Olshey, Neil

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    McCollum on Simmons Trade Rumors, Vaccines and Blazers Firing

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    Portland guard CJ McCollum is facing challenges both personal and professional in his first year as president of the players’ union. “It’s the life I chose,” he said.Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum has been interested in the business machinations of the N.B.A. since early in his career. He was a team representative and vice president in the players’ union, the National Basketball Players Association, before he was elected to succeed Chris Paul as its president this year.The job pays nothing. It adds phone calls and video conferences to his already busy schedule with his day job. His wife is due to deliver their first child any day now. He has a fledgling wine business.Why would McCollum want to take this on?“I’m ready for the next step, the next evolution of myself,” he said in a recent phone interview. “And that’s being more mature, having more responsibility, but also figuring out ways to help more people. Figuring out ways to provide leadership, counsel, guidance.”Since he started, more challenges have faced him and the Trail Blazers. McCollum, who is in his ninth season playing in Portland, has been the subject of trade rumors. As the team struggled on the court in recent weeks, its then president and general manager, Neil Olshey, was fired for improper workplace conduct. And McCollum is now sidelined as he recovers from a partially collapsed lung.On top of that, the union is navigating the coronavirus pandemic, with McCollum — who has said he doesn’t allow unvaccinated people into his home — and the league encouraging vaccines. The players do not have a vaccine mandate, but McCollum said, “We were at 98, we might even be around 99 percent vaccinated right now, which is a big deal.”He’s sought advice from Paul, other veteran players and lawyers and executives who work for the union. He’s learning to advocate for players while building relationships with teams and the league office. The next collective bargaining agreement will be negotiated during his term, and he’d like to help players with financial literacy.He recently spoke with The New York Times about being the players’ union president during a pandemic, how he handles trade rumors and his relationship with Olshey.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Have you had to explain to others why the extra coronavirus testing is a good thing? [The league and union agreed to require additional testing, even for vaccinated players, after Thanksgiving, which has coincided with an uptick in positive tests.]I think when we explain to people the importance of knowing — there’s a lot of things that go under the radar in terms of being positive, but being asymptomatic. So I think testing around the holidays when people are flying or traveling, families are coming in from out of town, you’re gathering, you’re more exposed. It just makes sense and the only bad thing that can come from it is finding out that you are positive. But the good news is you’re finding out early and you can save and not expose some of your friends and family.As training camps opened, there was a lot of attention on the small number of unvaccinated players. Did that annoy you?Yeah, it did. I feel like we were targeted. Obviously, people look up to us. We play a sport for a living. It’s entertainment. People looked at us as the bar. In reality, we are kind of the bar: We got 98 percent of our league volunteered to be vaccinated, whereas the public was 55 percent or 60 percent at that point. No one was talking about corporate America going through the same problem, no one was talking about how there were health care workers going through the same issues. It was us in the spotlight, and I thought it was unfair because we were doing such a great job of educating our players.There was a lot of conversation about vaccine hesitancy in the Black community as being a problem for the N.B.A. How did you view that?There was hesitancy, but I think there’s hesitancy from everyone. We wanted to know more, we wanted more data. Understanding historically Blacks and African Americans have been taken advantage of, especially in similar circumstances and situations. Historically, we’ve been used almost as guinea pigs at times for experimental medicine. There was caution, there was pause, but for good reason.I think as we’ve continued to educate ourselves and ask the right questions from experts, we’ve learned that there was a shift.As union president, you have to think about the welfare of other players, but some of their situations impact you too. I’m thinking about Ben Simmons, who hasn’t played this year and how your name gets mentioned in trade rumors with him. How do you process your dual role in that?The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 5The Omicron variant. More

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      Trail Blazers Fire Team President Neil Olshey

