When you’re 7-foot-1, 325 pounds, and regarded in the basketball lore as the “most dominant specimen to ever play,” there’s not much worth fearing. But a few years after his playing career concluded, Shaquille O’Neal admitted that there were two teams that he and his legendary Los Angeles Lakers feared: the Sacramento Kings and, you guessed it, the Portland Trail Blazers.
From 1997 to 2002, the Lakers and Blazers — No. 1 and No. 3 in wins — were amongst an expansive (and eventually post-Jordan) crop of teams that had aspirations of being the best team in the world.