Portland Trail Blazers fire Neil Olshey in early holiday gift to fans

Apparently Jody Allen reads us here at the Rip City Project. Less than 24 hours ago, in this very space, we called on the Trail Blazers to speed the investigation of Neil Olshey to its inevitable conclusion — his firing.

This morning they did just that, announcing in a statement on twitter:

"The Portland Trail Blazers are committed to building an organization that positively impacts our colleagues, communities, and the world in which we live and play.Following the conclusion of the independent review of concerns and complaints around our workplace environment… the Portland Trail Blazers organization has decided to terminate General Manager and President of Basketball Operations Neil Olshey, effective immediately due to violations of the Portland Trail Blazers’ Code of Conduct."

Assistant General Manager Joe Cronin has been named interim GM while a search for a permanent replacement is conducted — keep an eye on Rip City Project for our thoughts on who that should be.

The Portland Trail Blazers wash their hands of Neil Olshey’s sins; what comes next?

The move came not a moment too soon, as trade season is fast approaching. In a season where a staggering group of all-star caliber players – Ben Simmons, John Wall, Bradley Beal, Kyrie Irving, CJ McCollum – are likely to be traded, this is a bad year to go even a few weeks without a general manager.

The Blazers made a clear statement with the investigation and firing; that they won’t tolerate the type of hostile and toxic behavior Olshey became known for.

In perhaps the perfect trifecta of bad environments, Barry Hecker was working for the Donald Sterling-owned Los Angeles Clippers under Olshey in 2012 when he found out the Blazers were about to hire him as GM.

Hecker tried to warn the Blazers, calling Olshey “an arrogant SOB” and “just a bad human being.” And he wasn’t the only one to speak openly about issues with Olshey once the investigation was

made public.

Popular ex-Blazer Dan Dickau also had a disturbing story about dealing with Olshey to tell and expressed hope that the investigation would come to the conclusion it did.

Olshey’s way has been celebrated in sports for decades. Legend is filled with old-school tough guys who screamed and bullied their players to championships: Vince Lombardi, Herb Brooks, Woody Hayes, Bobby Knight, ad infinitum.

But for every Billy Martin or Bela Karolyi there is a Gregg Popovich, a Mike Tomlin, a Tara Vanderveer: coaches who are able to get the best from athletes without this hostility that somehow is seen as motivation.

I’m glad to see the Blazers moving forward; I do have to question how it took nine years for this to become enough of an issue to address. These stories about Olshey are by no means new or hard to uncover.

I just hope it’s not too late for them to get a quality replacement in time to fix this team’s obvious flaws, and try and prod some hustle out of Jusuf Nurkic and Robert Covington. Gratefully, we no longer have to do the same for Jody Allen and O’Melveney & Meyers.