Earlier this year, we took a trip down memory lane when we cataloged all of the absurd moments from the infamous Jail Blazers era in Portland, which included that time Zach Randolph shattered Reuben Patterson’s eye-socket, the time Rasheed Wallace and Damon Stoudamire got stopped by the state police for smoking weed on the way back from a Sonics game, the time Qyntel Woods tried to use his basketball card as identification, and so much more.
As it turns out, Jay Ellis, co-star of the hit HBO series Insecure, actually worked as an intern for the Trail Blazers during this time, and he took a moment to reminisce about his experience on a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“It was probably the darkest years in NBA history,” Ellis said. “It was a crash course in learning what not to do in life. I was an intern in the PR department. Exactly. You can feel my pain. So I learned how to write a lot of press releases, man. Basically, every time the players would get in trouble, we would have to like spin some story as to why they got in trouble, which usually was just an apology to the fans and to the NBA, because there’s only so many times you can say ‘no, it wasn’t them. They weren’t driving from Seattle with a bunch of weed in the car. They’re so sorry, and they’ll never do it again, until next week.'”
Managing public relations during that period certainly sounds like an unenviable task, but Ellis has obviously since moved on to bigger and better things. Meanwhile, Z-Bo offered us a little blast from the past recently when he was arrested in Los Angeles on charges of possession of marijuana with intent to sell. So it seems the specter of the Jail Blazers lives on.
