Steve Kelley / Times staff columnist
A new trail is being blazed in Portland

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PORTLAND — The storm has passed. The air is clearing. The anger has lifted. There is love in the building again.

The players are crashing the boards. Making their jumpers. Sharing the ball. They're even staying out of trouble.

Bad guys Bonzi Wells and Jeff McInnis are gone. The coach has settled on a lineup he likes. The players are talking to the media. The cheering is drowning out the few lingering jeers aimed at Rasheed Wallace.

It's morning in Portland again. The Trail Blazers are winning. They are 7-1 since small forward Darius Miles, acquired in a trade from Cleveland, became a starter. They have won eight of their last 10.

Three weeks ago they were dead. Boos drifted like paint flecks from the top of the Rose Garden. Players hogged the ball. Everybody on the team seemed expendable.

Things were so bad earlier this year, coach Maurice Cheeks, one of the really good people in the game, started crying after a loss.

But that was before the changes. Before the trade. Before Wallace was moved from power forward to center. Before Zach Randolph, the best player who won't be playing in Los Angeles next Sunday, was moved from small to power forward.

Before this team finally caught a wave.

"There was a time when I wondered if we'd come together," Portland's Derek Anderson said. "There was a part of me that just hoped we wouldn't fall into the trap of being a bad team. Sometimes you look at a team and wonder, 'Why are they underachieving?' And we were almost one of those teams.

"We'll still have games where guys will be, all of a sudden — not purposely selfish — but we'll start holding the ball. And we'll start looking like a team of individuals. Then there are games like this when we give ourselves a chance to win. When we play with energy."
 
Who were those guys whooping up on the Sonics yesterday, 95-85? Who were those guys passing the ball around like they were Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance? Why the sudden harmonic convergence? What happened to Team Dysfunction?

The Portland Trail Blazers are playing as if they are as happy as the Duke Blue Devils.

"If you start sharing the ball, it becomes contagious," said Anderson, who had nine assists yesterday. "Everybody starts doing it because you know if you don't you're coming out of the game. Now, for us, it's a matter of staying together as a unit. I've always thought we were a good team. Now we're starting to feel like a better team."

Against the Sonics, Portland had 27 assists among its 35 field goals. Damon Stoudamire looks reborn at the point. Wallace is playing the best defense of his life. Miles is giving them a long-armed stopper who can guard the best small forwards.

And despite the snub, Randolph has become an all-star. He is exactly what the Sonics don't have: a gritty, relentless power forward with deceptive range on his jump shot.

He scored 25 points and grabbed 16 rebounds, an in-your-face reminder to the league's coaches of how wrong they were for keeping him out of L.A.

"I was a little bit disappointed, but next year will be coming up," said Randolph, who had 15 points and six rebounds in the game-breaking third quarter. "With (the lineup changes) they have to focus on three of us now — on Sheed, on Darius and on me.

"We're just playing hard and more focused and finding guys better. We're longer guys who can play defense and rebound, and we'll get our points on the other end."

Yesterday felt like the calm after the storm in Portland. It felt as if the Trail Blazers had weathered the worst of their public-relations blunders and all of their inexcusable brushes with the law. It felt as if there was hope for a franchise that has been the punch line of every bad joke that has circulated around the league since the late 1990s.

"We've got a long way to go," Cheeks cautioned.

Portland has made the playoffs 21 straight years. The league record is 22. But the Blazers (24-25) still are a game below .500. They still are 3.5 games out of the eighth-and-final Western Conference playoff spot.

They still have to get past the uncertain days before the Feb. 19 trade deadline. And mercurial Wallace's future in Portland still is the top sports story in the city and the subject of much discussion even inside the locker room.

"I think we should keep him," Anderson said. "I mean there's a lot of guys in the league who are hot heads. Look at (Indiana's) Ron Artest. He used to be one, but now he's changed and he's helping his team."

How different is this team? In the second half, when a foul was whistled on Wallace, he diplomatically nodded his head in agreement with the call.

"I think people misunderstand Sheed," Miles said. "Sheed does everything for this team. Some days he don't score all the points, but today he was the big factor on defense. Rasheed is the big key to our team. He's our leader, and he's leading us right now."

Strange things are happening in Portland. Wallace is agreeing with officials. The bench is smiling. The team is winning. And the police blotter is becoming Blazer free.

It's morning in Portland.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com.

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