Here's the Blazers bulletpoints if you don't want to bother watching:
*Cronin told team in a meeting after news broke. Told players they are not allowed to contact Billups while investigation is ongoing.
*They offered job to Bjorkgren before Splitter, he declined to stay in his current role. The reasoning given was because of his relationship with Billups.
*When Splitter talked after Cronin told team he would be the HC, he told the team that he's in charge and he wants to "keep the team afloat until they get their coach back"
The last bulletpoint is a little - lets say - eyebrow raising. My hope is this isn't being taken literally that the team might ever considering hiring Billups back. They, IMO, should be turning the page immediately on Billups. That said, I can understand reasons not to take a such a black-and-white stance that could alienate the team considering how beloved Billups was in that lockerroom and organization. I can also still understand they need to let the legal process play out before they can fire him and cancel his contract. I do believe the moral cause is still ther
Ignoring the personal side of things, I think the Blazers have a massive upgrade in going from Billups to Splitter as HC. He's got way more experience coming into this job that Billups has, Billups to me has always been a slightly less irritating Doc Rivers. A dude guys genuinely like playing for and a great motivator that keeps lockerrooms together, but just nonsensical with play-calling, rotations, timeouts and challenges. He's gotten.... beetttteerrrr... but man, I trust the coaching decision of a coach with the experience and coming from the Pop coaching tree infinitely more than I ever did Billups.
So, this is a long way to say, I'm hoping that speech to the team was just Splitter speaking and appealing to the emotions of the teams love for Billups as a person vs what the team actual intends to do in the long-term at the HC position. Even if these charges end up to be overblown, the FBI overplaying their hands a bit or something Billups can plead out of with cooperation in some way that he doesn't serve any jailtime, having him back would be an absolute disaster PR move for the team.
Even if you play the best case scenario game here, it sure seems the FBI has him dead to rights on the gambling thing... but your milage may vary how damning of a issue that is. From what I've heard and read, it was rich guys doing rich guy things. The game was rigged, but the none pro gamblers who played in the game and lost likely still had a good time and got to spend a night partying with some of their idols / be star struck. Maybe I'm too nonchalant about that, but if some multi-millionaires lose what amounts to some chump change... whatever. It's shady and he obviously shouldn't do it, but also I can understand why players and people in that stratosphere maybe aren't super bent out of shape about it. The mob ties are obviously... a MAJOR issue, but then you have to find out how much Billups knew about these guys background. My gut would assume he would have known, but there's a chance he may be able to plead some ignorance there, we don't know and may never know.
Than for the issue of him sharing of private information on game decisions... If we're playing the same "best case scenario", it could have been him just talking to a buddy about the game and that person takes the information and uses it for gambling. Again, personally, I'm highly highly highly skeptical that is the case (kind of think it's laughable, but besides the point), but it can't be ruled out with the limited knowledge we have on the outside.
So lets just say those two best cases, the gambling thing was shady, but he didn't know about the mob ties and the insider info was just him talking to a friend who did shady things with it... those are still plenty of reason for cause imo to let him go even if he faces no charges. He was a bad hire from the jump, seems like a genuinely nice human being from all accounts - but clearly likes to live on the line and cross that line from time to time, and that's just not the kind of person I want representing a team. Nice people with poor judgement skills are not good representations for an organization.
Get ready to learn Chinese buddy... #YangBang
