Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups yelled and cursed at Jerami Grant and Matisse Thybulle on December 2, according to Jason Quick of The Athletic.
The Blazers were getting destroyed by the Utah Jazz and Billups saw Grant and Thybulle on the bench smiling and laughing.
“I went crazy,” Billups said. “What the f— we laughing at?” Billups remembers shouting. “I don’t see nothing funny right now! We are getting our asses kicked …”
Grant and Thybulle didn’t take Billups’ yelling and cursing personally. They actually went back into the game and helped the Blazers erase a big deficit to send the game into overtime, where the Jazz wound up winning by a final score of 118-113.
“I was proud of our ability to go back in the game and play well,” Thybulle said. “And it wasn’t ‘Go back in and play well to spite coach’ … it was play well because we were losing and it’s what the team needs.”
Said Billups: “I put my heart and soul into this. I had to let them know I don’t put up with none of that. We ain’t that type of team. And they accepted the coaching. They didn’t take it personal.”
The Blazers are 6-13 on the season. They are not expected to win many games this season. However, that’s not going to stop Billups from coaching his hardest.
“We’ve lost a lot of games this year, but you can lose games and get so much better, just as you can win games and get worse,” Billups said. “But I sit back with my coaches after a lot of these games and say ‘This is fun.’ Coaching these guys is fun because everything we say, they try it. And the reward is being them do it right.”
Billups won the 2004 championship with the Detroit Pistons. He was named the Finals MVP, so players on the Blazers have a lot of respect for him.
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