2021 nba offseason draft free agency etc

he's olshey's bud so i don't like it

TIL abt the very credible r*pe case against chauncey so this sucks ass

fuck

well if the billups hire is real I’m gonna learn to turn off the part of myself that loves the blazers for a few years and just follow basketball generally. it sucks but I’ll be far from the only one. indefensible, villainous decision. to hell with ‘em.

fun seeing the organization throwing up their hands and saying "sorry, this is dame's guy! we definitely would have hired someone else"

it's predictable that the blazers' PR may take a hit from hiring billups and having his dirty laundry aired out in local media, but equally predictable that if the blazers have an unexpectedly successful season with a trip to the WCF or the Finals, all will be forgiven and forgotten in a surge of enthusiasm. the converse is true, too. if the team just limps along or falls apart he'll be reviled, but not for any credible rape accusations. it's just the way it works.

so you’re saying if the team does good people will like the team and if they do bad people will like the team less, interesting

I'm saying that in the eyes of the franchise and most of the fans, the rape accusation against billups is just a small PR management problem that will go away as soon as the season gets underway, so it probably was a negligible factor in the decision to hire him. the local media will probably play along bcz the blazers are proven money makers for them.

Really? I was asked what coaches I like of the names I “heard” and I named them. Sorry I wasn’t aware of their history I didn’t read the news when I was 7/8yrs old. I don’t support Those things … but if this the route y’all wana come at me… say less https://t.co/N1GPkX3Ohd

— Damian Lillard (@Dame_Lillard) June 26, 2021

🤔

this is so dumb and bad

sorry but the blazers are now a bad vibes team

honestly the fact that lillard already feels like he needs to respond means there is a path to reversing this if that is what the people want

yeah seems like it could be falling apart

is the ink dry on this deal?

also honestly--if i heard about this billups allegation before the past few weeks of his name being considered for head coaching jobs, it was a long time ago and i forgot about it. sucks that it happened while he was in boston. does anyone know if he has ever publicly spoken about it or acknowledged it?

well he’s going to have to now

lillard’s response is…not great. why say that if you’re going to say anything?

a lot of people are comfortable using ignorance as an excuse i guess

yeah i have been thinking this afternoon that maybe there's been enough backlash they rescind the offer but that's very unlikely at this stage. but the big sportswriters for the local papers are just saying "this is wrong for portland and wrong for the team and wrong for this day and age" in pretty bold strokes. the posts on the blazers blogs are just basically "here are what several women who like the blazers think about this hire, trigger warning", it's ugly already and nothing's signed that i know of

the reporting that jody allen wanted becky hammond for the job seems like it matters

lol and right on time here’s the lillard wants out stuff, Olshey made his bed

portland's gotta blow it up

There’s only so many teams left that are both trying to contend and haven’t traded away all their draft assets

damn you can’t even defend a rapist these days without catching feelings huh

I think the pelicans could sell him on the idea of contending with Zion

being like “I want out now because the Twitter meanies got on me about being okay with the rapist coach” is just about the worst look possible, very very dark days for the franchise

That Chris Haynes article is basically a press release from Dame saying I didn’t know about Chauncey Billups’ past (which is fair) so y’all better be nice to me or I’ll ask for a trade (which is hilarious)

— sreekar (@sreekyshooter) June 27, 2021

a simple solution to all this would be "not hiring chauncey billups"

yes. I was pleasantly surprised that the mostly worthless sports-columnist-troll for the Oregonian, John Canzano, threw down the gantlet at once over Billups, the moment Shams broke the story. Good on him. Maybe Olshey can back out of this one without falling out a window in the process.

welp

Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups has reached agreement on a five-year deal to become the new coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, sources tell ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 28, 2021

str8 bullshit

five years! get your buds paid before your ass is dropped I guess. very grody all around

There’s only so many teams left that are both trying to contend and haven’t traded away all their draft assets

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, June 27, 2021 5:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Philadelphia has entered the chatroom.

