By Wayne Thompson
TrailBlazers.com

The Portland Trail Blazers lost a major chapter in their colorful past Jan. 30 with the death of Stuart K. Inman, the very first and, in my opinion, the very best talent scout the franchise has ever known.

As The Oregonian's first Trail Blazer beat writer, I will never forget my first encounter with Inman in the spring of 1970 when the team's general manager Harry Glickman began to organize the Trail Blazers' front office.

"Hi, I'm Wayne Thompson," I said as I approached the deeply tanned, 6-foot-4 Inman, then age 44. "I'll be covering the team this year."

"Then we need to talk," replied Stu, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye, as if to say, "Young man, you've got a lot to learn."

And that's what happened. Stu Inman, one of the true geniuses in a sport that could use more visionaries like him, took me aside and taught me so much about how to watch and critique a basketball game.

Inman had insights that were spell-binding. In December of 1971, for example, when the Blazers were in Los Angeles scheduled to play the Lakers the next day; Stu knocked on my hotel room door and said. "I've got to scout a player at Santa Barbara tonight. You want to go along for the ride?"

"Absolutely," I replied, thinking to myself how much fun it would be to see a professional talent scout at work, and to be able to share in the inside secrets of what he noticed in a player's game.

I can't remember the name of the player for the Cal-Santa Barbara team that Inman scouted that night, but what sticks forever in my mind was how he did his job.

First, Stu always took a seat high in the stands to get a better look of the floor where he could see defensive movements, screens being set -- all the little things that demonstrate a player's fundamentals and competitive instincts.

A player could go 2-14, he told me, and yet do so many things that help his team that he would earn a good grade for the outing.

Secondly, Inman paid special attention to the pre-game warm-ups to see how serious a player was in preparing himself for the game.

On these first-time visits, Inman seldom made contact with the college coaches involved "Just here to get a first look," he told me.

Halfway through the game, I noticed that Inman stopped charting the player he came to see and began taking mental notes on a player from Samford University of Birmingham, Alabama.

Inman's eye focused on a big 6-foot-7 inch rebounder who reminded Stu of Walt Gilmore, the 6-foot-6 forward from Fort Valley State, Georgia; Gilmore was the second player Inman drafted in 1970 after Geoff Petrie.

"You interested?" I asked.

"A little," he said. "I like the way he was still playing hard even though Samford was losing by 20. Gilmore has more upside," Inman added, "but this guy could be a steal in the late rounds."

Inman then scribbled on a piece of paper. "Worth a second look, but he can't shoot."

Later, however, Inman found a better choice than the Samford rebounder in Tennessee State center Lloyd Neal, whom Inman grabbed in the third round of the 1972 draft. Neal, as it turned out, was a solid NBA player and a vital cog in Portland's 1976-77 championship team.

Finding players who became serviceable contributors and who filled special roles -- players other teams had overlooked -- was Inman's special genius.

Character was a major variable in his consideration of a player. Stu's long-time friend, the late Dr. Bruce Ogilvie, a sports psychologist from San Jose State, used to test all Trail Blazer rookies so that Inman could get a handle on what personal traits were driving their talent.

Personal character issues were often the make-weight in draft decisions for Stu not only looked at the players on the court, but he conducted countless interviews with teachers, coaches, family members and friends to find out who these people were as people.

I got a first-hand insight into this as Inman asked me on several occasions after my sportswriting days were over to work up personal profiles on Tar Heel players Sam Perkins, Al Wood and Dudley Bradley. The Blazers drafted none of these players, but Inman wanted a complete portfolio on everybody he was interested in. No doubt that is what made him so successful in finding diamonds in the rough.

Indeed, during his tenure as Portland's personnel chief, Stu drafted 33 players in the 2nd round or later who went on to play in the NBA.

