Trail Blazers setting themselves up for embarrassment with Billups' situation

There is no doubting that the Portland Trail Blazers are currently in a transitional phase. After offloading Damian Lillard last offseason and securing a bottom-three record in the association in 2023-24, hardly anything is set in stone for the Blazers. They have several workable pieces going forward, but the exact path they choose to take is still up in the air.

Looking at their roster, Portland's talent level is far from bottom of the barrel. Multiple players that would be viable in a playoff setting are currently sitting on their bench, and this gives them plenty of room to operate. Given smart organizational decision-making, they can get back to playing in the postseason through making the right trades and capitalizing on guys with high value.

Perhaps the most uncertain part of Portland's plan right now revolves around their head coach. First hired back in June 2021, Chauncey Billups has certainly had a less than desirable tenure as the Blazers' coach to this point. Through three full seasons at the helm, he has not led the team to more than 33 wins and has helped Portland to just 27 wins per season on average.

Of course this is less than desirable, but Billups did have to deal with crippling injuries like the one that kept Lillard out for over half the season three seasons ago, as well as the absence of the franchise's former star this past season. As such, it may be a bit hard to determine if he is the solution for this team going forward.

Intel points to Billups being out within one year's time

But according to intel from ESPN Columnist John Hollinger (subscription required), many around the league believe Billups could be out as head coach a year from now. Noting how the team let go of his brother Rodney and the fact that Billups was not hired by the team's current General Manager Joe Cronin, it seems increasingly likely that the team could part ways with him after next season.

And that begs the question: If the organization is set on moving on from Chauncey, where is the sense in keeping him around for another 11 months? Doing so would likely only increase the tensions between he and the front office, inevitably only leading to bad on-court results as well.

Hollinger described the current situation between Billups and Portland's management as reminiscent of the Damian Lillard saga wherein things seemed to be at a stalemate for weeks and even months at a time. Frankly, this is the worst outcome imaginable for Blazers fans.

Prolonging the inevitable will only lead to awkward moments and ultimately make things harder than they need to be. If Portland is truly dead set on replacing Billups, it would seem the best option would be to get that out of the way now rather than keep putting it off.