Portland Trail Blazers Hire Terry Stotts as Head Coach
The search for the next coach of the Portland Trail Blazers is finally over.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, the organization has decided on Terry Stotts:
"The Portland Trail Blazers have hired Dallas assistant Terry Stotts as head coach, the team says in a statement.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) August 7, 2012"
The 54-year-old Stotts has spent the last four seasons as lead assistant for the Dallas Mavericks. Before that, he accumulated a 115-168 record as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks (2002-04) and Milwaukee Bucks (2005-07), leading the Bucks to the playoffs in the ’05-06 season.
He was an All-Big 8 forward at Oklahoma and played basketball professionally for nine years, mostly in France.
Stotts was the de facto offensive guru during the Dallas Mavericks' 2011 title run. Mavs coach Rick Carlisle had nothing but good things to say about his former assistant when talking about Stotts last month (via The Oregonian):
"There are a lot of inexperienced coaches who might lose four or five early games and get paralyzed. Terry wouldn't blink. It pains me to say this, but I think he's 100-percent the right coach for Portland.
"
My biggest concern then would be how do I replace him?
Stotts landed the job over Kaleb Canales, who was 8-15 as interim head after Nate McMillan was fired last season. According to Chris Haynes of Comcast SportsNet Northwest, Canales will still be a part of the organization:
"Kaleb Canales will remain with the #Blazers in some capacity I'm being told.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) August 7, 2012"
Stotts inherits a roster that’s headlined by LaMarcus Aldridge and rookie Damian Lillard. With a record of 28-38, the Blazers finished a disappointing 11th in the Western Conference last season, as the vast majority of the team underachieved once Aldridge was knocked out with season-ending hip surgery.
The pressure is now on Stotts to get the most out of his roster and improve upon the ghastly 8-25 road record of a year ago.