Examples: 1970, Walt Gilmore, 2nd round, Ron Knight, 5th round, Claude English, 7th round; 1971, Charlie Yelverton, 2nd round, Larry Steele, Bill Smith, 3rd round; 1972, Bob Davis, Dave Twardzik, Ollie Johnson, 2nd round, Lloyd Neal , 3rd round; 1974, Phil Lumpkin, 2nd round, Mickey Johnson, 4th round, Dan Anderson, 6th round; 1975, Bobby Gross, 2nd round; 1976, Johnny Davis, Major Jones, 2nd round; 1977, Kim Anderson, T.R. Dunn, 2nd round; 1978, Clemon Johnson, 2nd round; 1980, Michael Harper, 3rd round; 1981, Peter Gudmundsson, 3rd round. Peter Verhoeven, 4th round; 1982, Linton Townes, Audie Norris, 2nd round; 1983, Tom Piotrowski, 3rd round; 1984, Victor Fleming, Steve Colter, Jerome Kersey, 2nd round; 1985, Ken Johnson, Michigan State, 2nd round, Perry Young, 3rd round; 1986, Drazen Petrovic, third round; 1987, Nikita Wilson, 2nd round, Kevin Gamble, 3rd round.

The same skills he exhibited in finding sleepers in the later rounds of the draft sometimes haunted him in making first round picks.

He fell in love in 1971, for instance, with smooth shooting All-America Ken Durrett of LaSalle and almost took him ahead of Sidney Wicks in the 1971 draft. Durrett's history of knee problems, thankfully, saved Inman from that mistake.

Later, he selected center LaRue Martin of Chicago Loyola with the first pick of the draft -- a selection often regarded as one of the worst picks in NBA history. But there's an untold story behind that mistake. Inman really wanted North Carolina All-America Bob McAdoo, a Hall of Famer. And the Blazers thought they had him signed on the eve of the 1973 draft. But McAdoo's agent came back in the morning with new contract terms and wanted more money, thus, Blazer ownership tore up the deal and decided to take Martin. It was not Inman's call.

In 1974, Inman selected Barry Parkhill of Virginia, who became a bust in the rival ABA. He had little to choose from when he took Hofstra's Rich Laurel with the 19th pick in 1977 and Ronnie Lester of Iowa in 1980, though he did make a trade of Lester that netted the Blazers one of their better point guards in franchise history -- Kelvin Ransey of Ohio State.

Stu Inman was never quite able to shake the oft-told story of how the Trail Blazers passed up Michael Jordan in 1984 to take 7-foot-1 Sam Bowie of Kentucky. Never mind that the Chicago Bulls admitted years later that they would have done the same thing had they been in Portland's shoes, or that Portland already had veteran NBA All-Star Jim Paxson and promising NBA Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler in the position that Jordan played.

You can never win that argument anyway, Inman said later. "When a team passes on a player who later becomes the greatest player in basketball history, nothing you can say will convince anyone that you made the right decision, no matter the circumstances at the time," Inman said. "Let's just say it was a mistake and move on."

In that small way, Inman was taking one for a team that was trying to fill a need (at center) with the pick instead of taking the best player available. A lesson learned perhaps, but not one that Inman or the Trail Blazers religiously believed in.

Because of the Larue Martin and Sam Bowie selections, Inman probably won't be given his rightful place among the great basketball minds of the 20th century, but his name should be included among them, nonetheless.

The Stu Inman I knew (and I don't mind saying it. . . loved) had uncommon perceptions about people and what made them tick. When talking about a player, one of his favorite descriptions of a player went something like this, "...I don't know if John Doe has really discovered who he is, but I think I have an idea of who he can be."

Then Inman would inevitably make a comparison of that player to another player that everybody would be familiar with. On Clyde Drexler, for example, Inman once said, "he's Dominique Wilkins without the ego." About Terry Porter, he exclaimed, "He and John Stockton are a lot alike, except Terry has more range, and Stockton is a better playmaker."

Moreover, he said this about Porter and Stockton before either played an NBA game.

He scouted Bobby Gross at Long Beach State in 1974-75 and seemed more enthusiastic about him than he was about Bill Walton a year earlier. That was because everybody knew how great Walton would be, so promoting him to the Blazer hierarchy was a no-brainer.

But finding a talent that few people had ever heard of -- the Bobby Grosses of the basketball world -- now that was being a Vasco da Gama, a discoverer of another world of talent.

Inman loved to be cast in that role.

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