He had not given it much thought, so he assumed he would spend most of his time at the Rockets' downtown hotel a few miles from his house, doing what coaches on road trips do.

But for Adelman, Portland is not just another NBA city, even if the Trail Blazers are for this brief time no more than the team standing in the Rockets' way. He played and coached in Portland and raised a family there. He calls Portland home.

Like to see them succeed

"I like to see them succeed," he said, "to a certain point."

He said it will even be good in some ways to see the revival of the relationship between the city and team, with the Trail Blazers' transformation from the years locked in the lottery and the players the subjects of local scorn, to a share of a division title, loved again as the subject of renewed Blazermania.

"I know what we're going to face when we go to Portland," Rick Adelman said. "They're going nuts right now. "

Few franchises have had a closer relationship with a community than the Blazers enjoy with Portland.

Getting his start

Adelman joined Jack Ramsay's staff in 1983 and replaced Mike Shuler as Portland coach in 1989, leading the Blazers to a 59-23 record and the NBA Finals in his first full season.

From Adelman's seasons as a player to his time as Chemeketa Community College coach in Salem to his run with the Blazers, taking two Portland teams to the NBA Finals, he experienced the bond between a city and team that had seemed unbreakable.

That bond was not unbreakable, and Adelman had kept his ties to Portland long enough to see the way the team's reputation of the early 2000s pushed the most loyal of fans away.

"I never doubted the fact, when they went through all the tough times, if they ever started winning again it was going to explode," he said. "That's what's happened."

jonathan.feigen@chron.com