There are very few if any tales explaining Brandon Roy's decision to part ways with the Portland Trail Blazers. To most, his surgically degenerates knees and a lack of cartilage were the main reasons he chose to call it quits after five seasons in the league, yet there was also the toll his absences had taken in his relationship with the team and his teammates.
Though it's been nearly nine years since he stepped away from the NBA before deciding to come back for a brief stint, the former Blazers guard still recalls the uncomfortable feeling of coming back to a team that had grown used to being without him.
“I remember we were in Toronto, and it was almost awkward being around the team,” Roy told Jason Quick of The Athletic. “I’m not saying this in a bad way, I’m just trying to express how I was feeling at the time, but here I was, the highest-paid guy on the team, I was just an All-Star and All-NBA guy and literally the only person who talked to me was (trainer) Jay Jensen.”
The team flew to Detroit next and Roy took that as an opportunity to get a grip on the locker room chemistry. LaMarcus Aldridge, always the introvert, kept to himself. Andre Miller did as well. Wesley Matthews was consumed with trying to prove he belonged in the league as an undrafted player, having inherited Roy's spot as the starting shooting guard.
“I was just hanging out with the trainers working out, thinking, ‘Man, I don’t really feel a part of this deal,'” said Roy. “Not that anybody was trying to do it, it just that you get bonds with guys when you have to go out there in games and count on them, rely on them, trust them, and I just wasn’t in on that bond.
“It just seemed like… have you ever been somewhere and it seems like, dang, time has passed me? It was like that for me. It just felt different.”
Roy had four knee surgeries during his five years with the Blazers — two on each side. Couple that with a left knee surgery in high school and a right knee surgery during his time at the University of Washington, his operations at the pros were no longer the regular kind, but arthroscopies that kept taking more meniscus tissue, more cartilage, like the tread on a tire.
By the time he was ready to call it quits, his knees were virtually grinding bone-on-bone, like tires almost down to bare metal.
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