Dec 16 2008
The Jail Blazers, Part 2: Ha Seung-Jin
A good friend of mine in college is a gifted portraitist. For a period during our sophomore year, he specialized in pictures that approached caricature of famous players from the late 90s and noted Jailblazers. His Larry Johnson had the teeth, and the Sheed had its mouth open, ready to bark at an official on a loading dock. My favorite, though, was the portrait of Ha Seung Jin, the team’s backup center at the time. Right now, the picture is lost to time and unkempt work space, but from memory, the picture was the only one of the series that was subdued. It showed Ha’s face as it was, but it was also able to keep the joy that Ha had whenever he was on the court. His face, in itself, was a caricature. Here’s this 7 foot 3, nearly 300 pound Korean dude with what may be the largest head in history. His brow shot out over his eyes, and his cheek bones were slightly too big and too high, which took attention away from some shoddy orthodontic work. It seemed as if his features were meant for a man a foot shorter while his bone structure kept getting bigger and more oddly defined. And he was this big when he was drafted at only 18 years old. While the picture paid service to his unusual features, it didn’t mock them. It showed a big kid who was looking to do his best.
He’s a great symbol of the change in regimes between the Bob Whitsitt era success at any costs Jail Blazers to the sad-sack Steve Patterson Jail Blazers. Whitsitt’s picks were defensible, as they were focused solely on stock-piling the greatest assortment talent possible and hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t implode on itself before winning a championship.¹ Patterson’s picks were of a different variety; clueless, cronyistic, and vaguely racist.² It seemed as if he was picking Ha simply because he was a giant Asian dude, much like Yao Ming, hoping that he’d play like Yao, regardless of the fact that Yao was (and is) a complete player and Ha was a raw 18 year old kid.
However, this is no insult to Ha. This kid played his heart out to the best of his ability. He never moped, and he always worked hard. If he wasn’t unfit for the NBA, I’m sure he would fit in with the culture of the current team perfectly. His hands were made of material that gave cement blocks a bad name, as passes would bounce off him and out of bounds constantly, but he wouldn’t let that bring him down. He had a joy when he played; when he awkwardly shuffled up the hardwood, you could see that he was just happy to be there.³ By some freak chance of a team losing Arvydas Sabonis, Theo Ratliff, and Joel Przybilla, he got his chance, and tried his hardest. On April 20, 2005, the last game of the season, he put up 13 against the archrival Lakers, including a beautiful hook shot in crunch time that made us forget about Arvydas’ departure for a minute and put the Blazers up 1. The team ended up winning the game and put a cap on the Lakers worst season of the last ten years. After the game, then-interim-head coach and future savior Kevin Pritchard put on a brave face saying, “If you looked around the building tonight you saw some of our future playing out there.” By now, though, most of that team is gone. Ha couldn’t keep up with the league in his next season, and was traded at the end of the 05-06 season.
His departure from the team was part of the end of the Jail Blazer era that coincided with the draft of Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. There has since been sightings of him around the basketball world. I heard whispers that he was in Beijing representing South Korea at the Olympics. According to Trail Post friend Wikipedia, he’s currently playing for KCC Egis, hopefully gaining the skills for a comeback in the NBA.
Personally, I can’t think of a guy who deserves another shot more.
¹ This is one misunderstood part of his legacy. He managed to nearly succeed twice with this seemingly horrible game plan. If the Sonics had beaten the Bulls or hadn’t lost to the Nuggets in the first round, and somehow won a championship, any fan in Seattle would have gladly taken the championship in exchange for ten years of horrible play that peaked at mediocrity. I’m not going to rehash the events of 2000, but let’s just say Whitsitt would have been canonized in Pioneer Courthouse Square if that team had not melted down in the fourth quarter. Granted the Blazers went on the same streak as the Sonics soon after his departure. He took two teams to the absolute peak, and within ten years of his departure, both became toxic and on the verge of relocation, with one of them hijacked to Oklahoma City. Th
at’s why it’s called gambling, folks.
² Which makes him an ideal representative GM for the Bush era.
³ This sense of joy infected the Blazers fan base, too, resulting in two of Trail Post’s favorite YouTube videos of time: the Ha Seung Jin mixtape, and the NBA Live 2006 Party Hard video. In the first, you see a progression of Ha’s career and skill with R. Kelly’s “The Greatest” droning in the background. With the second, you see the player you wish he could be with the greatest piece of pop music composition from the last ten years blaring into your soul accompanying.
