Wild Rice

Mike Rice has kept Blazer broadcasts lively for 15 years

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 15, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

As radio analyst for the Trail Blazers, Mike Rice talks basketball as he would sitting next to the stranger at the corner bar.

On Wednesday, when Portland visits Houston to take on the Rockets, Rice will belly up for the 1,500th time.

Over 15 years and 1,500 games, Rice has entertained listeners with an inimitable style that includes dramatic declarations, malapropisms and mispronounced names to go with his incisive commentary.

What Jerry Coleman is to San Diego and Dizzy Dean was to national baseball audiences in the 1950s and ’60s, Rice is to the Blazer faithful. He is part basketball expert, part entertainer, 100 percent character.

“A hustler, a con artist and conniver of the highest order,” broadcast partner Brian Wheeler says affectionately.

“Like your favorite uncle,” says Scott Zachry, producer for Blazer Broadcasting. “He’s a goofy dude.”

“A loose cannon,” suggests former broadcast partner Eddie Doucette, now semiretired and living in San Diego.

And this from Steve Jones, who has worked with Rice for years on the “Blazer Courtside” shows: “Mike is the great Houdini. No matter what kind of corner he paints himself into, he leaves himself an exit Ñ at least in his mind.”

Rice ponders all of this on a recent morning at a golf course, his home away from home, and laughs.

“I don’t give a damn about a lot of things,” he says. “Later on, I think back, ‘Now why’d I do that?’ ”

After a distinguished 20 years as a coach and another 16 in broadcasting, Rice’s claim to fame was the day in 1994 when he became the only broadcaster to be ejected from an NBA game.

“Certain things stand out in a career,” Rice says, chuckling again at the thought. “You would hope that wouldn’t be the only thing you’d be known for. But because I was the only one ever, that’s how everyone identifies me.”

Rice isn’t going to lose sleep over it. In fact, he embraces his notoriety. He loves the attention. He loves to talk. He loves his job. At, as Wheeler says, “65 going on 25,” Rice figures he’s beating the system, and he’ll do it forever.

“I hate to say this, because I don’t want the Blazers to think what I do isn’t work,” he says. “But I’m as energetic today in everything I do as when I started. I enjoy my job even more today. When a season is over, I can’t wait for the next season. I have no thoughts at all of retirement. It doesn’t enter my mind.”

Schonely made the call

Rice arrived in Portland in 1990 after a year and a half broadcasting mostly college games for ESPN. A Detroit native, he had been a good enough point guard at Duquesne to be selected by the Pistons in the eighth round of the 1962 NBA draft Ñ the 64th player overall. He didn’t go to the Pistons’ training camp, opting to move directly into a high-school coaching job.

“I kind of regret that,” Rice says. “Kevin Loughery was drafted, and I know I was better than him.”

Loughery, a star guard at Boston College, averaged 15.3 points over 11 NBA seasons, which says as much about Rice’s self-confidence as his ability.

Rice’s coaching career included nine years as head man at Division I schools Ñ at Duquesne from 1978-82 and Youngstown State from 1982-87. His teams enjoyed six winning seasons, two conference co-championships and a record of 137-116.

“Recruiting came easy to me Ñ probably too easy,” he says. “On the court, I probably experimented too much. When you played for me, each day was a new experience.”

After a season coaching in the World Basketball League, which featured players 6-4 and smaller, Rice hooked on with ESPN and SportsChannel America. In the summer of 1990, a month after Portland had fallen to Detroit in the NBA Finals, Rice auditioned for the Blazer radio analyst position. During a “Slam and Jam” exhibition at Civic Stadium, Rice, Earl Strom, Jack McKinney and Mark Radford each called a quarter of play with radio voice Bill Schonely.

“Afterward, (Blazer executive) Marshall Glickman said, ‘Schonz, it’s your call. You decide,’ ” Schonely says. “To me, there was no question who the best candidate was. Rice just fit. So I’m the one to blame for all of this.”

Rice worked six years alongside Schonely and two with Doucette and is in his seventh season partnering with Wheeler. He has enjoyed excellent professional and personal relationships with all three.

“If you don’t get along with your partner, then the games aren’t fun,” Rice says. “I’ve always tried to be professional. Let the play-by-play guy be the man, and you add to it.”

Rice’s conversational on-air style comes naturally.

“I broadcast like I talk to people sitting next to me,” he explains. “If I see something that interests me, I just talk about it. It’s not anything profound.”

Rice has earned the respect of his peers.

“Mike is one of the top analysts in the country,” says KXL radio’s Jay Allen, who has handled “Blazer Courtside” pre- and post-game programming the past six years. With the passing of time, the line between objectivity and cheerleading in home-team broadcasts has become blurred. Rice’s unabashed homerism fits snugly with his love for the sport and his team.

“Mike is a fan of basketball, and he loves what he’s doing,” Jones says. “He also really cares about the team. He absolutely dies with each loss and is sky-high after every win. He rides the emotional wave of being a Blazer. He takes it as seriously as anybody who has ever been in the organization. He is as emotionally attached as Schonz was. It’s Mike Rice’s life. If you were to take it away, he’d be wandering down somewhere by the Burnside Bridge.”

Working the system

Stories. Everyone has Mike Rice stories. Many of them have to do with his love of tennis and golf, and his unique ability to persuade people to let him play for free. The 6-2, 190-pound Rice, who looks and carries himself like a man of 50, plays tennis three to four days a week. Rare is the day he doesn’t play golf. “It’s my exercise,” he says. “I set aside two hours a day to play either golf or tennis. It’s what keeps you young.”

Rice, who carries a 6 handicap, boasts a list of 20 Portland-area courses on which he can play gratis. Once, when Blazer Broadcasting’s Zachry suggested he toss a tattered file folder, Rice said he couldn’t, because it held “all the phone numbers where he could get a free golf game.”

On the road, Rice’s connections and friendly manner have opened doors to some of the best courts and courses known to mankind Ñ at no cost, of course. It’s why former Blazer employee Nick Jones dubbed Rice “America’s Guest.”

“Mike can work the system like nobody I know,” says Mike Barrett, the Blazers’ TV play-by-play man and a frequent golf and tennis partner of Rice on the road. “It’s almost embarrassing. We always find a way onto a nice golf course or into elite tennis clubs. I don’t know how it happens. I just follow behind him, and the next thing I know, we’re playing on a prime court or a beautiful course.”

Rice brings his golf clubs and tennis racket on nearly every trip.

“I was embarrassed to put my clubs on the team plane; it doesn’t bother Rice at all,” Doucette says. “Every city we went into where the temperature was above 40 degrees, he would play golf. Eighteen holes, and then come back in time to throw deodorant under his arms and get to the arena for the game.”

Rice says he’s just doing his part to promote the Blazer organization.

“I always stop in the clubhouse and talk to members about the team,” he says. “The people who run the courses enjoy me and say, ‘Come any time you want, Mike.’ Who am I to turn them down?”

With the many celebrity events in which Rice is asked to play come freebies.

“Mike doesn’t own a stitch of clothing that doesn’t have a logo on it,” Doucette says.

Schonely is in the Mr. Frugality Hall of Fame, but Rice may earn induction at some point.

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