Portland Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts is a believer in what Pau Gasol can bring to his team.
“His game really fits with what we want to do and how we want to play,” Stotts said, via Joe Freeman of The Oregonian. “He can play the four and five … he knows how to play. The bonus is that he’s a winning player and he’s won everywhere he’s been.”
The Blazers agreed to a one-year, $2.6 million deal with the 39-year-old veteran big man, who's also a two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers. Gasol played for the San Antonio Spurs and the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2018-19 season, but he saw his year cut short due to a foot ailment.
Gasol did not compete in the playoffs for the Bucks, who fell to the eventual champions — the Toronto Raptors — in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Stotts, who has been Portland's head coach since the 2012-13 season, signed an extension with the club in 2016 and has seen the most precipitous rise in the postseason for the Blazers since the franchise went to back-to-back conference finals in 1999-00.
Under the on-court leadership of Damian Lillard, who also signed an extension with the Blazers in the offseason, Stotts and Portland reached the Western Conference Finals last campaign.
With Gasol on board too, though, the Blazers are hoping some of his championship pedigree will rub off on Lillard, CJ McCollum and newly acquired center Hassan Whiteside.
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