Blazer's Edge: Helping Over One Thousand Underprivileged Kids Attend An NBA Game

SB Nation blogs were never intended to be just a writer telling his or her opinion to the world about a team or a sport. That was an old model of sports journalism we were looking to break. What we wanted was a whole community of sports fans congregating at a site, all of them with opinions, all of them with a way to express those opinions, and all of them part of a bigger community than just themselves. Creating that kind of community can lead to great things when directed in a positive way. Take, for example, what they did over at Blazer's Edge, a Portland Trail Blazers site.

Six weeks ago we announced Blazer's Edge Night 2014, a chance for you to send underprivileged children and youth from the greater Portland area to the Blazers-Wizards game on March 20th in the Moda Center. You may recall that after a couple years hanging around the 500-700 guest range we got ambitious this season and asked whether the readers of this site could sponsor 1000 kids and their chaperons. We've held this event for years but I've got to admit, heading into four-digit territory made me sweat a little. Could we sustain it? Would you guys care enough or believe enough to make it happen?

Oh yeah. And then some.

It's my great pleasure to announce that we are actually over the 1000 ticket mark. More than a thousand kids who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend a Blazers game--plus their teachers, principals, counselors, foster parents, social workers, and coaches--will see the Blazers take on the Wizards because of you.

That's simply incredible. The Blazer's Edge community donated enough tickets so that over 1,000 underprivileged kids and chaperons could attend a basketball game. What a thrill it must be for these kids to go to the game.

You should read the whole story as Dave Deckard, the head honcho at Blazer's Edge, relays a story about the tickets and a conversation he had with the Blazers ticket rep.

We salute Dave Deckard and the Blazer's Edge community. You guys are the best. When we started this whole SB Nation thing long ago, we knew we wanted strong communities, but we didn't anticipate everything they would do. Now, we see what they have become and we are proud and thankful.