Book Cover

Kerry Eggers recalled inviting Jerome Kersey over to his home for dinner with his family in the early 1990s, when the Portland Trail Blazers were in the midst of three magical seasons.

“My kids were little and they loved him,” said Eggers, a Portland-based author and longtime sportswriter. “He came over with his fiancée and his 1-year-old daughter, Kiara.”

Kiara Kersey, now 27, joined Eggers for a recent book signing at Moda Center in Portland to promote his new biography of the late Kersey, “Jerome Kersey: Overcoming the Odds.”

“It was great, because so many people came up to her and told her how they feel about her dad,” Eggers said.

Eggers will be at Big E’s Sports Bar & Grill in Bend (1012 S.E. Cleveland Square Loop) on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. for the 30th stop of his book tour. He will discuss the book project, Kersey’s life and career and the Trail Blazers’ teams of the early 1990s.

It is the eighth book by Eggers, 68, who retired nearly two years ago after 45 years as a Portland-based sportswriter. He worked for the Oregon Journal from 1975-82, The Oregonian from 1982-2000 and the Portland Tribune from 2001-2020. He is a six-time National Sports Media Association’s Oregon Sportswriter of the Year.

Eggers covered a wide variety of sports throughout his prolific career. In the early 1990s he had the Trail Blazers beat for the Oregonian when the team reached the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992 with a starting lineup that featured Kersey, Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Buck Williams and Kevin Duckworth. The Blazers lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 1990 NBA Finals and the Chicago Bulls in the 1992 finals.

“I think it was the greatest era in Blazer basketball,” Eggers said. “Now, the old-timers would argue with that since they won a title in 1977, but that was such a short-lived time. The run the Blazers had was longer in the early 1990s. It was three glorious years. And those were the first three years that I covered the team. They were good the whole time under Rick Adelman, in my mind the greatest coach in Blazer history.”

Jerome Kersey died in 2015 at age 52 of a pulmonary embolism. He was remembered as one of the most beloved Trail Blazers players ever because of his hustle and determination, according to Eggers.

“He played with such passion,” Eggers said. “They called him the run-down man. He was always chasing guys down and swatting away their dunks. He was great on the break. He could dunk like crazy. But more than that, he could have scored more, but he sort of subjugated his role because he knew he needed to fit in with those other guys, and he fit in perfectly.”

Eggers said he interviewed more than 80 people for the Kersey biography, which he considers one of the biggest underdog stories in NBA history.

Kersey was raised by his grandparents in rural Virginina, and signed with Longwood College in nearby Farmville, Virginia, which was just making the transition from NCAA Division III to Division II.

Kersey became a four-year starter and a small-college All-American but received little notice from NBA scouts. He was chosen with the 46th pick in the second round of the 1984 draft by the Trail Blazers.

“They picked four guys ahead of him,” Eggers said. “And he ended up playing 17 years in the NBA. Only one player that was drafted lower than him ever played as many games as he did — Kyle Korver.”

Kersey played 11 of his 17 NBA seasons in Portland. As a veteran reserve he won an NBA championship ring with the San Antonio Spurs in 1999. After his retirement as a player, he served many years as an ambassador to the Blazers and was working as the team’s director of alumni relations when he died.

Eggers’ book will be available for purchase at the event at Big E’s on Thursday night, and it is also available at kerryeggers.com for $25. Proceeds from the sales of the general edition of the book will go to the Jerome Kersey 1984 men’s basketball scholarship at Longwood University.