It's early, but we have a frontrunner for the crankiest postgame press conference of the 2024-25 season. After a 45-point loss at home against the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups began his presser by using the word "embarrassing" five times in 54 seconds.
"It was just f---ing embarrassing, to be honest with you," Billups told reporters. "We were soft as hell the whole game. Nobody really fought. It was just embarrassing. For everybody. That's just not who we are. It really isn't. There's no excuse for that. You have a lot of rough nights in this league, obviously, but I don't even care, it just wasn't even that -- it was like our guys just showed up because they had to be here, but didn't want to play, didn't want to actually work. And that's embarrassing. It's unfortunate that we had to go out there in front of our fans who paid their hard-earned money to come see their favorite team play, and we show up and do that. It was embarrassing, man. It was embarrassing."
Billups said that he delivered a succinct message to his team.
"I told 'em that anybody that sleeps well tonight, you're a loser," he said. "It's just that simple. You're a loser. You sleep well after this one, you're a loser."
Portland fell down by 19 points in the first quarter and trailed by as many as 25 in the second. The Grizzlies, who were without guards Ja Morant (due to a hip injury) and Desmond Bane (due to an oblique injury), increased their lead to 35 in the third. The Blazers shot 4 for 42 (9.5%) from 3-point range, and they scored 80.9 points per 100 possessions, which is the worst offensive performance any team has had this season.
"I'm not just going to pinpoint one or two guys; they all were terrible," Billups said. He then made an exception for the group that "played as hard as they could" in garbage time. "But for the most part, everybody, they all sucked."
Normally, Billups doesn't like to say much to the team after losses. This one, however, was "different," he said, and not just because of the outrageous margin of defeat.
"We've lost by more points than this, but it's how," Billups said. "It's how. It's just you're laying down and just kind of caving in and giving in. At the end of the day, that's on me. I'm the leader of this. This is our team, but I'm the head of this. So, to me, I take that very personally. Because I don't have none of that, not one bone of that in my body, to just lay down. So that's on me. I gotta be better."
The Blazers are 3-8 on the season, and they've lost three consecutive games in increasingly lopsided fashion, as the Memphis debacle was preceded by a 127-102 loss in Minnesota last Friday and a 118-105 loss in San Antonio last Thursday. Those other losses, however, weren't nearly this ugly, and Billups wasn't nearly this grouchy afterward.
"I really don't know where that came from, to be honest with you," Billups said. "We scrap. That's what we do. We don't win all our games -- not even close -- but we fight. We don't lay down. And today they laid down."
Portland will play its first game of the NBA Cup on Tuesday against the Timberwolves, and it will host the Wolves again on Wednesday. Before that back-to-back, the Blazers will have plenty of time to think about why they were so sloppy against the Grizzlies. Billups, however, does not plan to break down the film.
"I don't want to see that shit," he said.