Portland Trail Blazers are honing in on Chauncey Billups as their next head coach

The Portland Trail Blazers have hired LA Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups to be their next head coach.

The vast amount of head coaching vacancies in the NBA have filled up rather quickly. Ime Udoka has joined the Boston Celtics as their next head coach, Rick Carlisle is reuniting with the Indiana Pacers and Jason Kidd has agreed to become the new bench boss for the Dallas Mavericks. The Portland Trail Blazers, who parted ways with Terry Stotts following their first-round exit, have targeted and secured their next head coach.

According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania on Friday, the Trail Blazers are hiring Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups to be their new head coach. Earlier in the evening, ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Billups emerged as the frontrunner for the Trail Blazers‘ head coaching job.

Trail Blazers: Portland hiring Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups as next head coach

Wojnarowski’s sources told him that Billups met with Trail Blazers leadership this past Wednesday in Seattle. Additionally, ESPN’s NBA insider heard that Billups has been in communication with Portland star Damian Lillard through the team’s search for a new head coach.

Billups, a former NBA champion, Finals MVP (2004) and five-time All-Star, made the transition to coaching this past offseason. After Tyronn Lue was hired to be the new Clippers head coach, he brought in Billups as an assistant. While he has been with Los Angeles for one season, he made an immediate impact on star Paul George, who turned from playoff bust in past years into the Clippers’ savior once Kawhi Leonard went down with a sprained right knee in the second-round.

After getting eliminated by the Denver Nuggets in the first round, the Trail Blazers opted to move on from Stotts, who held a 22-40 record in the playoffs during his nine seasons as head coach. The Trail Blazers obviously felt that Billups is the guy who can help take the team to the next level, which is why they moved towards hiring him on Friday evening.