Trail Blazers players won’t be thinking about saving coach Terry Stotts‘ job when they open their playoff series with the Nuggets tonight, CJ McCollum tells Jason Quick of The Athletic. Stotts is rumored to be among a handful of coaches who are in jeopardy if they suffer an early exit in the postseason. He has one year left on his current contract with a salary of more than $6 million.
McCollum made it clear that the players support Stotts, but there are other motivating factors.
“You have no control over those things,” he said. “I like Terry. Terry has been great for me, my career, my development, he’s given me a chance. I will forever be grateful for everything he has done for me. But your job as a player is to play. And his job as a coach is to coach. Like, you can’t worry about what could happen. That’s every year. Every year, I could be traded. Every year, a coach could lose his job. There is enough pressure to perform on its own.
“… I don’t need any extra motivation to help Terry keep his job. I’m gonna go hoop and do what I do no matter what. And I think that’s Terry’s mentality. If something happens, Terry is OK. He’s gonna be all right, and he’s probably going to get another head coaching job.”
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