party were disappointed that Lillard couldn't get a “no-time” shot on Moda, thinking back. But when the buzzer sounded with the Blazers leading 119-116, the room erupted in cheers and Douglas folded his arms and shouted to the small crowd.
“We all love basketball here, and that’s the wave,” Thomas said. “…I'll be here for a while, dude.”
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