Chauncey Billups, Portland Trail Blazers. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
Chauncey Billups’ introductory press conference as the next head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers went over so horribly.
The Portland Trail Blazers hiring Chauncey Billups as their next head coach was a controversial decision, and one that did not go over very well in the new head coach’s introductory press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
While Billups had a great playing career most notably with the Detroit Pistons and his hometown Denver Nuggets, the reason people are up in arms about him being hired to lead the Blazers has everything to do with a 1997 rape allegation that very few people knew about prior to him being a serious head-coaching candidate this year. Billups has served as an assistant with the LA Clippers.
Twitter erupted after seeing the video and hearing the quotes from this awful press conference.
Portland Trail Blazers: Chauncey Billups’ introductory press was a disaster
Confounding doesn’t even begin to describe the Blazers decision to shield Billups from answering for his past, and the reaction to the entire debacle was swift and harsh.
Portland was not about to let Billups speak for himself on being asked what he has learned from the 1997 incident in the years since.
While Billups seemed comfortable enough to answer the question, not letting him do so makes the Trail Blazers look very bad at the podium.
Overall, Billups has to replace Terry Stotts in Portland. His predecessor led the Trail Blazers to the Western Conference Playoffs in eight of his nine seasons at the helm. Unfortunately, Portland bowed out in the first round of the NBA Playoffs in four of the last five years. Defensive issues largely led to the Trail Blazers front office making a decision to make a head-coaching change.
We have seen bad press conferences before, but this is the latest one of the truly awful variety.