Bill Oram: The coach must go! If losing is winning, then Chauncey Billups is tanking the Blazers’ hopes

Hey,

Jody Allen

, you heard those boos, didn’t you?

They were hard to miss, raining down on you courtside as the head coach of your

Portland Trail Blazers

was introduced.

His name had barely left the lips of legendary public address announcer Mark Mason before the assault began.

Chaun-

[booooOOOOOO]

-cey BILLups

[OOOOOoooooo]

Your fans are over it, Jody, and you should be too. It’s time to do the right thing. Fire

Chauncey Billups

before it’s too late.

End the madness!

He’s not the man for the job. Not this job. Because somehow his team,

this

team, keeps winning — at great cost to your franchise.

Boo

, indeed!

It turns out the man knows how to coach. And I simply can’t fathom a worse quality for a leader of this team to possess.

The Blazers are an outrageous 18-29, better than six teams in the NBA.

“It’s incredible what you can do when you just do it together,” Billups said Tuesday night. “We just believe in each other.”

Hello?! Do you hear the alarm bells ringing?!

Billups is getting through to his players.

He

needs to be through!

Has anyone ever been fired for being

in

their depth? For

out

performing expectations?

I’ll happily nominate Billups as the first.

A 125-112 win

over the Milwaukee Bucks should be the last straw, the Blazers cruising to a blowout against

Damian Lillard

, confetti falling from the rafters. Booming from the speakers were the melodious strains of Panic! At The Disco’s “Victorious.”

More like Panic! In The Front Office.

“We’ve got so many guys playing well,” Billups gushed.

He should have said “too many guys.” And that is a direct, damning reflection of the head coach. Would it have been so hard to bench Deni Avdija during his offensive explosion on Tuesday night? To discourage Scoot Henderson from working on his three-ball?

You know who the MVP of this team is? Deandre Ayton. Look at how he jogs back on defense and gestures at rebounds instead of grabbing them. That’s a team player.

Didn’t Chauncey read the fine print of his contract? The print that said “be worse than fine”?

It was a layup with Lillard back in town on Tuesday. An easy L to take. And Billups couldn’t even deliver that.

The man shouldn’t make it on the plane.

What’s that? The Blazers aren’t flying anywhere for another 10 days?

Fine, then he should be put

on

a plane for what he is trying to do to this franchise’s proud legacy of losing.

“Everybody else is the ones saying we can’t win,” Billups said Tuesday. “It’s not our guys in there, it’s not me. You all know how I am. Y’all know what I’m about. So we’re trying our butts off and we’re just playing real well right now.”

Insubordinate!

Billups has gone completely rogue.

Maybe that’s what happens when a coach has been asked to tank every year of his coaching career and has no security beyond this season. He just … snaps.

The only solution is to fire him before he wreaks more havoc.

What you need is a coach who can lose the locker room — not one who will unite it.

The Blazers won’t make the playoffs, but have notched wins over Denver and Dallas. They’ve now beaten Milwaukee twice.

They are within three victories of last year’s win total and four of hitting the over on the Vegas line.

Billups is toying with you, Jody. Messing with us all.

Busting

the process.

Other teams have learned to embrace the tank. Your coach is trying erase the tank.

He has inspired the Blazers to wins in five of their last six games.

But hey, Cooper Flagg sure is going to look great in the red, white and blue of the

Wah-wahhhh

-shington Wizards. They haven’t won five games since Halloween.

I hope you’re excited for the backup team manager from North Central Nobody Cares State, because that’s who you’ll be able to draft if you don’t end Billups’ reign of terror.

And quick.

I realize that .337 winning percentage in 293 games doesn’t exactly scream success. It slots him between Rolland Todd’s .297 in the first two seasons of the franchise’s existence and the .348 mark Kaleb Canales achieved in his 23 games as the interim in 2012.

But it’s just enough to count as sabotage. At the moment, the Blazers need a little more Rolland and a lot less Kaleb.

This feels like Billups’ ultimate revenge for having the rug pulled out from under him after arriving in 2021. You hired him to coach a team of veterans, then traded them all away. He thought he was going to get Dame Time and instead got DominAyton.

His teams have won 27, 33 and 21 games. He has been a willful participant in the annual late-season shutdowns.

Now, it’s like the artificial intelligence has gained self-awareness.

Billups is revolting. And, boy, is revolting the right word for it.

Do the right thing, Jody, and cut Chauncey Billups loose.

Before he messes around and wins Coach of the Year.

—


Bill Oram


is the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.

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