The NBA coaching position is not a place to learn. place to prove Damian Lillard’s prime period is passing in vain.
The Portland Trail Blazers lost 113-119 in a home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2022-2023 NBA regular season held at the Moda Center on the 13th (Korean time).
Portland fell into a 5-game losing streak with the loss that day. The ranking fell to 11th in the West. Even if you look at the results of the last 10 games, the sluggishness is serious with 2 wins and 8 losses.
I can’t help but hold the director responsible for the team collapsing like this. Damian Lillard is still in good shape, and Anfernie Simons and Yusuf Nutziki are also playing healthy.
Ahead of the season, Jerami Grant and Gary Payton II, who have a good balance of offense and defense, were recruited, and Josh Hart and Justice Winslow were also recruited through trade.
The reason why the team can not use power at all in the midst of such power reinforcement is tactics after all.
Chauncey Billups is the star point guard of the Detroit Pistons, who had a tough time as a player, and won the Finals MVP with the 2004 championship. He averaged 15.2 points and 5.4 assists per game for his career, and his number was permanently removed.
Leaving behind his illustrious career, Billups is a broadcaster following his 2014 retirement when he is contacted by his best friend Turen Lu. Los Angeles Clippers manager Lou offered Billups a coaching position, and Billups accepted and took over as Clippers coach on November 9, 2020.
Billups had a clear voice as a coach and was well-received among players. He used to be evaluated as the next superintendent.
However, less than a year after Billups started his coaching career, a club appears offering him the job as an NBA manager. After firing manager Terry Stotts, Portland was weighing Becky Hammon and Billups over the vacant manager’s job, and gave Billups the manager’s job.
It happened on June 28, 2021, eight months after he became a coach.
The 8-month-old rookie coach became a coach like that. There are many people who cannot become a manager even after 10 or 20 years of coaching in the league, but Billups became a manager very easily.
Billups finished the season with a 32.9% winning percentage in his first season. The season ended with an 11-game losing streak. However, it was difficult to make hasty decisions considering the situation where the main gun Damian Lillard was out of the season early and the second option CJ McCallum was traded.
However, this season, the second year, has no such excuse. The key players are playing the healthiest in the league. However, they are still unable to get out of the Western Howe area.메이저놀이터
Even leaders who have been a coach for 10 or 20 years go through serious trials and errors when they become a manager who leads a team. Billups, who has been a coach for only eight months, has no choice but to go through even greater trials and errors.
In his first season, Billups played an all-out pressing defense. He also ordered big man Yu Suffner Kichi to play an active hedge defense. It is the exact opposite defense of the modern basketball trend, the dropback. Ultimately, Portland’s defense exposed several weaknesses.
Billups realized his mistakes and nearly scrapped the big man hedge defense in his sophomore season. Rather, he ordered a drop-back defense, and at the same time changed his style to a defense that mixes various area defenses. Toronto coach Nick Nurses showed his defensive color. And Portland had a lot of fun with a different style at the beginning of the season. He went to and from the top of the defensive index.
But NBA teams are never easygoing. No matter how often they switch defensive styles, in the end there are always defensive weaknesses in the Lillard and Simons guards. It is difficult to say that the starting center Yusuf Nurkic is top-notch in rim protecting ability. Teams focused on match-up hunting with various tactics, and the defensive rating, which was at the top, fell to 19th in the league as of the end of the first half.
Billups was a very smart player as a player. He was a player who read the game better than anyone else.
The fact that he changed his tactics from his first year to his second year shows that he is tactically very bold. He is expected to be a good enough leader in the long run.
But being a director is not a place to learn like this. He is the place to take and prove what he has learned. Even if Billups’ basketball intelligence was outstanding as a player, it may have been too hasty to appoint a coach with a year of experience as a coach.
Most NBA teams look a lot at career when selecting a manager. Will Hardy (34), the new coach of Utah, who was considered too early to become a coach by the public, is also an 8-year veteran coach. He is evaluated as too early for an 8th year, but how early is an 8th month coach?
Portland overcame everyone’s distrust in the manager selection process and hired a rookie coach with little leadership experience. The consequences of this choice must be made only by themselves. Damian Lillard’s heyday is going like that.