The Portland Trail Blazers got off to a good start this season but things have fizzled as the final stretch of the regular season approaches. The Blazers are hanging on to a thread for their playoff hopes and that has drawn critics of head coach Chauncey Billups. Some have even called for Billups to be fired amid only his second season as head coach. Overall, the Blazers are a very young team led by superstar Damian Lillard. This week, Lillard came to the defense of his coach and stressed the fact that it's a tough situation with the Blazers being so young.
“A lot of things go into a team struggling, and I’ve never been a fan — even going back to Terry — of blaming the coach,” Lillard said. “I think there are a lot of things on the court, and that you can see in film, that us as players have to be better about. The last two years, we’ve been really young, and I think it’s hard for a first-time coach to have a young team, where you have to do so much teaching.
“But that’s the way this goes: You lose games, you struggle and people are going to be saying, ‘We need a new coach!’ We made the playoffs for eight years and they were saying the same thing about Terry.”
As it stands, the Blazers are 31-39 and in the midst of a five-game losing streak. They are two and a half games back of the 10th seeded Los Angeles Lakers for the final play-in spot. It's not impossible, but things aren't looking so good for Damian Lillard, Chauncey Billups and the rest of the Blazers.
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