Bill Schonely, the iconic Trail Blazers announcer credited with starting ‘Rip City,’ dies at 93

Longtime Portland Trail Blazers broadcaster Bill Schonely, who first coined the iconic phrase “Rip City,” has died, the team announced.

He was 93.

Schonely was the Trail Blazers’ original radio broadcaster, getting his start there during the inaugural season in 1970. He was actually hired as the sixth employee in the organization’s history after a long broadcast career in the area.

He kept broadcasting for the next 28 seasons, and even spent two seasons in the 1990s as the team’s television play-by-play announcer.

Schonely retired from calling games in 1998, but he continued with sideline reporting and other projects for television broadcasts. He also worked as an ambassador with the franchise from 2003 until last April.

Schonely called more than 2,500 games in his career, and missed just 28, per The Oregonian — the bulk of which came while recovering from a heart attack.

Schonely is credited with coining the term “Rip City,” something the franchise and the city at large has embraced in the decades since. According to The Oregonian, Schonely first blurted out, “Rip City, all right!” after Jim Barnett made a shot during the team's first season in 1971, and it stuck from there on.

“That night, I got caught up in the excitement and it just came out of my mouth,” he said in 2009, per The Oregonian. “It wasn’t something that was planned.”

Schonely was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2002, and he had a banner raised in the Trail Blazers’ arena the following year. He received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, too.