So this got linked on the Blazersedge comment section and I found out some interesting facts about Mike Rice. Some of my favorite moments in the article:
Steve "Snapper" Jones had this to say:
“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.”
Another co-worker shares this little insight:
“At the end of a season, when he sends his clothes to the cleaners, there are about five pounds of oatmeal cookie crumbs. Before he gets off the team plane, he stuffs everything he can into his pockets: sandwiches, candy bars, what have you.”
And it sheds a bit of light on the infamous ejection that Rice got back in 1994:
In the third quarter, the Blazers’ Cliff Robinson had a shot he thought was goaltended, but it wasn’t called. Robinson looked at Rice on the way upcourt, “and I made a goaltending gesture to him,” Rice says. “Javie saw me do it.”
Subsequently, Doucette recalls, “Mike made the choke sign. I don’t think Javie liked it.”
According to Rice, as Javie ran by Rice’s courtside seat, the analyst was saying, “Justice is not being served.”
Javie approached Rice and said, “Just do your piddly little job and leave the officiating to me.”
“My piddly little job?” Rice replied. “I’m not the one who blew the call.”
After another exchange, Javie motioned him to the exits with, “You’re outta here.”
A security guard escorted Rice into the tunnel toward the locker room.
