Before Bill Walton. Before Clyde Drexler. Before Damian Lillard. Before any of the names that Portland fans now associate with Trail Blazers greatness, there was Geoff Petrie — the Princeton-educated guard who arrived in Portland's very first season, immediately became the franchise's most exciting player, and set the standard for what excellence in a Trail Blazers uniform looked like before anyone in Rip City had thought to define it.
The #45 in the Moda Center rafters honors the first great Portland Trail Blazer — the player who gave the franchise its early identity, its early energy, and its early reason for fans to believe that this small-market expansion team might someday become something worth watching. That belief, planted by Geoff Petrie, grew into the 1977 championship and everything that followed. The number belongs in the rafters not merely as a tribute to one player, but as a tribute to the beginning of Rip City itself.
Princeton to Portland: An Unlikely Founding Star
Geoffrey Michael Petrie was born April 17, 1948, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and attended Princeton University — an Ivy League school not traditionally associated with producing NBA talent. At Princeton, Petrie developed the combination of intelligence, shooting touch, and competitive instincts that would make him one of the most productive young guards in professional basketball. He was selected eighth overall by the brand-new Portland Trail Blazers in the 1970 NBA Draft, becoming one of the franchise's foundational pieces from its very first day of existence.
Petrie's impact was immediate and extraordinary. In his rookie season (1970-71), he averaged 24.8 points per game and co-won the NBA Rookie of the Year award with Dave Cowens of the Boston Celtics — both players averaging exactly 21.8 points per game, a statistical tie that produced one of the most unusual shared honors in award history. For a brand-new franchise still figuring out its identity, Petrie's immediate excellence was invaluable. He gave Portland something to celebrate from the very beginning.
The Peak Years: Carrying a Franchise on His Shoulders
Petrie's peak seasons (1970-74) placed him among the most productive scoring guards in the Western Conference. His combination of off-the-dribble creation, catch-and-shoot accuracy, and the ability to score in traffic made him one of the league's most consistent offensive options — a player around whom Portland built its early offensive identity. In an era before the three-point line, his shooting range and release point were advanced for his generation.
Carrying an expansion franchise requires a particular kind of resilience. Portland's early teams were not built to compete for championships — they were learning how to be a franchise, how to draft and develop, how to create the organizational infrastructure that contenders require. Petrie performed at an All-Star level while the organization around him was still in formation, providing the consistency and the talent that gave Portland's early fan base its reason to show up and its reason to care.
Injuries, Early Retirement, and the Executive Legacy
Knee injuries began limiting Petrie's availability in his third season and became increasingly problematic through the mid-1970s. He retired in 1976 at age 27 — before Portland's championship season, before the franchise had assembled the pieces that would make 1977 possible. The timing was cruel: the player who had established Portland as a real NBA city never got to experience the championship moment that his early presence had helped make organizationally possible.
His basketball legacy did not end with his playing career. Petrie transitioned to the front office, eventually becoming the General Manager of the Sacramento Kings, where he built multiple playoff teams and earned recognition as one of the more thoughtful executives in the league. His selection of Chris Webber and his development of Sacramento's early 2000s rosters — one of the most entertaining teams of that era — reflected the same basketball intelligence that had made him an elite scorer as a player.
Why the Trail Blazers Retired #45
Portland retired Geoff Petrie's #45 to honor a player who came first — who established that the Trail Blazers could attract genuine talent, develop genuine stars, and give Rip City something worth investing in emotionally. Every franchise needs its founding star, the player who says to a new city: this is what we can be. Petrie was that player for Portland.
The #45 in the rafters is also an acknowledgment that NBA careers can be stolen by injury — that greatness is sometimes measured in what was accomplished during the time available rather than across a full career arc. Petrie averaged close to 22 points per game over his six professional seasons. That average, sustained against the competition of his era, places him among the most productive guards of his generation. Knee injuries determined the length of his career. The Trail Blazers' decision to retire his number determined how he would be remembered.
When the Trail Blazers were born in 1970, Geoff Petrie gave them their first identity. The franchise has honored that gift appropriately — with a retired number that hangs alongside the championship-era legends who came after him, a permanent reminder that Rip City's story began with a Princeton guard who immediately became something special in an expansion city that needed exactly that.
