As a native Portlander, I can say that the Blazers were really hyper-focused on the idea of a center at the time, because they thought it was what they were missing to make a run at the Lakers. Jim Paxson was 2nd team all-NBA as a SG in ‘84 and was still pretty young. Drexler was a young bench piece with promise. They traded for Kiki Vandeweghe, who was an elite scorer, a couple weeks before the draft. They saw Mychal Thompson as a better PF than C. They won 48 games in ‘84 so they believed they were close to contending. Bowie filled a need. I believe if they had a bad team they would’ve been more likely to draft Jordan and build around him and Drexler. They ended up slipping back to about a .500 team for a couple years before the core of their two teams that went to the finals came together in the late ‘80s.
Bowie’s injury history was a huge red flag but they took the risk. They were frustrated about not getting Olajuwon and instead of rethinking the strategy they plowed ahead with Bowie.