honest question, be kind to me - has this info about chauncey been out in the public sphere consistently? is it a component of his public reputation prior to the past couple weeks? it kinda blows my mind that he's been a prominent nba personality for the past 2 decades, and this story is just really registering with me now. i don't remember any shade at all when he was leading a Pistons team regarded for its character, won finals mvp, got hired and was again highly regarded as an analyst, etc. Not at all saying that the Blazers should just ignore this stuff in his history, and there are cases to be made to nix it both based on the desire and convinction to reverse the Jail Blazers rep, and on the #metoo context, changing times. To say nothing of just What Is the Right Thing to Do, morally. But, on a certain level it feels a little bit like a gotcha on the Blazers, like we've been cool with this dude and papering over his past for 20 years, so why would they think this would be different.

its not been common knowledge, i think it became a bigger deal via blazers fans online bringing it up while theyve been looking at hc candidates

thx bise. i think i'm also trying to reconcile this info with the fact that i have always liked him. fighting off the part of me that wants to make excuses about an nba rookie being caught up in the life and all. hard to know whether or not it's abominable to make excuses for him without knowing more about what happened, but there's enough out there for me to know it would be nagl to defend him

i wonder if he and the blazers have plans to address this, would certainly be interested in what they have to say

i always liked him too fwiw, and a couple weeks ago was the first i heard about all this, dont recall it being in the news at the time when he was with the celtics, obvs a long time ago tho

same, first time i've heard of it was when he got brought up as a potential celtics coach

my tendency is def to disengage with cases of celebrity harm causing cause theres just so much harm in society at large that im just like let the celebrities deal with the fallout from their own shit i ultimately dont really care about them i would like to relax and watch thunderous dunks, which is not to say that these cases arent important for society at large as examples and so forth, just that i have low enthusiasm for litigating them myself, its all so depressing

i hear that, i feel very out of my normal m.o. bringing it up

plus there's presumably no shortage of potentially good nba coaches out there (though unearthing them is another matter)

yeah i feel like theres all sort of opportunities for repairing harm forgiveness etc, obvs they have to actually do that, but it still doesnt mean its good for them to become a head coach or a senator or whatever, it send a pretty callous message to the countless people who have been harmed by similar behaviors

I think that the saintly place Kobe has in the NBA is a part of this

chauncey was also close to being hired as GM of the cavs several years back and none of this ever came up.

this reminds me a lot of when greg schiano got hired to be tennessee football coach and fans who didn’t like the hire bcuz they thought the should be getting a better coach concocted a campaign to overturn the hire based on schiano having an alleged role in covering for jerry sandusky. the billups accusations seem more damning — or are at least directly accusing him of a crime — but one does get the sense that the accusations are being weaponized bcuz the fans just want a different coach. i don’t pity chauncey bcuz nobody deserves a job as an NBA coach but it does feel like there’s a sort of proxy war being waged here. dame being thrown in the middle of it is kind of a tip of the hand to me, the fanbase thinks the process has been illegitimately led by a player so they pressed the big red button they thought would blow up the hire. of course, the blazers risking the goodwill of their franchise and possibly lillard’s status on the team to hire chauncey billups as coach is, even if all of the above is true, the craziest thing of all.

Matt Armstrong
Posted: June 28, 2021 at 12:19:33 PM
I think that the saintly place Kobe has in the NBA is a part of this

yeah was thinking about this too, and aside from the rape accusation he was just such a blatant psycho and has been canonized for it

but one does get the sense that the accusations are being weaponized bcuz the fans just want a different coach.

i dont get this impression at all??

The scant details made public are damning enough to establish that a fairly brutal rape occurred and that billups was present. Beyond his undoubted presence at the scene, it is not clear exactly what his role was.

There is a widespread expectation that the Warriors will use the No. 7 pick and James Wiseman to immediately upgrade the roster, @johnhollinger writes.

One name to watch: Pascal Siakam.

More: https://t.co/nn68CLMvCi pic.twitter.com/FPjeLkGKin

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 28, 2021