Sources: NBA Teams Monitoring Status of Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups

Despite a vote of confidence at the end of the season, Portland has made a series of moves that suggest uncertainty about the head coach’s future with the franchise.

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups / Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports

As coaching vacancies open up across the NBA, teams are monitoring the situation with Chauncey Billups in Portland, league sources told Sports Illustrated. 

Billups, 47, recently completed his third season as the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. He received a vote of confidence from general manager Joe Cronin last month but last week the organization chose not to renew the contracts of two of Billups’s assistants, including Billups’s younger brother, Rodney. With Billups entering the last year of his contract—Portland has a team option for the 2025–26 season—there has been speculation inside rival front offices that Portland and the head coach could part ways. 

If Billups leaves Portland he would immediately emerge as a candidate for other jobs, sources said. 

Despite a poor record in Portland—the Blazers are 81–165 under Billups—the ex-Detroit Pistons star remains well-regarded around the NBA. Currently, three teams—the Los Angeles Lakers, Washington Wizards and Charlotte Hornets—have coaching openings. The Phoenix Suns are reportedly evaluating the future of Frank Vogel and Detroit, where Billups played for parts of eight seasons, recently announced plans to hire a new president of basketball operations. 

In 2021, Billups was hired by the Blazers with the hope that he could elevate a perennial playoff team into a title contender. Injuries marred Billups’s first two seasons and last summer, Portland traded Damian Lillard, ending the star point guard’s 11-year run with the franchise and beginning what was expected to be a lengthy rebuild. 

At the Blazers’ season-ending media availability Cronin praised Billups’s performance. He called Billups “an incredible leader” and “an incredible teacher” for Portland’s young roster. But while Billups told reporters he was focused on winning next season, Cronin shifted the focus to developing Portland’s young core, headlined by Anfernee Simons and Scoot Henderson. The Blazers, who finished tied for the NBA’s third worst record, will add another high lottery pick to the roster next year. 

Publicly, Billups said he would embrace the challenge of coaching in the last year of his contract. 

“That's a decision that I don’t make,” Billups said. “I just try to do the best job that I can, and if they see that there’s a value there to do [an extension], that’s on them. But I’m committed to doing the best job.”