The Portland Trail Blazers welcomed the Oklahoma City Thunder to Moda Center on Friday night, but his team's chances of avenging a blowout loss only four days earlier wasn't the focus of Chauncey Billups' pregame presser. Instead, the rookie head coach shed some much-needed light on Portland's stunning trade that sent Norman Powell and Robert Covington to the LA Clippers.
Billups told reporters that he was involved in the decision-making process leading up to the consummation of Friday's trade. While he refused to pinpoint exactly when Joe Cronin sought his opinion, Billups made sure to stress he and Portland's interim general manager were aligned with respect to both this specific trad and what their team hopes to accomplish while retooling around Damian Lillard before next season.
“You have to try to create and build some kind of identity,” Billups said. “We're working on that this year, how we wanna play, ways that we wanna play. I think all really good teams are tough and really competitive. Those are some of things and ways that we want to build our culture here.”
Forging that identity as previously constructed was impossible for the Blazers not just due to personnel redundancies and their lacking overall talent level, but how clogged future cap sheets robbed the front office of opportunities to significantly revamp the roster.
Portland, obviously, didn't “win” this trade. Billups even indirectly admitted the big-picture implications of moving proven playoff performers like Powell and Covington for an aging backup point guard, oft-injured journeyman wing and raw, toolsy teenager. Friday's move was more about “flexibility” for the Blazers than anything else.
“For us, it really comes down to Joe and I having talks and conversations about what an NBA championship-contending team roster looks like, and trying to find a way to get our roster to that point,” Billups said. “Today, we lost some good players, obviously, that are really loved around here that you'll miss. But it's just all a part of it, it's just kind of the business of it. I think today we took some necessary steps to have flexibility that we're gonna need.”
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Portland plans on remaining active before the trade deadline. There's a clear case to be made the Blazers' most realistic path to meaningful contention involves moving C.J. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic, and another that any additional personnel shuffling before summer should come on the periphery.
Either way, Billups didn't exactly refute the prospect of his team potentially undergoing more changes prior to February 10th.
“I'm not sure,” he said, “but Thursday is a long ways away as far as I'm concerned.”
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