Blazers Shock Insider Amid Chauncey Billups FBI Scandal

The Portland Trail Blazers' technical head coach, Chauncey Billups, has been indicted by the FBI for helping to hustle people in mob-rigged poker games.

But that hasn't prevented Portland from emerging as a serious threat in the Western Conference, having posted a 5-3 record against legitimate competition like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets already.

Interim head coach Tiago Splitter has gamely guided the Trail Blazers in Billups' absence, and is employing innovative methods to goose his clubs, including hockey-type five-man substitution patterns.

John Gonzalez of CBS Sports opines that this defense-first squad with an egalitarian passing and scoring game represents "a perfect Portland team."

"Last season the Blazers were among the group I thought should hard tank and instead they actually tried at the end of the season. Then they acquired Jrue Holiday coming off an is-he-cooked year with the Celtics, who salary dumped him for prudent cost cutting measures, which elicited a lot of what's-happening dog-head-tilt questions from me."

Holiday, of course, has undergone a revival, a season removed from an injury-plagued run with Boston.

Through eight regular season bouts with Portland so far, the 6-foot-4 UCLA product has been averaging 17.4 points on .464/.368/.824 shooting splits, 7.6 assists, 4.9 rebounds, and 1.4 steals a night.

That represents his best scoring and passing output since 2022-23, when he was an All-Star on the Milwaukee Bucks.

But Holiday's two-way impact isn't even the big (on-court) story of the Trail Blazers' season.

"Deni Avdija is scoring nearly eight points more per game than last season for a team that plays fast and is second in pace," Gonzalez notes. "The Blazers are eighth in defensive rating and led at that end by Toumani Camara who is everywhere all the time. No one looks at the schedule and thinks oh cool let's get on a plane and fly to the corner of the NBA map to play a bunch of try-hards."

Camara, Avdija on the Rise

Avdija, still just 24, has been averaging a career-high 24.4 points while slashing .465/.360/.851 and 4.5 dishes, plus 6.5 rebounds, 0.9 blocks and 0.8 steals per bout.

The 25-year-old Camara, already an All-Defensive Teamer, continues to level up on the other end of the floor, too. Camara has been averaging 12.4 points on .424/.340/.688 shooting splits, 5.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.3 steals and 0.5 blocks per bout.

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