Blazer turns booze to cheers

PORTLAND — Ruben Patterson awoke one day just before the start of the NBA season feeling sick and tired. Again. Hangovers were just as much a part of his routine as practice.

But that day was to be unlike others. Patterson decided he’d had enough of alcohol.

Concerned about his legacy as a player, a father and a man, Patterson resolved to eliminate the demon that had dogged him since he was a teenager.

Over the past decade, Patterson’s career as an NBA forward probably could best be characterized as mediocre. A second-round draft pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1998, and a two-year player with the Seattle SuperSonics, he primarily has been used off the bench. He is better known for off-court incidents, including the attempted rape of his children’s nanny.

“I got to the point where I was so tired, I was like, man, I’ve got to stop,” he said. “So then and there I said to myself, ‘I’m stopping.’ And I haven’t had any since.”

It remains to be seen whether Patterson indeed has turned his troubled life around, but his play is one of the few positives in the Portland Trail Blazers’ bleak season. One newspaper columnist said Patterson, while not the team’s highest scorer, should nonetheless be considered its Most Valuable Player.

Former Trail Blazers player Darnell Valentine, the team’s director of player programs, is in charge of providing players with support on and off the court as part of a management pledge to Portland fans.

“Ruben was able to wake up. He had that kind of determination. He saw where his life was going, and what his legacy was going to be, and he changed it,” said Valentine, previously a regional representative for the NBA players’ association. “He has that kind of willpower.”

Patterson’s transformation has come during a season when the once-proud franchise has had its first losing record since 1988-89. The Blazers will miss the NBA playoffs for the second straight season, after 21 straight years in the postseason.

This season has not been entirely smooth for Patterson, either.

Patterson came to training camp demanding a trade because of a perceived verbal slight made by general manager John Nash during the summer. But he steadily played and practiced his way to more minutes.

The team fired coach Maurice Cheeks last month, handing over the job on an interim basis to Kevin Pritchard, the team’s director for player personnel. Pritchard all but conceded the season was lost and proclaimed the team would shift its focus toward evaluating new talent.

Patterson acknowledges he did not react well to the news, and he landed on the injured list with right knee tendinitis and missed 11 games. Now back, Patterson said he spent the time in Ohio resting with his kids, and in retrospect said he probably shouldn’t have missed so many games.

Patterson’s troubled past still haunts him.

In 2001, he entered a modified guilty plea in Washington state to third-degree attempted rape for allegedly forcing his children’s 24-year-old nanny to perform a sex act on him. A judge suspended all but 15 days of a one-year sentence, and Patterson served the time in his Cleveland home. He also was suspended for the first five games of the following season by the NBA, and had to register as a sex offender in Oregon.

Patterson was convicted of misdemeanor assault in February 2001 for attacking a man who scratched his car outside a Cleveland night club.

He was signed by the Blazers in August 2001 to a six-year deal worth $33.8 million.

But his troubles continued in November 2002 when he was arrested on felony charges of domestic abuse against his wife. Shannon Patterson later dropped the abuse charges, but the couple’s marriage ended in divorce.

Patterson said he realized that his children were seeing the same trouble he had seen during his youth. His father struggled with drug addition and spent time in prison.

“I wanted to see my kids — when they grow up — to be good, successful,” Patterson said. “That’s another reason I made my change. I don’t want my kids to go through all the trouble I went through.”

He’s forging a new relationship with his ex-wife, whom he calls his best friend. They’re working on a reconciliation, he said. Sobriety made it happen.