With a few minutes left in Game Two of the 1977 NBA finals, the Portland Trail Blazers were preparing to head back to Portland down 0-2 to the Philadelphia 76ers.

But Maurice Lucas had something left to say.

When big, powerful 'Sixer Darryl Dawkins got in a shoving match with another Blazer, Lucas ran down to Dawkins and drilled his right fist squarely into the back of the big man's head. Blazer aficionados say the '77 finals turned on that blow. Portland swept the next four games against the rattled 'Sixers and won the championship.

But today, with the weakened grasp this city and its players now have on the basketball world, that incident looks significant for another reason altogether.

A day after the clinching victory at Memorial Coliseum, Lucas climbed into coach Jack Ramsay's car at the front of a team parade and rode through an adoring throng of 500,000 gathered along Broadway.

"I just remember a lot of people coming up and saying stuff, congratulating me," Lucas says. "That's a lot of folks, man. As you get older, you think about how that's just a tremendous amount of people."

As hard as it is to imagine such an assemblage gathering to cheer today's Blazers, it's even harder to picture Portlanders today toasting a player who landed a sucker punch on national TV.

The difference, for one thing, is that the 6-foot-9-inch Lucas figured out how to carry himself as a professional athlete. He had a rough edge at times; he could be loud, even ornery on the court. But he was personable off the floor. On the whole, he had a sense of timing — when to shoot, pass, pick, punch and party. And he knew how to win. And for all of that, fans still love to cry out: "LUUUKE."

Today's Blazers, young and often earning more in a year than Lucas did in his entire career, struggle to find the same poise and success.

The organization is paying dearly for it.

Over the last several years, thanks to worsening records, a bickering team and plenty of off-court run-ins with the law, the Blazers' paid attendance has plummeted to the third worst in league, and the franchise value, pegged by Forbes at $283 million in 2002, sank to $247 million in 2004.

Team president Steve Patterson, hired by owner Paul Allen in 2003, has shown a keen understanding that character is at the root of the team's problems. But after a house cleaning of the team's bad apples the Blazers still had a dismal, dysfunctional 2004-2005 season.

This year's answer to the team's woes is a coaching staff with fortitude. Head coach Nate McMillan, hired in July, established himself as a no-nonsense winner in Seattle, where he handled a mix of veterans and young players. He'll try to set a new tone here in Portland.

McMillan has put Lucas, 53, back in the thick of things by hiring him as an assistant. Lucas' role is lower profile, but perhaps equally important. He'll be mentoring players within the new system. Among other things, he's trying to instill an old-fashioned work ethic into 24-year-old forward Zach Randolph, the franchise's best player.

"As a young professional if you can surround yourself with people who've had the success a guy like Maurice has had," Steve Patterson says, "they help guide you and help you avoid mistakes and take advantage of the successes."

At the same time, Lucas and all his past glory is an immediate draw for the disaffected fans who were around in '77. "I'm not gonna deny the PR value," says Patterson.

Since hiring McMillan and Lucas, the team has drawn a new corporate sponsor in Wells Fargo and season ticket sales are beginning to turn up. "People are saying, 'I like what I see, I'm gonna get some tickets,'" says former broadcaster Bill Schonely, now a team representative.

But, like any good turnaround CEO, McMillan is managing expectations. He's not about to guarantee that the current crop of players will immediately respond to its new coaches and mentors.

"What I want to do is bring a team to the arena that fans can be proud of," he says. "I know that everyone wants that to happen right away. I can't promise it will."

LUCAS' NEW POSITION is a marked departure for the team, which over the last decade or so seemed to turn its back on Blazer alums.

Here and there the franchise honored Lucas and his teammates, including a halftime tribute a few years ago. But from the time Lucas served one year as an assistant coach during the 1988-1989 season (after stints with seven other teams and one final season with the Blazers) until his rehiring this August, only two members of the '77 Blazers, Larry Steele and Johnny Davis, were — briefly — on the club's payroll. As alums of that team rose to prominence elsewhere in the NBA — Davis and Lionel Hollins as coaches, Dave Twardzik and Wally Walker as executives, and legendary center Bill Walton as an announcer — the Blazers were reluctant to hire them back. That soured many former players, including Lucas, and it countered standard practice among other NBA teams.

"If you look at teams that are relatively successful they've always had players from their past," Lucas says. "Boston always has somebody at coach or GM from their past glory. The Lakers, Chicago had it. Unfortunately, for this team that didn't exist. I felt slighted. It's like we matured this thing and then we didn't get to be part of the fruit falling off the tree."

