After a year of uncertainty, the Trail Blazers signed the head coach to a multiyear contract extension.
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📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Days before the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, Chauncey Billups, Joe Cronin and several other senior members of the Trail Blazers organization took a redeye from Seattle, where the team had just played a preseason game, to Springfield, Mass., to attend Billups’ Naismith Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Most of Billups’ acceptance speech was focused on the 17-year playing career he was being honored for. It’s one of the more unique paths to enshrinement that any Hall of Famer has ever taken: a former third overall draft pick who bounced to five different teams in his first five seasons before becoming a champion, Finals MVP and multiple-time All-Star and All-NBA selection by captaining the 2004 Pistons squad that stands as an anomaly in league history, a title team with no superstars.
The speech touched only briefly on Billups’ much less decorated coaching career, which will officially continue in Portland after the Blazers announced a multiyear contract extension on Sunday morning.
