{"id":767448,"date":"2026-06-29T08:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767448\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T08:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:58:17","slug":"portland-trail-blazers-hire-mike-williams-as-assistant-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767448\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers Hire Mike Williams as Assistant Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Portland Trail Blazers have hired Mike Williams as an assistant coach, marking the first appointment to new head coach Micah Nori\u2019s staff. HoopsHype\u2019s Michael Scotto <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/mikeascotto.bsky.social\/post\/3mpf6dehygs2g\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">broke the news<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Williams joins the Blazers after working as an assistant coach with the Utah Jazz under head coach Will Hardy for the past three seasons. Prior to his tenure with the Jazz, Williams served as the head coach of the Capital City Go-Go, the Washington Wizards\u2019 G League affiliate, from 2021-2023. He also served as a player development assistant coach with the Wizards from 2018-2021 under head coach Scott Brooks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Williams graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor\u2019s degree in multi-platform journalism in 2017 and a master\u2019s degree in business and management in 2018. In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rhsmith.umd.edu\/smith-profiles\/calling-shots\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">article that appeared last summer<\/a> on the website for the university\u2019s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Williams discussed his role with the Jazz, which included structuring individual workout plans for players and contributing to game strategy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">Williams says with the NBA, he has become an offensive strategy specialist\u2014\u201ccreating plays, schemes and concepts that fit our personnel.\u201d This includes sometimes \u201cgoing down a rabbit hole\u2014on a tangent\u2014to explore an obscure concept that may give the team a new edge on offense.\u201d And perhaps like a business-class assignment, he says, \u201cyou make it a project\u2014fleshing it out and presenting it to the head coach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers have hired Mike Williams as an assistant coach, marking the first appointment to new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,47884,590,85],"class_list":["post-767448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blazers-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}