PORTLAND, Ore. -- A day after the Portland Trail Blazers clinched a spot in the NBA playoffs, a new billboard popped up on the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd and Broadway St.
It read, "LEBRON, DAME NEEDS A THIRD OPTION.”
The billboard left some who passed by, confused.
“Are they talking about LeBron and did they mean like, Damians in plural?” Wondered Bruce Amick.
Others were skeptical about the billboard’s efficiency.
“I think we're going to need more than one billboard,” said Blazers fan, Charles Kimmons.
Ira LaFontaine and his fellow co-founders of Trillblazin.net -- a Blazers fan and satire site — said they crowdfunded money for the billboard as a joke and maybe, he admits, a secret hope.
“You know, everything starts with a kernel, and it just needs a little bit of something to gain momentum and maybe this could be it,” said LaFontaine. He said their initial fundraising goal was around $2,000 but fans donated more than triple that amount in just four days.
“You pump money in, we're going to spend it to get LeBron here,” assured LaFontaine. “You're going to see bus shelter ads, bus benches.”
So what does James think about idea of playing for the Blazers? Reporters asked him last month when he Cleveland visited Portland. He said little more than having felt welcomed by Rip City.
“He kind of dodged around the question,” recalled LaFontaine. And since NBA team personnel can’t comment on players who are under contract with other teams, the notion of LeBron to PDX remains purely a fan discussion.
“That would be real, real good if LeBron packed his bags up and came to Rip City,” said Kimmons.
At the end of the day, the new billboard remains just that — a billboard. And maybe, the idea of something more.
“Perhaps that's LeBron, perhaps it's someone else,” said LaFontaine. Time will tell.”