3 Portland Trail Blazers who are set up to fail this season

3. Chauncey Billups

Chauncey Billups is among the few head coaches already entering the 2024-25 season on the hot seat, according to The Athletic's John Hollinger. The other coaches mentioned were Taylor Jenkins and Willie Green from the Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans, respectively.

It makes more sense for their situations, as the Grizzlies and Pelicans are talented teams with playoff aspirations that have relatively underperformed the past few seasons. But for the Blazers to have Billups on the hot seat in a season where they are tanking to land another top-ten draft pick in 2025 is unfair to the point where it suggests that they have already made their mind up about moving in another direction next season.

This upcoming season very well could be Billups' last year with the Blazers. They have an option to bring him back for the 2025-26 season, but it could be in both parties' best interest to explore alternative options. Billups wants to be competitive immediately, which is understandable given the Blazers' situation when he first accepted the role.

He's widely viewed as a below-average head coach in the league, but coach rankings and their team's records frequently go hand-in-hand. With a rebuilding team like Portland, who is bad by design and purposely constructed their roster timeline to be years away from being competitive, it doesn't give Billups a fair shot to be properly evaluated.

No matter what Billups decides to do with the Blazers regarding lineup constructions, it will be a lose-lose situation. Win too many games (by their standards) with established players like Simons, Grant, and Ayton, and it will be about how Billups isn't properly tanking and developing the Blazers' youth. Lose too many games by going through growing pains with Henderson, Sharpe, and others, and people will call Billups to be fired even before the season ends.