Micah Nori’s meticulous climb up the NBA coaching ladder has finally resulted in his first head-coaching opportunity, but the unorthodox contract he reportedly signed with the Portland Trail Blazers has overshadowed the feel-good story of his well-respected basketball journey.
The Athletic’s Jason Quick reported on Tuesday that the 52-year-old Nori, who spent the past five seasons as the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ lead assistant, inked a one-year deal with team options for each of the next two seasons.
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On Wednesday, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon reported the same details of the contract, which most notably includes only one guaranteed year. Also in MacMahon’s report, he reported that Nori’s deal has a below-market base salary, includes team success-based incentives and has drawn immense ire from J.B. Bickerstaff, who’s not only the head coach of the Detroit Pistons but also the president of the National Basketball Coaches Association.
“Most ownership understands that there is value in quality coaching and good coaching, and they’re willing to pay for it,” Bickerstaff told ESPN. “Coaching salaries have been increasing because the league understands and owners understand the value of quality coaching.
“So for a new guy to come in who doesn’t have that understanding and to go out and chop at the knees of coaches is a slap in the face to our value.”
Bickerstaff made it clear to ESPN that he’s thrilled for Nori’s deserved moment but that he’s concerned his contract could set a devaluing precedent for NBA coaches. In other words, Bickerstaff’s placing the blame on the Trail Blazers and, more specifically, the “new guy,” AKA owner Tom Dundon.
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Dundon, who also owns the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, led a group that purchased the Trail Blazers for $4.25 billion, a sale the NBA approved on March 30.
Since he took over the franchise, he’s been scrutinized heavily for his cost-cutting measures. Reports have detailed Portland cutting corners on travel expenses, including not bringing its two-way players on the road for the opening weekend of the playoffs and asking staffers to check out of their Phoenix-area hotel rooms hours before the first team bus left for a play-in tournament game versus the Suns so that the team could avoid late-checkout fees.
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Last month, news broke that the Trail Blazers laid off around 70 people. At the time, team president Dewayne Hankins characterized the personnel changes as restructuring.
In an interview with The Oregonian, Dundon maintained that everything he is doing is in the “relentless pursuit of trying to win.” Dundon made similar money-saving maneuvers early in his ownership of the Hurricanes, who have flourished since that purchase as a perennial playoff team.
But the NHL and NBA are different, and, as illustrated in ESPN’s report, it’s atypical for an NBA coach to be working on a year-to-year deal.
“It changes the math on where a coach stands, and it creates an environment where how do you hold players accountable when it looks like you are easily replaced and removed if things don’t go the way that players may see it going,” Bickerstaff told ESPN. “It’s almost, which is disappointing, a mindset of the substitute teacher being there with no guarantee or support [regarding] what it looks like long term or in the future.
“I’ve talked to a lot of coaches — head coaches, assistant coaches — who are extremely concerned. It’s a very serious matter to us as coaches to make sure that we protect the value of coaching staffs. It’s years and years of work that coaches have put in to put ourselves in this position and to put future coaches in the position where our value remains and isn’t disregarded because of a power flux of ownership.”
Even before Portland’s season ended, reports surfaced that the Dundon-led Trail Blazers weren’t willing to pay top dollar for a head coach. Here’s what general manager Joe Cronin said in his end-of-season news conference:
“A lot of the reports on budget out there were a little misleading,” Cronin said on April 30. “Have talked to Tom a lot about this. We’re going to pay the coach based on some sort of level of shared risk. If it’s a first-time coach who comes with a lot of risk and doesn’t have a market that we have to necessarily compete in, it’ll be one number.
“If the coach we’re talking to is a 15-year vet and a future Hall of Famer, it’s going to be a completely different number, and Tom isn’t going to flinch at either of those scenarios. We’re going to be very open-minded to what types of people we interview and would potentially bring in, and I’m not concerned about the number at all.”
Portland wound up bringing in a first-time head coach, choosing Nori over two other reported finalists, former interim head coach Tiago Splitter — who ended up earning the Chicago Bulls’ top gig — and Boston Celtics assistant Tyler Lashbrook.
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Nori filled the final NBA head-coaching vacancy this cycle, bringing an end to one of the more criticized searches in recent league history.
