Portland currently has one major professional team, the Portland Trail Blazers. Each season since moving to Portland in 2000, I have been assigned a handful of games each season. The games were assigned to the photographer working the night shift on game day. For the first several years, I would request for some sort of behind-the-scenes access from the team, but was denied. I tried asking over and over and was met with the same response: No.
I wanted to change that answer. The approach I decided on would take an investment of both time and a little money.