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The Portland Trail Blazers are in a waking nightmare, and it’s one of their own making. Or, more accurately, general manager Neil Olshey’s making.
While it was clear things had gotten stale with head coach Terry Stotts, it wasn’t Stotts’ roster that was fundamentally flawed. It wasn’t Stotts who failed to surround Damian Lillard with a championship-caliber supporting cast, and it wasn’t Stotts who wasted the prime of arguably the best player in the franchise’s history.
That was Olshey, and his latest mistake could not only push Lillard toward the exit, but a host of Blazers fans as well.
On Sunday, Chris Haynes of Yahoo! Sports reported that due to backlash over Portland’s hiring process of its next head coach and doubts over the organization’s ability to assemble a title contender, Dame may push for a trade soon. On the surface, it’s an alarming, DEFCON-1 alert that Lillard is not happy with the Blazers and could be on his way out in the near future.
But that’s not our focus today. Because as intriguing as it is to imagine Damian Lillard trade scenarios, and as fun as it is to remind Los Angeles Lakers fans why they’re probably not getting their latest Photoshopped star, there’s a more important, uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had about Dame, Chauncey Billups and hiring practices in male-dominated sports leagues.
For starters, it’s been fascinating to see how Lillard has handled the first real scrutiny he’s faced in his NBA career. Dame has long been one of the league’s universally likable superstars, not just for his incredible game, but also for his loyalty to Portland, his disdain for super-teams and his overall grasp on social issues. He just gets it.
Usually.
When the Blazers began their search for Stotts’ replacements, it was reported that Dame approved of two names that had been brought up: Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups. Both were problematic candidates.
Kidd, who was eventually hired by the Dallas Mavericks, pled guilty to domestic abuse charges in 2001 and faced a lawsuit for “perpetual physical and emotional abuse” during his divorce from his now ex-wife. That hiring is particularly indefensible considering the Mavs’ own recent history with sexual harassment and domestic assault within the organization.
Billups, meanwhile, faced rape allegations back in 1997 as a rookie with the Boston Celtics. While he denied anything nonconsensual occurred and no criminal charges were filed, he also settled a civil lawsuit with the alleged victim, and the details of her allegation are horrific.
Which brings us back to Dame, who’s faced public backlash over the last few weeks over his reported endorsement of these two candidates with problematic pasts. Sunday’s report from Haynes read like a not-so-veiled attempt for Dame to not only distance himself from the Blazers’ hiring process, but almost a scare tactic to remind fans how much they’d miss him if he were gone.
Both attempts were more ill-advised than any “bad shot” Paul George ever saw him take.
“Lillard has remained loyal to Portland in large part due to the tremendous fan base,” Haynes wrote. “But over the last few days, he’s seen some of those same fans attacking him on social media for a pending coaching hire he played no part in consummating, sources said.”
It’s at this point we need to remind the audience what Lillard told The Athletic at the beginning of June in the wake of Stotts’ firing, about the need for Portland’s next head coach to have experience: “I like J. Kidd and Chauncey.”
Is that Lillard being directly involved in the team’s head coaching search? No. But you’re kidding yourself if you think his public input — especially after yet another disappointing playoff run being cut short in the first round — is insignificant. This is coming from a franchise star who was getting closer and closer to “disgruntled” territory. In other words, Dame knew what he was doing by making the candidates that he liked public knowledge.
“The coaching search was conducted by Neil Olshey, the team’s president of basketball operations,” Haynes continued in Sunday’s save-face PR job. “None of the candidates who were interviewed were from suggestions from Lillard, sources said.”
Again, were they outright suggestions to Olshey? Perhaps not. But that technicality doesn’t matter when Lillard publicly gave his thoughts for his GM — whose job this offseason is to do whatever it takes to convince Dame he can win in Portland — and all the world to hear.
