LAKERS fans, stop grieving. The opening-day loss wasn’t the end-of-the-world stuff.
Be content with seeing LeBron James opening up with two thunderous dunks to declare his rousing debut with Los Angeles.
Big enough for his new team thinking big of a robust rebound from years of dungeons-like existence—James jamming loopholes pretty soon.
Big enough, too, for the NBA to learn that its biggest star’s monster jams could only mean he is “ready to rumble” in the world’s grandest stage of basketball.
And, yes, who wouldn’t want to see the Portland Trail Blazers win?
They were grieving before they beat the Lakers 128-119.
They remained grieving still as the passing of Blazers owner Paul Allen had happened on the week of the Laker-Blazer game.
Allen, who cofounded Microsoft with his high school buddy Bill Gates, had succumbed to Hodgkin lymphoma. He was 65.
As a sophomore college dropout from Washington State University, Allen invited Gates, then studying at Harvard University, to partner with him at Microsoft.
In no time in the early Eighties, Microsoft made them multi-millionaires.
In 1988, at age 35, Allen bought the Trail Blazers, long the NBA’s favorite whipping boys. Soon after, the Blazers broke their losing streak to record their best runs in franchise history by barging into the NBA Finals twice in three years.
They lost both times, but Allen, who religiously watched Blazer games seated next to his mother, was elated no end.
In Allen’s vacant chair, during last week’s Laker-Blazer game in Portland, sat a single rose beside a “Rip City” baseball cap.
Bloomberg said Allen’s net worth was $26.1 billion. He donated $2 billion to the advancement of science, technology, education, the environment and sports.
He loved the arts and the movies, buying Captain Kirk’s command chair from the 1960s TV series “Star Trek.”
But what I liked most in Allen wa s his love for rock ‘n’ roll. He bought guitars owned by Jimi Hendrix.
In his song, “Purple Haze,” Jimi, a lefty, had this immortal line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”
Allen is with Hendrix now in the sky.
Stop grieving.