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Clyde Drexler Reveals Real Reason Behind His Portland Trail Blazers Exit In 1995

Clyde Drexler was undoubtedly one of the best shooting guards of all-time. He made the All-Star team 10 times and was selected to an All-NBA team five times.

Drexler was one of the fiercest competitors during his time. But perhaps, he just wasn’t comparable to Michael Jordan, who overshadowed him over the course of his career. 

The two players enjoyed many heated games against each other from the 1980s up to the 1990s. But the most memorable matchup was obviously during the 1992 NBA Finals where Jordan gave us one of the most iconic moments in history which was the savage shrug in game one of the Finals.

In February of 1995, Portland honored Drexler’s request to be traded to a contender, and traded him to his hometown team, the Houston Rockets.

Later that same year, in his first season with the Rockets, Drexler helped Houston win the NBA Championship.

While talking to James Posey on the ‘Posecast‘ podcast, Drexler now revealed that he actually never wanted to leave Portland, but was more or less forced to, because Portland gave up too soon, wanting to rebuild instead.

“The only reason I left Portland – they were starting to rebuild. Because after all those great years, I had some injuries on my knees. And they kind of gave up a little too soon. So they started rebuilding and got rid of Kevin Duckworth. And I was like ‘Hold up guys, we don’t have a center’. Then they started saying ‘we need to rebuild, we need to trade some of these veterans while they can still play so we can get something for them. And that’s when I orchestrated the move to Houston. But if they hadn’t done that, I would’ve finished my career there.”

NBA legend Clyde Drexler wanted to finish his career with the Portland Trail Blazers. However, on "The Posecast," he explained what went wrong in Portland and why he ultimately orchestrated a trade to the Houston Rockets: pic.twitter.com/kZvwZRcmPW

— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) October 31, 2020