Chauncey Billups ESPN Interview | 2025 NBA Summer League | Portland Trail Blazers

Chauncey Billups ESPN Interview | 2025 NBA Summer League | Portland Trail Blazers

Welcome back everyone to NBA 2K26 Summer League here in Las Vegas. Joined by Johny Phillips now at our desk. Johny, thanks a lot for joining us, man. And uh, of course, man, congratulations on a on a strong, nice, impressive run to end the season. Uh, moving forward. One of the guys that’s getting a lot of eyeballs right now is the man with the ball, Young Hansen. Tell us where he fits moving forward in the big picture where you guys are going. Well, I mean, obviously we have a really young team. Um, with the exception of a few few vets. Um, but I think I think Hansen fits in very perfectly with our team. We got a little lot of we want to play up and down. Get up and down. really good passer, very competitive. Um, great touch around the basket. I think in time he’s going to he has the touch to be a really good three-point shooter as well, you know, as he continues to build his game out. But really soft touch, you know, he he’s he’s he’s going to fit perfectly with us. We’re very very happy to to get him. Before I ask you my first question about your team, I got to ask you this. Did you hate doing TV with me that much? I mean, you were it was only like a year together and then next thing you know, you’re coaching. forced you into coaching. Is that what happened? Nah, bro. You you you was so good to me, man. You you made it you made my job very easy. I always appreciate what you did for me, legs. Hey. All right, let’s get into your to your team, man. You really had a strong finish to the year and some of that young talent started to blossom. I want to start with Shane Sharp and what he started to turn himself into because early on it was the Sports Center highlight reel, but now it’s much more than that. Talk about his development. Yeah, it really is. I thought this year, you know, once he can continue to to focus on one just kind of playing with his teammates, but also defensively, you know, taking a challenge defensively every single night, knowing that he scored the ball pretty easy, you know, so if you want to play a lot of minutes for the head coach that he’s playing for, you going to have to play defense. And when he realized that, you know, his season got better. Tell us about Caleb Love, a guy that’s gotten off to a pretty good start here tonight. He comes in, Chanty, he’s a little bit of an older prospect at 23 years old. Yeah, he is. And you know, obviously, you know, we get guys that age coming into the league, they’ve been through a ton. I love guys that have a chip on their shoulder that have been through a lot, you know, and he’s eager. He’s eager to learn, you know. Um he’s gonna be in an incredible situation this year being able to learn from Drew Holiday and and even our young guys, you know, who will have they’re younger than him, Shaden and Scoop, but they have more NBA experience than him. So, he’ll be able to learn a lot from them as well. Let me follow up on that with Drew Holiday. So, obviously Anthony Simon is very talented, explosive, dynamic offensive player. Uh he’s no longer there and now you go with Drew Holiday. talk a little bit about just the mindset behind that and what he’s going to bring to you guys. Yeah, I’m just so I’m just so happy, you know, to have Drew and I had such an incredible time coaching Anthony and I felt like, you know, from the time I’ve been there, Anthony has really grown to to be a really good player. I’m happy for him and his opportunity, but to be able to get a guy like Drew, um what better guy in the league could you have to raise, scoop, and shading, you know, than Drew Holiday, two-time champion, Hall of Famer, you know, um going to be a Hall of Famer in my opinion, but he can still hoop. He’s not coming there to just be assistant coach. Like, he can still ball. He can still hoop. So, he’s going to have an opportunity to do so. I spoke with Scoo Henderson for a minute a couple of days ago. has been putting in some great work with Chris Johnson, his trainer, out in Los Angeles. What kind of a leap do you expect from him next year? Well, I’ll be honest with you. Scoot Scoot’s having an incredible summer. Um, he he was a little he had a tough year last year, a little only because he didn’t get to play basketball last summer. He was banged up. He was he was licking his wounds from the season. This year, he’s been playing ball all summer. He’s been working on his game. As you said, he is going to take an incredible lead this year. Okay. I really really believe Scoot’s going to take a big time jump this year. Um, and we I’m along for the ride, man. We’re ready for it. I thought he was a can miss dynamic scorer and guard coming out. Got to work on his efficiency. I’m sure he’s going to get there. But that’s really good to hear about him. I want to talk about Denny Abia. You unlocked something in him because he was a guy that was a high draft pick in Washington, but he took his game to a completely different level once he got to Portland. And he’s a guy really that affects the game across multiple platforms. Yeah, he really does legs. I mean, I I I wanted him to be able to