Chauncey Billups has interviewed for high-level front office positions before but has now settled in as the Trail Blazers coach.
The Trail Blazers fired general manager Neil Olshey this week and have opened the door for a new GM search.
Would Billups want the job? He politely said no thanks when asked about it.
Chauncey Billups, who has interviewed for front-office jobs before, on if he has any interest in being both coach and GM: "I'm just trying to figure this one job out. I've got enough on my plate. I'm going to stick to this one job."
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) December 5, 2021
Billups is not a named mentioned as a potential future Blazers GM.
After what happened with Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota and Doc Rivers with the Clippers, the days of the combo coach/GM are dead. At least for a while. The two jobs have a natural tension — a coach wants to win every game and thinks more short term, a GM has to take a much broader, longer-term view — and asking one man to do both is a recipe for disaster. Unless that man is Gregg Popovich. But for everyone else, it’s a disaster.
The Trail Blazers need to right the ship and have some hard questions ahead about building a winner around Damian Lillard, questions the next GM has to answer (along with how to keep Lillard from pushing his way out the door). Whoever lands the job walks into a franchise at a crossroads. Billups needs to hope the next GM is someone he can work with, because NBA history suggests that once a new GM is in place the existing coach doesn’t keep his job that long.
