Did Trail Blazers Make A Major Mistake in Letting G League Coach Walk This Summer?

Portland let a beloved NBAGL coach depart for an assistant gig with a West rival.

Oct 20, 2018; Portland, OR, USA; A detailed view of a Portland Trail Blazers jersey with a PGA patch honoring the late Paul Allen during the first quarter of the game against the San Antonio Spursat the Moda Center. Allen passed away last week. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports / Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

The Portland Trail Blazers could be dealing with a mass coaching exodus this year.

Portland's fourth-year head coach, Chauncey Billups, has a team option on his contract for the 2024-25 season, though Billups has at least inferred that he'd be amenable to moving on from what looks to be a long-term, lottery-bound situation with the Trail Blazers.Across three underwhelming seasons in Rip City thus far, Billups has posted an 81-165 record and has yet to make a postseason.

Read More: Trail Blazers News: Does Chauncey Billups Want To Leave After Contract Ends?

The departure of a young, up-and-coming coach could come back to bite the Blazers.

According to Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report, now-ex-Rip City Remix head coach Jim Moran left his gig as Portland's G League affiliate head coach to join Mike Brown's bench on the Sacramento Kings, at least in part, because he felt that a role as an assistant on an NBA staff could get him closer to a head coaching gig.

It's unclear if the opportunity to serve under Billups with the Trail Blazers proper was ever floated to Moran prior to his decision to depart the Remix.

"I do know that they were big fans of what he was doing leading their G League team and would have been very happy keeping him in that role if he hadn’t gotten the offer from the Kings," Highkin notes. "There are always other factors that come into play with this sort of coaching turnover. Steve Hetzel is another assistant coach the Blazers thought very highly of and weren’t looking to part ways with when he left to become Jordi Fernandez’s lead assistant in Brooklyn. But Hetzel and Fernandez had known each other and worked together for years, going back to when Fernandez was an assistant under Hetzel during his stint as head coach of the Cavaliers’ G League team in 2014. Maybe the Blazers could have offered him the lead assistant job when they let Scott Brooks go, but Hetzel has known Fernandez a lot longer than he’s known Billups and it was a full-circle moment when the opportunity came up to join his friend in his first head-coaching job."

In their last season under Moran, the 2023-24 Rip City Remix went 18-16 overall, finishing ninth in the G League's Western Conference

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