show just all he can do. Um, he didn’t get to really show it like he wanted to in Washington, and I said, “All right, well, we’re going to find out. If you can do all the things that you say you can, I’m going give you that opportunity to do so.” And man, he just continued to get better and better and better. And I believe there’s more levels for him to even get even more efficient and even better. So, I was happy to really kind of unlock Denny. Um, I thought I thought he could have been a little better. Like, um, and we talk about this all the time, like I think defensively, you know, sometimes I say, I don’t want you to be this guy that your offense goes way way up and you just start forgetting about defense. Offense is so fun. I think he can be a lock down defensive. I really do. He’s so strong. Um, he got great feet. He’s tough as heck, you know. Um, so he he’ll be better defensively for us this year, but that’s a guy that he already took a leap for us and I love it. What about Big Ben Donovan in the middle of the five for him? He’s here tonight. Got a look at him and had a chance to chop it up with him a little bit. Uh, what kind of track is his development on right now? Yeah, DC had a great year, man. You know, um, being able to be there and obviously come off the bench for for big DA and then Robert Williams there. He had a great mentor in Robert, you know, and still does have that, you know, him getting to understand like how important it is for him to be able to change hands and roll change really fast is a big big deal for him, you know, and his body is right. Um, he’s he’s lost some weight. He’s gotten a lot stronger this summer. Um, he’s going to be primed for for a big campaign. I think you guys have me eyes as intrigued as just about any team in the west because of the way you finish the year. The young offensive talent you have and you got also guys like Tumi Kamar, one of the best perimeter defenders in the league. You got Matis Style. I know how important that is to you. Now you bring in Drew Holiday. So you can actually play different types of lineups now depending on what you think the situation calls for. You need more offense, need more defense. I love that. I love that. I really do. I mean we we want to pick it up and play a lot faster this year. So that rule requires sometimes we’ll play a little smaller, you know, and to have guys like Jeremy Grant and Tmani and Denny that can play three, four, five, and you know, all these fast guards. We we’ll had an opportunity to to change up how we play um on different nights. But I’m just so excited about what we’re what we’re going to be able to do. We talked about Shad a little bit earlier. Have you been around him at all this summer? Is he up in Portland? Is he back in back in Toronto or Oh, no. Well, he’s here right now. He’s he’s he’s right here watching his guys and working out in the gym with us earlier and playing five on five. He’s he’s been very focused. Blazers up by 10. I was telling Jonesy, and I don’t know if this was by design or what you guys were trying to do when you put your summer league team together, but it’s like a track meet out here in the first first like 14 minutes of the game. That’s the fastest we’ve seen any team changing ends of the floor. Whoever got it just went. Yeah. And you’re putting relentless pressure on them to start this game. Um was that by design? You were kind of looking. That is that is by design, legs. I mean, we we we want to just get up and down and play fast, man, and just have fun. Um the summer league is always a good time, but I just think you get guys to be so much more engaged if you just get up and just start flying around sharing the basketball. You’ll probably have to make more sub quicker subs because these guys will get tired. But that is by design for sure. Um and you know what you with just on point right there. I mean because we haven’t played fast, we haven’t been able to score. Thoughts on uh saw Chris Murray always think it’s you never tell them to check. Yeah. Another one of the talented wings you guys have and uh how much does he contribute next year? What’s it look like for him? Yeah, I mean he’s one of those wings that we have that can really guard. You know, Chris is having a a really good summer as well, putting in a lot of time getting trying to get his shot together. He struggled a little bit behind behind the arc last year, but he’s trying to he’s addressing that, you know, but he’s a guy that defensively I think he’s as good as anybody on our team. All right. So, we had Brian Keith from Washington on earlier. I asked him, they’re a different state, man. They got all those young first round picks. Defining success for a team like that different than for you. 36 and 46 a year ago. Mhm. Some personnel changes. You expecting your young guys to take leap. So defined success this year for the Cordinal Trailblazers. Yeah, I think you know as we’re establishing our identity. Thought we did a pretty good job of it last year on the defensive end and we’ll continue to do that. I think now it’s time for us to establish an identity offensively legs, you know, um and in terms of how fast we’re going to play and how we’re going to move the ball and how we’re going to cut, you know, in the half court. I think when we do that, you know, and we just continue to keep keep getting better, take a little step, little step in the Western Conference is very difficult, man. So, yeah, it you you can’t lot of runs in that ladder. You sometimes can’t define it with wins in the Western Conference because it’s just so difficult. You know, you got five or six teams that can actually win an NBA championship. So, for us, we just want to continue to keep defining that and just keep taking steps. 