Indiana Pacers: It’s Chauncey Billups’ time to be a head coach

Chauncey Billups should get his chance with the Indiana Pacers

As the NBA season begins to wind down and approach the NBA conference finals matchups, we also begin to see front office personnel hired and fired, as is the same for head coaches and their staffs as well. Chauncey Billups’ name popped up this week as being heavily considered for his first coaching gig in the Association (interest from the Indiana Pacers). And not just his first coaching job as a head coach, but his first coaching job in general at this level.

After retiring at the end of the 2013-14 NBA season, Billups almost immediately resurfaced as an analyst on ESPN. Over the next few years, Billups would become a regular on ESPN shows like Sportscenter and NBA countdown. Billups would then go on to join the play-by-play broadcast for LA Clippers games as an analyst along with performing the same duties for select NBA games on ESPN.

This has been the majority of Mr. Big Shots’ involvement in the NBA since he retired from the game an NBA champion, NBA Finals MVP, five-time all-star, three times All-NBA player, and two times All-NBA defender just to name a few of the accolades he compiled over his 17-year career. The bulk of the prime of his career being spent in Detroit as a Piston from 2002-08.

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Over this six-year span, Billups would help to lead the Pistons to six straight NBA Eastern Conference Finals appearances and two NBA Finals appearances. They would win one of those Finals appearances in 2004 against the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The very next season in 2005, the Pistons were back in the Finals against San Antonio where they would fall to the Spurs in a hard-fought seven-game series.

Even with his pedigree as a winner, leader, and ambassador for the league that young players can look up to and go to for mentoring, still, some may have been surprised to hear Chauncey’s name arise this week as being a serious candidate for the Indiana Pacers now-vacant head coaching job. Though this would not be an unprecedented move as the NBA is sometimes known for teams hiring former players as first-time head coaches without having any coaching experience at all.

Just recently the Brooklyn Nets hired former Phoenix Suns hall of fame point guard Steve Nash as their new head coach without having sat on anyone’s bench as an assistant since his retirement from the league. Most recently Nash was performing in a consultant type position with the Golden State Warriors while Kevin Durant was playing for Golden State.

Since 2011, there have been five former players hired as head coaches with no prior coaching experience. Mark Jackson with Golden State 2011, Jason Kidd with Brooklyn in 2013, Steve Kerr with Golden State 2014, Derek Fisher also in 2014 for the Knicks, and as mentioned above Steve Nash for the Brooklyn Nets in 2020.

One thing that stands out is all five hired since 2011 played the point guard position with differing levels of success. All were known as being anywhere from good to great players in their day. Billups surely falls into this range and much closer to the greater end of the spectrum if you asked those who played during or covered his time in the league.

All of this seems to bode quite well for Billups who we know has a great mind for the game of basketball at any level. Often in sports, we talk about guys being able to lead, and we know for a fact that Billups possess the qualities to lead as well as the demeanor, and charisma to make young players want to follow and listen to him while also teaching them how to be professionals.

This is not the first time though that Billups has been linked to an NBA team. Back in 2017 reports came out about Billups being in talks with the Cleveland Cavaliers about taking overrunning their front office.

When Billups was asked about his decision to pass on the Cleveland front office gig, he told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated this:

"“First and foremost, my family was 100 percent behind me taking the job,” he said. “It didn’t come down to that at all. At the end of the day, after carefully looking at the entire situation, I just felt it wasn’t the time. It’s that simple. I’ve got a ton of respect for Dan and the Cavs organization. But now just wasn’t the time.“These kinds of decisions go down to a gut thing and my spirit. It just wasn’t time.”"

One rumor that circulated around the situation at the time was that Chauncey declined the offer from the Cavs because LeBron James, at the time was due to become a free agent at the end of the 2017-18 season, and had not committed to the Cavs long term, and so Billups did not want to be left holding the bag if LeBron opted to go elsewhere in pursuit of a bigger bag as we now know he did in 2018.

Many long time NBA fans may remember the rivalry that the Pistons and Pacers had from 2002-05 that hit its peak in November of 2004 during ‘the malice at the Palace’ and which ultimately caused the breaking up of that Indiana Pacers team that many pundits had picked to win an NBA championship that very season. Aside from that brawl, Chauncey Billups was a huge reason why the Pacers team was never able to realize their full potential on the court.

Regardless of all of this, if the Indiana Pacers and Chauncey Billups are in talks about making him the team’s next head coach, this feels like it will be a great fit for all parties involved. The Pacers have a nice young core group of players that will without a doubt benefit from playing and developing under someone with the knowledge and legacy of a Chauncey Billups.