Chauncey Billups Deserves Credit During Trail Blazers' Unexpected Surge

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — The Trail Blazers’ Monday win over the Phoenix Suns was a lot of things. It was their fourth win in a row, it was their eighth win in nine games, it was their first overtime game of the season. It was their 21st win, meaning they’ve already matched their win total for all of last season with over a week to go before the All-Star break.

It was also the closest to nonexistent the boos for Chauncey Billups have been during introductions in at least two years.

That’s been an awkward subplot of this recent Blazers hot streak. All year, it’s been constant. PA announcer Mark Mason has tried various subtle tactics to quiet it. At the beginning of the season, shortly after Billups was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame as a player, Mason included that honor when introducing the head coach in hopes that would make people think twice about booing him. Lately, he’s switched it up and started saying, “Chauncey Billups is the head coach of YOUR TRAIL BLAZERS!,” hoping fans would grasp onto the team name rather than Billups’ name and cheer. Nothing’s worked.

Even as recently as a week ago, before Damian Lillard’s return to Portland with the Milwaukee Bucks, it was noticeable enough that at least one national writer who was in town for that game commented on it on social media.

There are many reasons fans have greeted Billups that way. Some, surely, are still upset about the way his hiring was handled by former general manager Neil Olshey and everything that came with that. Some are upset he isn’t playing Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe enough minutes, or whichever young player they want to see more of. Some know he’s in a contract year and wonder why he’s still the coach. Most of them are probably just tired of the constant losing that’s been going on, and has largely been expected, in Portland for most of the past four seasons.

But the Blazers aren’t losing much these days, and Billups is not a small part of why.

“Nobody on the team wavered on Chauncey’s message [early in the season],” Anfernee Simons said after Monday’s win. “It can be frustrating at times when you don’t see the results. But we stuck with it. We’ve been sticking with how we want to play. It took some time to get adjusted to playing faster now, getting to know each other. But he’s been preaching the same thing all year. We’re seeing the results of the things he’s been preaching.”

It’s to Billups’ credit that he’s continued to push the right buttons with this group despite the way they started the season and his own uncertain future. It would be easy and understandable for a coach most people think is on the way out to go on autopilot for the final few months of the last year of his contract.

Billups hasn’t done that. This surge started with a Jan. 19 win over the Chicago Bulls in which Billups not only moved Sharpe to the bench, but was very clear publicly about why—because he felt Sharpe wasn’t bringing it defensively and wanted to make him understand he needed to be better on that end. And Sharpe has responded well to that demotion.

Billups has kept Henderson engaged as he’s shuffled from the bench to the starting lineup and back again, and Henderson has had his most productive month as a pro despite the fluctuating role.

Billups has empowered Deni Avdija and Deandre Ayton to play some of the best basketball of their careers. Ayton in particular has been outstanding during this stretch of nine games. His 25-point, 20-rebound performance on Monday against the Suns was highlighted by a game-sealing rebound of a Devin Booker missed free throw in overtime.

The benchmark for success earlier in the season was keeping it respectable against good teams. The Blazers’ only loss of this nine-game run was against the best team in the NBA, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and they were competitive in that game. Billups sat at the podium night after night talking about things he liked in games they lost. You could understand why, to most fans, that gets old after a while.

They’re not losing those games anymore.

“We played so good in so many stretches,” Billups said. “When you’re young and you're inexperienced, your margin of error is just so small. We can play great for 43 minutes in a game, and then have a tough stretch where we turn it over, turn it over, and they’re hitting threes, and now we end up losing by 16 and it looks like we got blown out. And I’m saying, ‘Man, we did some good things. We’re getting there.’ That’s what you’ve seen and heard from me. I’m omitting those five minutes knowing that we’re just not ready for those five minutes yet.”

Now, the Blazers are playing like they’re ready for those five minutes.

Billups isn’t ready to talk about the play-in yet. Realistically, that isn’t happening. Whether or not they do anything before Thursday’s trade deadline, this run isn’t going to last forever.

But even if they do the post-All-Star veteran shutdown again with Ayton, Simons and Jerami Grant, they won’t be able to lose at the clip they’d need to in order to get back in the top of the lottery race. You can say it’s a bad thing that they’re weakening their odds of landing Cooper Flagg. I would counter that they can’t lose that much anymore because Henderson, Avdija and Toumani Camara have gotten too good, and those are the players they hope will be linchpins the next time they truly enter a season with the goal of making the playoffs.

Billups has taken a lot of hits in the past three and a half seasons as head coach. Some of them have been fair and some have not. But it’s hard to argue with how he’s had them playing in the last month.

“I knew it would be tough for us this year,” he said. “We had the hardest schedule in the league. That’s all people talked about around us. We’re one of the youngest teams in the league with the hardest schedule in the league. It was just so many things stacked against us, that I don’t allow in our locker room. I don’t allow those excuses. You’ve still got to play the games and try to get better. I’m really proud of where we’re at right now.”