It’s been a couple of months now since Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was arrested and charged with profiting from rigged poker games involving several Mafia figures, along with a former NBA player.
And while the now former coach has since pleaded not guilty to said charges, what he is guilty of is leaving the Blazers team and franchise as a rudderless ship during a time when they could desperately use a captain to navigate the seas that lie ahead.
Irrelevant would be a harsh but accurate way to describe the team to this point.
They’re 13-19 overall, are 10th in the Western Conference standings and, if the season ended today, would find themselves in the play-in round and a game or two from Cancun.
They’d again be an afterthought when it comes to title-contending teams, and with a roster full of “maybes” and “could bes,” would feel no closer to the path to relevancy than they’ve been seeking since their surprise appearance in the Western Conference Finals nearly seven years ago.
Whose fault is that? The front office, I guess to an extent. After all, they’re responsible for the roster that’s been best defined by intrigue and potential opposed to results in recent years. But while Joe Cronin has to shoulder some of the blame, I can’t help but finger Billups as the primary cause to what’s been little to no effect to a team from whom most hoped to see progress.
These were Billups’ guys.
This was a group he’d mentored over the last couple of years, and throughout last season’s campaign appeared to be building a core molded by the former gritty champion.
Billups was supposed to provide stability for that group going forward.
He stressed defense, teamwork and discipline, in addition to demanding from his players the same respect he afforded the coaches who demanded the same from him.
But instead of building on the foundation he’d spent the prior four years laying, he demolished it with either a Hall of Fame level of naivete at best, or stupidity at worst.
Upon signing his two-year contract extension last spring, the rookie head coach beamed with excitement.
He spoke to the potential he thought the team had and couldn’t wait to help them tap into and ultimately meet it.
“I’m just so happy with what we’ve done and where I think we can go,” Billups said. “So much promise here. I’m pumped about it.”
And fans of the team couldn’t help but be pumped as well. After all, outsiders are really only making marginally educated guesses as to what they see and, as a result, put the bulk of their stock regarding the future in the people on the inside: General Manager Joe Cronin, the players themselves and, of course, the coach paid to make magic happen.
Well, while Cronin and the players he’s compiled are still here ready to work, O Captain! My Captain seems at present to be closer to assembling license plates than a championship NBA roster, leaving his players and Portland’s team as a headless snake.
That’s not a shot at interim coach Tiago Splitter, for the former NBA player is in the infantile stage of his coaching career but at the same time in the deep end of a pool he should really only be wading into.
Coaching in the NBA requires a delicate balance of tactical brilliance and babysitting. While Xs and Os are a piece of the puzzle, I’d argue the more important piece is managing egos that have mostly only been stroked.
The bulk of the league’s talent have always been “the man,” and from the first time they ran circles around their childhood competition, have been coddled, acquiesced to and only barely coached. They’ve always had the power and even at the game’s highest level hold the bulk of the cards — and they know it.
As a result, it’s a rare breed that can foster the relationship and respect necessary to mold a group of NBA professionals into one willing to listen, trust and follow direction. Billups seemed to be on, if not far down that path with this Blazers team, and due to such had people like me — and, more importantly, the team — buying what he had spent the better part of four years selling.
In a league built around superstars, it’s that buy-in that can often lead to success for a team devoid of one.
Sure, Deni Avdija might be headed toward that stratosphere, but I think we now know Shaedon Sharpe — while good — isn’t; Scoot Henderson as the result of repeated injury remains at best an unknown; and the rest of the roster is filled with the “good but not great” players that litter rosters across the league.
But while the Blazers lack elite-level talent, Billups believed they had enough and the right combination of such that if they did things the right/his way, they could do more with less to the tune of a competitive unit.
Now, however, and in the wake of Billups’ unceremonious departure, there’s no straw stirring the drink in Portland and, as a result, no magic for a roster that needs a little.
That’s not Cronin’s fault, nor the players’. But rather the man both believed in to show them the way, teach them what they didn’t already know, and take them where they and the fans are desperate to go.
It’s Chauncey’s fault — remind me to thank him.