ESPN NBA

I grew up in Portland, and worked for a little under two years as a reporter and radio producer in Madison, Wisconsin. Now those two cities are are having an NBA-themed spat! I feel I have to weigh in.

The Oregonian's Susan Nielsen kicked it off by writing this:

T wo types of people live in Portland: those who wish the city were a little more like Boston or Seattle, and those who wish the city were a little more like Madison, Wis.

The Madison people are winning. This is a scary prospect for those of us who love big-league sports, as well as for everyone who'd prefer Portland not to fall off the national grid and land in the heap of lovely but forgettable towns.

Oregon sports fans should fight for their NBA franchise, no matter how dormant their love for the Trail Blazers may be. And Portlanders should fight for their city. This can't be the year Portland loses the Blazers, squanders its chances for a major league baseball team and generally announces to the world that it's not a player.

Can it?

In the red corner, a Madison columnist I have met, Doug Moe, says this:

Forgettable? I'll tell you what is forgettable. Except for the last two minutes of the occasional playoff game, NBA basketball is forgettable.

It's overpaid prima donnas padding individual statistics and not playing defense. I'll take Big Ten basketball (and football), and the Mallards, for that matter, any day.

Sure Nielsen took a needless dig at a perfectly nice place in Madison (Portland should pick on somebody its own size), but I hardly think Moe's retort will sway many people. The fact is, as someone who has also lived in New York City--Portland is much more of a city than Madison is. Madison is great because you can have the effect of living in the country (space, backyards, cleanliness, good schools, cross-country skiing, ice skating on ponds, quiet) even if you live within the "city."

But it's not a city. It's not bustling. It's not a metropolis.

Portland has a lot more going on. How do I know this? Here's one way: in 1998 I did a traffic report on the radio in Madison. The people at the station where I worked tell me it was the first regular traffic report in the city's history. And it was hardly necessary. There was not much to report. It's nothing to be proud of, but real cities have traffic jams.