The Portland Trail Blazers have been led by Terry Stotts since the 2012 season, and in that time, the team has won a whole lot of games and been a mainstay in the Western Conference playoff picture. Despite this, Portland has struggled to make the jump from a consistently very good team to one of the best teams in the Western Conference, and as a result, a new report in The Athletic indicates that Stotts’ time with the team could come to an end sometime soon.
Sam Amick and Shams Charania took the temperature of a number of potential coaching vacancies around the league, and started things off by saying that the expectation is that Stotts will be gone after this season. There is, however, one chance for him to save his job: “If Stotts can’t ‘pull a rabbit out of his hat’ with a playoff miracle of sorts, as one source put it, the Blazers are expected to opt for a new coaching voice,” they wrote.
As for where the Blazers are expected to turn next, the situation was compared to how another team under this ownership group’s umbrella, the Seattle Seahawks, brought in Pete Carroll years ago to get the team over the hump and win a Super Bowl. The list of names currently linked to the job includes a mix of people with coaching experience and individuals who would take over a team for the first time.
Among the potential coaching candidates for the Trail Blazers, sources say: Lakers assistant Jason Kidd, Hawks interim coach Nate McMillan, 76ers assistant Dave Joerger, Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups and Spurs vice president of basketball operations Brent Barry.
Portland sits 36-29 on the season and are in seventh place in the Western Conference. The team is a game back of the 5-seed, though, and has a path to avoid the play-in tournament.