In Lillard’s defense, it genuinely seems like he didn’t know about Billups’ past until recently. How recently is up for debate, but at some point in the ongoing backlash, the Blazers star realized this was a candidate he could no longer endorse. So he changed his tune, but rather than just admitting he learned new information and changed his mind — a sign of growth and mental maturity, which in no way should be shamed — he decided to wash his hands of any involvement.
This is not meant to be an attack on Lillard’s character. Acting like he had no direct or even indirect input on the coaching search would be naive, but at the end of the day, he’s not the one to blame here. He’s also not the only person in the NBA industry who first learned of this unsettling story from Billups’ past over the last few weeks … which in and of itself is an indictment of this male-dominated league where people (men) go to incredible lengths to protect former players and employees (also men) who have done reprehensible things.
We’ve seen it in Dallas with what was going on under Mark Cuban’s nose. We’ve seen it with Marv Albert, who’s currently enjoying a farewell tour in his final year as an NBA broadcaster despite ugly accusations from his past. We’ve seen it with players like Kristaps Porzingis and Derrick Rose. And every time these types of past allegations resurface and the conversation picks up again, “whataboutism” takes over.
What about when Billups was an ESPN broadcaster or when he became an assistant with the LA Clippers? Where was your anger then?
Aside from questions like these totally missing the point, they’re insulting to the many, many survivors of sexual assault and abuse who enjoy professional basketball but are constantly told by common league practices that their past trauma is insignificant. That there’s some sort of time limit on when those kinds of indefensible actions matter. That “it was 20 years ago,” or that if was such a big deal, you really would’ve spoken up about your displeasure at this set moment in time.
Over the last few weeks, with Kidd and Billups being widely coveted by multiple teams with head coaching vacancies, many of those survivors within the NBA sphere itself have had to relive that past trauma, and more than a few have been brave enough to share their experiences to help the more obtuse observers understand why this is such a big deal.
It shouldn’t take former victims speaking out about their past experiences with sexual assault or physical abuse for people to care. It shouldn’t be their responsibility to speak up and open old wounds to explain why past actions — yes, even 20 years ago! — still matter.
And while I personally believe second chances are possible, there’s a difference between actually being contrite and working to rectify something awful from your past (which Billups has never done publicly) and being rewarded with a highly coveted job and a national platform. Imagine experiencing that kind of trauma, then watching someone with that sort of grave accusation levied against them get a head coaching job where they’ll be in the national spotlight, and then hearing a star like Damian Lillard sign off on it. Imagine being excited your favorite team was seriously considering hiring the first female head coach in NBA history in Becky Hammon … and then realizing she maybe was just checking off another diversity box in the hiring process, an empty gesture to justify picking one of the candidates they wanted all along, both of which have problematic histories involving women.
That blame lies directly with Olshey, no matter which candidates Lillard supported. That fault doubles when you consider Portland is pushing full steam ahead despite the widespread backlash to this decision, and how this whole experience has further alienated the team’s star player. It’s the rare type of organizational reckoning that could cost the Blazers their present, their future, their reputation and a considerable portion of their fan support.
It’s also entirely necessary if the NBA continues to downplay such serious accusations. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Blazers conducted an internal investigation into those 1997 allegations and were reportedly satisfied with Billups’ cooperation and how his answers matched up with the findings of their independent investigation.
But that’s nowhere near enough to let Olshey and this new coaching regime off the hook, and when Billups is officially introduced on Tuesday, there need to be tough questions. How thorough was this investigation process, and what did it entail? What exactly were the findings that made Olshey comfortable with a controversial decision? And what steps has Billups taken since that settlement more than two decades ago to earn this kind of position of power?
When it should be “believe women,” the divide from the “he denies it and was never charged!” crowd is unbelievably uncomfortable. This whole conversation is.
But it’s one we need to be having more often. If the NBA and sports leagues, in general, are going to continue to put men with dicey pasts in positions of power, there needs to be a much higher level of accountability, scrutiny and backlash that comes with it.
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