A former player, coach and childhood fan of the Portland Trail Blazers has gone on the record detailing his fraught interactions with Neil Olshey, the team's longtime president of basketball operations who's recently come under investigation for workplace misconduct.
Dan Dickau played for the Blazers during the 2006-07 season, re-joining them as a player development coach several years later. Hired by interim general manager Chad Buchanan before the 2011-12 season, Dickau wasn't retained by Portland after the team named Olshey its head decision-maker the following summer.
On the most recent episode of The Iso With Dan Dickau, the Portland native alleges that Olshey never officially addressed his employment status with the Blazers despite being repeatedly asked. Dickau says he only learned he'd been bypassed for a job on Terry Stotts' bench through media reports. He eventually emailed an organization business staffer about other job prospects with the team, alluding to both his time spent on Nate McMillan's staff the previous season as well as his lifelong Blazers fandom.
A couple days later, in late August 2012, Dickau says he finally received a call from Olshey, who relayed the following message.
“Why would you f***ing go behind my back? You went behind my back and tried to play politics with the email that you sent,” Olshey told Dickau, per the latter's contemporaneous notes on the conversation. “You former players don’t get it. You don’t work. You’re lazy. You’re gonna have a hard time finding a job in the league ever again if this is the way you act.”
Olshey also purportedly said to Dickau, a new father at the time, that he could prove his worth to the team by “laying on the floor of the practice facility each and every day, waiting for players to come in and rebound for them.”
The Blazers indirectly confirmed an internal investigation into Olshey on Friday night, shortly after reports surfaced about allegations of his “hostile workplace conduct.” Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reported on Sunday that investigators expanded their probe after first interviewing employees at the team's practice facility.
Olshey came under scrutiny last summer for his hiring of rookie head coach Chauncey Billups, who was accused of rape in 1997. Though the team conducted an investigation into the allegations against Billups prior to his appointment, it didn't include any contact with the alleged victim and was overseen by a man who shared right-wing conspiracy theories and pornographic material on social media. The Blazers ultimately cut ties with David Hallman, their handpicked private investigator, publicly rebuking the content of his posts on Twitter.
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