36 and 46 last year, 12th in the conference. Johny, to tell you a little story, I was in the hotel elevator and ran into about five or six Blazers fans and they were hyped about being at this game tonight and talking about see they they named all the guys on your roster and I just got the general sense that the expectations have really risen uh in in the city of what does it look like? What does it feel like now? Well, it feels great and obviously we have some incredible fans and we’ve gone through a lot of pain, you know, in the last four years, man. So, once last year we started getting a little better, showing that we’ve taken some steps, I think our fans are just excited and they’re ready for that, you know. Um, but so are our our players and and so are us, the coaches. Getting back to Young and you know that pick and getting him where you did and the first thing that I think stood out to me right off the bat was he absolutely likes physical contact. You don’t see a lot of 20-year-old foreignb born players come in to the league. First of all, built like he is and also that that seek out contact. Yeah, he’s looking for it. He’s looking for he understands that there’s always going to be a collision. He wants to be the first one to it and that’s rare for a young guy. It really is. Um he’s looking for that and he’s just going to continue to get better and better, you know, in terms of him just, you know, this thing is going so fast for him right there right now. You know, he’s he’s working on his English. So anything that we say it’s like it takes him a while to kind of process, you know. So there’s just so many levels that he’ll get better in and he’ll do it in a very very short amount of time. I can remember Greg Con telling me if Genobi didn’t get enough minutes, he had an entire country madly. So I’m just I’m just throwing it out there with Yang Hansen. I hear you. I hear you. You know what you might want to do with him? You might want to stick him in a film room. put on some old video of Barbus Sabonis. Hey, right. You talking about one of the best passing big men of all time, particularly from that from that top of the key area. He already had a couple of looks in this in this first half that kind of reminded you of that. The way Sabotus used to pass the ball. Yeah, he can do that. And he you know, one thing about it, he takes he takes a lot of pride in it. You know, he takes a lot of pride in making plays for the rest of the guys. Um and you just love everybody likes to play with a guy like that. John, I want to ask you a question and we saw this in the NBA finals with Indiana and OKC. There seems to be a a rising of four quarter at least three quarter court pressure. Guys are picking up and teams are trying to win the margins a little bit more. Is that a style that can be ubiquitous throughout the league? Is it something that you guys look at in terms of cranking up and maybe going nine guys, eight guys deep during the course of the game? Well, we don’t crank up right there. But we we were the first ones doing it. We were the first ones picking up full court, guarding everybody, scrapping, running all over the place. So like that was the only way we can really compete in the game, try to pick it up like that. So we’ll continue to be like that the entire time cuz we have to, you know, and why would you be young, right? And not like play fast and pick up rotate guys in. You might as well, you know. So we’ll continue to play that way. Um and we try to make people very uncomfortable, you know. It’s It’s just what we enjoy. You know what I’m curious about with you, man? So, how are you better and more comfortable now? Yeah. Haven’t been there in a while. Like, you know, each year obviously what have you learned the most and how you’ve adopted and changed as a coach? Yeah, man. So many things. I’ve been so many so many different renditions of this thing for me in the last four years, legs. But I would say a couple of the main things. One, um, is just my patience. You know, my patience. I was always been always been a pretty patient person, but this has challenged my patience a lot, you know, going through kind of a rebuild, but that’s gotten a lot better, you know, and just understanding how to call the game and slow down for me. When you first took over, Dame was still on the team. Feels like ages ago. That’s right. That’s right. Johny Phillips, head coach of the Portland Trailblazers. Thanks a lot for joining us, man. You really this TV thing, bro. Oh, come on, man. Good, man. Feel like we’re doing another studio hit right here.

Chauncey Billups joins the ESPN broadcast table for an in-game chat at NBA Summer League.

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