Why Ime Udoka’s return to Portland is special

PORTLAND, Ore. — All these years later, Willie Stoudamire is not sure why he was drawn to Ime Udoka so quickly or why Udoka gravitated to him, at least not in the beginning. But as Udoka returns home, it does make sense.

Udoka was from a North Portland neighborhood Stoudamire said was “horrible.” However, Udoka was not pulled toward the crime that filled those streets. He was not in a gang. He did not need to be in the Midnight Games that Stoudamire ran to keep the kids occupied in the hours when they might otherwise find trouble.

Nor was Udoka, though growing into the size needed to bang bodies under NBA rims, seemingly that talented a player, with potential to be groomed by a coach’s guidance. But there was something about him, something that pushed him, something that would become obvious in the years that followed that Stoudamire perhaps detected from the beginning.

“I run a program that’s called Midnight Basketball,” Stoudamire said. “It was 10 to 2 in the morning. It’s something across the country to try to stem violence. We figure between 10 and 2, that’s when most crimes occur. After the games, him and his friends would come over to the Salvation Army. That’s where the program I ran was. And they would continue to play basketball.

“When Ime kind of came to me, we kind of gravitated to each other. He liked me as a person because I provided some things for him to deal with after 10 o’clock at night. And I liked him because of his determination and stuff. That’s kind of between me and him. But I cherish the fact that he considers me a father figure.”

Everything that combined to inspire and drive him to overcome his circumstances and rise beyond his natural limitations remains.

Inspired by the Trail Blazers and especially his hero, Clyde Drexler, Udoka built a career as a player, then paid his dues while learning to be a coach. The hunger and drive that comes from those neighborhoods and those gyms and those late nights are still a part of him, just as he remains entrenched in the Portland basketball community.

“That city really shaped me as a basketball player, for sure,” Udoka said. “As a person in general, too, but basketball-wise, growing up watching Clyde Drexler is the reason I started playing. And so those memories of listening with my father on the radio pretty much every game, that’s where it started. And then started watching games, tried to emulate him on the court and those Blazer teams that got to the Finals.

“I would say more so, it was our neighborhood, a very tight-knit Black community in North and Northeast (Portland). And the basketball community specifically was where … I would say the older guys were basically our idols, and then we all tried to pay it forward with that next generation. We were all there for each other, all trying to mentor each other and lift each other up.”

A.C. Green and Terrell Brandon led to Damon Stoudamire. Stoudamire inspired Udoka. Udoka was the example for Fred Jones, Terrence Ross, Terrence Jones and Aaron Miles. There were many more, most of whom did not create those sorts of NBA careers, including Udoka’s assistants with the Rockets — Mike Moser, Garrett Jackson and Ben Sullivan. But Udoka was different from most, starting from his roots on the west side of the line that divides North and Northeast Portland.

“Northeast Portland was dark,” Moser said. “But North Portland was darker.”

Udoka was not as gifted as many of the players who reached the NBA, including Willie Stoudamire’s son, Damon. But Udoka watched the glory-years Trail Blazers and the young players who made it out.

“North Portland was where the first gang shootings in Portland were,” Willie Stoudamire said. “It’s like two Portlands. One was North, and one was Northeast. Ime was from North Portland. It was horrible.

“Portland is a small community. There isn’t a huge Black population. Everybody kind of knows everybody. From my own understanding, like with my own son Damon when he was growing up, I kind of steered him away from that. In a sense, I did that with Ime, too. The determination with him — he wanted to make something of himself. That pushed him away from it.”

While pushing away from lurking trouble, Udoka was already driven toward childhood dreams.

“I think I found out very early on I was not Clyde as a player, but … he was a guy that was a role model,” Udoka said. “Just watching them, hearing them day in and day out, I fell in love with those teams. I cried when I was a kid when they lost to the Bulls and the Pistons (in the 1992 and 1990 NBA Finals, respectively). I was heavily invested in it. It’s funny — my dad used to get pissed at me for getting so emotional about games as a kid.

“Then I got to actually meet those guys at local camps. Terry Porter and Clyde Drexler, Jerome Kersey and Buck Williams, (Kevin) Duckworth. Cliff Robinson and a lot of those guys became friends as I got older, still being in the Portland community. I think Clyde being one of the top players and obviously an Olympian and everything he did to get put Portland on the map, it was just what I fell in love with.”

