The basketball ideals being instilled in the Portland Trail Blazers by Chauncey Billups were obvious even before his team tipped off training camp earlier this week.

At Media Day on September 28, everyone taking the podium for Portland—from Neil Olshey to Billups and Damian Lillard to Cody Zeller—extolled the virtues of accountability, communication and attention to detail, attributes that had mostly been missing under longtime coach Terry Stotts. Portland's plans for a motion-heavy, variable offensive attack and a more active, aggressive defensive scheme hadn't exactly been tenets of the team during Stotts' nine-year tenure, either.

Billups, clearly, had already made a deep imprint on the Blazers less than 24 hours before official preparations for the season began. His “core values” as a coach, though, are so important to Billups that he took no chance Portland would forget them when training camp finally started Tuesday morning.

A window facing the Blazers' practice court has been blacked out, featuring four bold, red letters and the words associated with them. What does P.A.C.E. mean to Billups? The same talking points so enthusiastically parroted by Portland at Media Day: Preparation, Accountability, Communication and Execution.

“Those are my core values as a coach…I want guys to walk by that every single day,” Billups said, per Jason Quick of The Athletic. “Because we are going to get into some tough spots this year, and we are going to refer back to these things.”

Billups didn't just use his favorite basketball acronym to impress Olshey during the interview process to be the Blazers' next coach, though. It also extends beyond the four characteristics he wants his team to rely upon and be identified with over the course of 2021-22.

Portland's offense was calculated and deliberate with Stotts at the helm, subsisting mostly on ball screens and dribble hand-offs in the halfcourt. The Blazers' frequency of transition plays last season was 12.6 percent, according to Cleaning The Glass, third-lowest in the league. They've finished bottom-five in that category for five seasons running, never ranking higher than 17th since Stotts took the reins in Rip City in 2012-13.

At least some of that sustained preference for halfcourt offense was due to personnel. LaMarcus Aldridge was far more comfortable and effective going to work from the left block and pinch post than rim running or filling gaps in transition, and what continues to make Lillard so devastating offensively is the attention he draws from 40 feet and in while operating pick-and-rolls against a set defense. It's not like supporting cores of Nicolas Batum and Wesley Matthews or C.J. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic are especially adept in the open court, either.

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Even if his team won't be one of the fastest in basketball, Billups still wants the Blazers to create opportunities in the open floor and take full advantage when they arise—an increase in pace further supported by Portland's overarching mantra.

“I don’t care how fast the [defender] is, he can’t outrun the basketball,” Billups told The Athletic.

Expect Portland to pointedly pitch the ball ahead after defensive rebounds this season, even if it risks Lillard or McCollum not initiating the offense when fast breaks are stymied. Billups has talked a lot about Norman Powell's impact as a downhill driver, one he believes can be replicated by Nassir Little. Anfernee Simons has the speed and leaping ability to exploit a defense with its back turned as the floor changes sides, too.

The Blazers will still play an overwhelming majority of their offensive possessions in the halfcourt. Not a single team spent even a fifth of its offensive trips in transition last season, despite the league's overall pace of play continuing to quicken. It would be surprising if Portland started just 15 percent of its possessions in transition, a rate that would have ranked tenth in 2020-21.

No matter where they finish in transition frequency this season, Billups won't be letting the Blazers forget about the sweeping benefits of PACE. Good thing for him that Portland, to a man,  is already excitedly embracing them.

[h/t Jason Quick, The Athletic]