In the Eye of Chaos, Trail Blazers Play—And Win—A Normal Basketball Game

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Well, that was...shockingly uneventful.

The Trail Blazers played their second game of the season on Friday, cruising to a 139-119 win over the Golden State Warriors. Everything positive from their season-opening loss to Minnesota, from the swarming defense to the pace and ball movement on offense, carried over, and this time they didn't give away the game with a shooting dry spell in the fourth quarter.

Everyone, from the players to the coaching staff, felt like the Blazers played well enough to win on Wednesday and felt as encouraged as anyone could by a loss. On Friday, they played just as well, and this time they did win, doing a lot to suggest that their new identity isn't a fluke.

If it weren't for the fact that it was Tiago Splitter and not Chauncey Billups roaming the sideline as head coach, you wouldn't know that anything unusual had happened in the 48 hours between the two games. The Blazers sure didn't play like a team weighed down by being at the center of the biggest scandal in the sports world at the moment.

About that...

As much as the organization stayed on message Friday about pushing forward, it was impossible to completely ignore the aftermath of Billups' shocking gambling arrest a day earlier.

"It's not an easy situation," said Deni Avdija, the only player who spoke before the game. "You feel like something's missing."

Other players filed in and out of the locker room. None were nearly as open to small talk, either with reporters or with each other, as they normally were. Out on the court, players went through warmups as usual while general manager Joe Cronin and members of his staff sat on the bench and watched. Cronin, usually talkative and personable before games, was stone-faced, just as blindsided as everyone else by the alleged involvement in a gambling operation of the coach he's tied his career to, the one he signed a twin contract extension with in April, who has served as a largely equal partner for four seasons.

This is a different kind of in-season setback than a star player injury or a performance-based coach firing. Even the cloud around the organization during the December 2021 investigation and eventual firing of president of basketball operations Neil Olshey for workplace-conduct violations wasn't quite like this. The FBI is involved here. No one wants to say the wrong thing.

So they all stuck to the script and talked about controlling what they could control.

"We all play basketball because we love it," Jrue Holiday said afterwards. "It doesn't matter if it's what's happened the last couple of days, or if I've got something going on personally at home, I love being on the court to compete."

Splitter, for his part, in a tough spot here. He left his job as head coach of the French LNB Élite club Paris Basketball this summer to join Billups' staff with the goal of eventually becoming a head coach in the NBA. Nobody expected or wanted it to happen like this.

And with Cronin and other Blazers executives still working through the legalities of the situation with the NBA league office, Splitter was left to speak for the organization about the Billups bombshell in his second day on the job. He declined to answer a question pregame about the greater implications of the gambling scandal on the integrity of the NBA game ("You've put me in a tough position," he told the reporter), but otherwise stuck to the message.

"Keep pounding on the team, what we've got to do on the court," he said. "Try to stay away from what's going on and just focus on the basketball."

That's what you're supposed to say, but this is an unprecedented situation, and even for the highest-level athletes, compartmentalizing something like what happened this week is easier said than done. Eleven years ago, the Los Angeles Clippers were at the center of a similarly high-profile scandal that was completely out of the players' control, when a tape of then-owner Donald Sterling making racist comments about Magic Johnson was published by TMZ before Game 4 of their first-round playoff series against the Warriors. The team staged a silent protest at midcourt before the game, and proceeded to get blown out by Golden State. It's just a lot to deal with that kind of distraction and also play a basketball game.

But the Blazers did just that, and turned a dark week for the organization into something hopeful and optimistic.

On the first possession of the game, Donovan Clingan found Avdija in the paint for a layup. The Blazers overcame a cold shooting stretch early, beginning the game 2-for-10 from the field and 0-for-6 from three-point range in the first four minutes. After that, just about everything worked. Eight players scored in double figures, their defense forced Golden State into 25 turnovers, and they doubled up the Warriors scoring in the paint, 66-30.

"Nobody's feeling sorry for us," Avdija said. "We've got to keep playing. Chauncey himself wouldn't want us to stop. Tiago's a good guy. We have a great coaching staff, good basketball knowledge. Got to keep moving forward."

There were only two plausible outcomes on Friday.

If the Blazers had come out still shellshocked by what happened, and been run off the floor by a veteran Warriors team that looked dominant in their first two games of the season, no one would have been surprised and everyone would have understood the circumstances.

Instead, it went the other way. The Blazers played freely and confidently, sticking to what worked in the first game and, most importantly, sticking together in what would be an impossible situation for any team.

Afterwards, they doused Splitter with what he described as "very cold water." His first win as a head coach was worth celebrating, no matter the circumstances.

"Just to see them smile is a great sensation," he said.