Terry Stotts, Portland Trail Blazers
It’s tough to blame the Trail Blazers’ fall from grace entirely on Terry Stotts, especially when the front office signed the likes of Evan Turner and Allen Crabbe to massive deals this summer. But after a 44-win 2016 season, Portland has to at least make the playoffs.
However, the playoffs feel a long way off right now. The Blazers are 23-33 and somehow only two games out of the eight seed. And if they can’t make it in the toxic race for the Western Conference’s final spot then Stotts’ seat will warm up fast. Portland is allowing an unacceptable 111.9 points per 100 possessions, good for 26th in the league. Moreover, despite a higher offensive rating than last season, the rest of the league has caught up. As a result, they’ve gone from sixth to 13th.
Stotts was a deserving Coach of the Year candidate last season, as Portland undoubtedly overachieved. But this steep decline is still unexpected to say the least. Sure, Turner junks up spacing but so do Maurice Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu, and the Blazers were just fine with them starting games last season.
This sort of decline almost requires some sort of shakeup. If the Blazers can pull out a playoff berth, then Stotts is probably safe. But it’s tough to justify keeping everyone if Portland wins, say, 35 games and misses the postseason. General manager Neil Olshey could be the first to go, but a new GM would probably want to hire his or her own coach. In any scenario, Stotts would likely be in trouble.