Udoka first saw Damon Stoudamire at Pop Warner football games. When Stoudamire succeeded, first with Arizona and then as Rookie of the Year with the Toronto Raptors, Udoka said his dream seemed “attainable.”

The Midnight Basketball program was then three blocks away from Udoka’s Jefferson High School, and he began playing in those games, sometimes immediately after his high school games. But the contacts and relationships meant more to him than the extra hours competing.

“It was another piece, but more so, it was for local gang members, to keep guys off the streets,” Udoka said. “I was a late bloomer, an unheralded player coming up. That was another opportunity to play. That league was big, like any opportunity to play.

“I met (Willie Stoudamire) playing Pop Warner football and saw Damon with him on the sideline. He was one of the idols that we all watched coming up. And then Willie was just a guy who had had a ton of success at Portland State, where I end up going, and his family is huge in Portland. He’s someone that imparted some knowledge on me, that looked out for me and took me to McDonald’s or wherever when I didn’t always have food.

“He was another father figure. Willie was huge with all that. And I still talk to him to this day.”

Damon Stoudamire’s success provided reason for hope, just as his predecessors inspired him and Udoka would encourage others.

“Damon’s favorite was Terrell Brandon, and Ime looked up to Damon,” Moser said. “You always look up to the local legends. Each one along the way pulls up the next guy up. Terrell pulling up Damon. Damon pulling up Ime. Ime pulling up myself or Garrett or Ben.”

More than provide hope, the players who got out of the North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods always came back, inspiring Udoka to push himself toward that level with a greater understanding of how far he had to go to get there.

“For me, it was really the measuring stick of the Portland guys,” Udoka said. “I played against all these older players and initially couldn’t get on the court with them. You know, as a freshman, they’re all seniors, or they’re all in college. And then every year, I’d see myself improved, and I would almost check guys off the list of who I’m better than.

“I just knew if I competed with these guys every summer, I’d get to my goal. That was my measuring stick — the local guys. I got stronger and stronger, got better and better, and changed my mentality and started to knock off my idols.”

By the time Udoka made it, the Portland basketball community had grown into a smaller, less heralded version of Seattle’s, with players returning home each offseason. Just as Jamal Crawford has led and organized Seattle players, as Doug Christie had before him, Udoka sought to give Portland players the examples and chances his predecessors had given him.

Some of that, he said, was because he “was a grinder that had to get back to Portland to get to work.”

As an NBA player, Udoka had an AAU team in Portland and mentored the next generation or just “took them to dinner or let them chill at my house.” As a head coach, Udoka is limited to the amount of contact he may have with NBA players, but he still returns in the offseason. Though he considers himself one of many in the NBA with Portland roots and values that history, his success is viewed differently.

“I think his story is the most important of all of us because you don’t see that from over there,” Moser said. “That’s not a thing. At all. You see guys come from Northeast Portland. You see guys who are super talented from other areas kind of make it out of their situation. But where he’s from and the limited talent he had as a player, for him to accomplish everything he accomplished, through tons and tons of barriers along the way, it’s impressive.

“If you tried to foreshadow it, it would have been (considered) impossible: to being an NBA player, to coaching in the NBA, to winning a championship as a coach (as a Spurs assistant), to bringing a team to the (Finals) as a head coach, I don’t think anyone could have foreshadowed that.”

Udoka returned to Portland as a head coach with the Celtics in December 2021. Boston scored a season-high 145 points as another Portland product, Payton Pritchard, played a starring role with 19 points off the bench. But Udoka said going back is “always special.”

“You know, at some point, I start to think … I’ve been playing in the league for seven years and coaching for 13 now … and every time I go back, in my mind, I’ve got to do all these tickets and see all the people and all that,” Udoka said. “But you know, understanding that you come back once or twice and people want to celebrate your success — your friends, family and everything — I’m like, OK, I’ve been doing it 20 years now, and you know, it’s still special. Always.”

Those nights bring memories of a time and journey he will never forget. Those Portland roots are not just a reminder of where Udoka is from but who he is.

“It’s funny, because (with) friends of mine, I’ll claim the North, and they always laugh about it because North is a little more raggedy, grimy down there and a little more rough of an area,” Udoka said. “So yeah, I’m from out that way and kind of wear it like a badge of honor. Yeah, that’s where I’m from. There’s something about North Portland, the area called the Villa, that’s a little tough where I grew up.

“It’s home. It’s always special to go home. In a different capacity now, it’s even more special.”