Ex-players and people close to the organization finger Patterson's predecessor, Bob Whitsitt, for orchestrating a sort of deliberate amnesia. "When Whitsitt was in charge, I never got a phone call back from him," says Bob Gross, a guard on the '77 team who works for property restoration firm Belfore in Portland but sought a job with the Blazers in the mid-1990s.

To fans and former players, the ugliest snub was Whitsitt's refusal in 1998 to renew the contract of Schonely, the beloved voice of the team from its inception in the 1970s. The announcer was ushered out without any big send-off. Meanwhile, angry fans started a brief boycott campaign.

Then the team began to unravel — in-fighting, drug arrests, referee bullying — following its last competitive run in the playoffs in 2000. And the team's bottom line worsened, hit by declining money from corporate sponsorships and arena suite sales, and fewer national TV appearances. According to Forbes research, owner Paul Allen lost $47 million on the team in 2003 and $85 million in 2004.

The Blazers responded by trading away Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells, who had developed thuggish reputations in Portland, and Patterson hired Jerome Kersey, a Blazer forward in the '80s and '90s, to mentor young players. But then the losses started mounting last season: Zach Randolph got injured, then-coach Maurice Cheeks gradually lost control of his team and the Blazers limped to a 27-55 record.

"Go anywhere and say Blazers and you find it's a negatively charged word — it's a PR disaster," says author Larry Colton, whose first book Idol Time chronicles the '77 team's championship. "I don't know anyone who likes them anymore."

Lucas watched the decline from his home in Lake Oswego, where he runs an event-planning business and is a founding investor in technology startups Unicru and EID Passport. "It was embarrassing," he says.

In December 2003, when Zach Randolph was pulled over while driving a car full of marijuana smoke, a blogger with the screen name "MauriceLucas" on OregonLive.com's BlazersBlog asked, "What will management do? Come down hard on the guy? Let it slide to certain degree?" The Blazers eventually fined Randolph.

Pressed on whether he or some imposter wrote those words, Lucas gets a steely-eyed look and bites off a piece of fingernail. "No, man, I didn't write that." But the sentiment is not far off. "I'd want to know what's our position? It's got to come from the top," he says.

Eventually, Lucas was lured back into the fold by McMillan, whom Lucas played with briefly in Seattle, and by Patterson, who has promised, among other things, to tap into the franchise's history, and who brought Schonely back on board. "He gets it," Lucas says of Patterson.

And however slighted in the past and disgusted with the team's behavior, Lucas is now out to help restore the franchise. "I'd like these young guys to feel the love I felt in this city," he says. "But you've got to earn it. These fans just don't give it to you."

IT'S LATE SEPTEMBER, a few weeks until the Blazers' mandatory training camp starts. At the team's practice gym in Tualatin, Dean Demopoulos, McMillan's lead assistant, is working out returning forwards Darius Miles and Travis Outlaw with newcomers Juan Dixon and Charles Smith. Lucas, still looking as big and imposing as any current Blazer, watches and throws out advice and commentary.

As the hard-fought two-on-two scrimmage rolls on, players start to soak through their shirts and heave. At one break, Outlaw flops on the floor to catch his breath. "You gotta pay the price. You gotta pay the man," Lucas says to Outlaw, sounding a little like he's speaking to a crowd.

Jawing with the players and grabbing rebounds, Lucas is comfortable on the court, but he's still working to establish himself. Most of the players on the team weren't even born when he won a championship. And it's asking a lot for his reputation to stand up over the 17 years he's been away from the game.

Asked what he thinks of Lucas, Juan Dixon, 26, says, "I don't know, I just met him last week."

Zach Randolph walks into the gym with two friends and the place gets a little chaotic. Darius Miles goes to chat with Randolph's posse and give them each a hug. Demopoulos is trying to counsel his players and organize practice for the next day. Meanwhile, Randolph dons a bicycle helmet and gloves and parades around, setting off some laughter. "What time tomorrow?" Demopoulos asks. Nobody says much. "I'm trying to plan ahead," he says, irritation creeping in. Miles finally offers up: "11 o'clock." But Randolph is out of earshot, and as he heads back out the door with his friends, it's not clear what time he'll show tomorrow.

Lucas, who has been doing individual workouts with the Blazer forward, watches him go and retreats to a courtside bench with another coach and a trainer. "What's with the posse?" Lucas asks after Randolph leaves. The others shake their heads and grumble.

Later, Lucas says of his charge: "It's just youth, they don't know any better." Then he says, assuredly, "We'll change that."

Remembering a team and another power forward from 30 years ago, a city awaits.

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