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      Neil Olshey, who has been with Portland since 2012, was fired for “violations” of the team’s code of conduct related to the workplace environment at the team’s practice facility.The Portland Trail Blazers fired Neil Olshey, the general manager and head of basketball operations, on Friday, citing “an independent review of concerns and complaints around our workplace environment at the practice facility.”In a statement posted on social media, the Blazers did not provide further details, saying, “Out of respect for those who candidly participated in that privileged investigation, we will not release or discuss it.”The Blazers did not immediately respond to a request from The New York Times seeking more details about the nature of the concerns and complaints that prompted Olshey’s firing.Statement from the Portland Trail Blazers pic.twitter.com/W9j4V3nNl2— Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) December 3, 2021
      Olshey, who also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, was hired as general manager of the Blazers in 2012 and was promoted to president of basketball operations in 2015. During his tenure, Portland made the playoffs eight straight years, but won only four playoff series.Olshey, who grew up in Queens, began his N.B.A. career working for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2003 as their director of player development. He then rose steadily through the organization until he was named vice president of basketball operations in 2010. His most noted move was acquiring the star point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets in 2011.In July, Olshey and the Blazers were criticized for hiring Chauncey Billups, the former point guard, as Portland’s head coach because Billups had been accused of sexual assault in 1997. The organization conducted what many felt was an incomplete investigation into the allegation against Billups as part of the hiring process.When asked about the investigation at the news conference announcing Billups’s hiring, Olshey said, “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened. We stand by Chauncey.”After a reporter pressed for details, Olshey called the findings “proprietary” and added, “You’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”In early November, the Blazers announced that they were conducting a workplace investigation related to “concerns” at their practice facility but did not say who was the focus of the concerns. Multiple news reports, including from The Athletic and Yahoo Sports, cited anonymous sources who said the investigation was focused on Olshey, but a team spokesperson declined to comment when asked if it did.In Friday’s statement about Olshey’s firing, the team said, “We are confident that these changes will help build a more positive and respectful working environment.”The Blazers also cited unspecified “violations” of the team’s code of conduct.Olshey’s most consequential basketball move for the Blazers was drafting Damian Lillard, now one of the N.B.A.’s biggest stars, with the sixth pick of the 2012 draft. But the franchise has struggled to put championship-level talent around Lillard, which Lillard publicly expressed frustration about over the summer.The Blazers have tapped Joe Cronin, the team’s director of player personnel who joined the franchise as an intern in 2006, to be the interim general manager. More

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      Blazers’ Billups Hire Draws Attention to Sexual Assault Accusation

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      Chauncey Billups was announced as Portland’s head coach on Tuesday as a team executive dodged and deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Billups.At a news conference on Tuesday, the top basketball executive for the Portland Trail Blazers dodged or deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Chauncey Billups, whom he was announcing as the team’s new head coach. A public relations official for Portland cut off a questioner entirely, and the executive, Neil Olshey, would not elaborate on an independent investigation into the incident he said the team had commissioned.Billups’s hire has elicited criticism both from within and outside Portland’s fan base because of the accusation, which was made during Billups’s 1997-98 rookie season as a player with the Boston Celtics.Olshey, the Blazers’ president of basketball operations, introduced Billups on Tuesday and said that he had “been successful at everything he’s done in his life, on and off the court.”He also said that the Blazers “took the allegations very seriously” and that “other N.B.A. organizations, business partners, television networks, regional networks have all enthusiastically in the past and present offered Chauncey high-profile positions within their organizations.” Billups is currently finishing his first season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, who are in the Western Conference finals, and he was previously an analyst for ESPN.Olshey said the team-initiated investigation was done with Billups’s support. “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened,” he said. “We stand by Chauncey. Everyone in the organization.”Neil Olshey, right, Portland’s president of basketball operations, said the team commissioned an independent investigation of the sexual assault accusation against Billups, left.Craig Mitchelldyer/Associated PressWhen asked by a reporter to give more details on the investigation, Olshey declined.“So that’s proprietary, Sean,” Olshey said, referring to the N.B.A. reporter Sean Highkin. “So you’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”Jason Quick, a reporter for The Athletic, followed up later to ask Billups about the impact the incident had on him, after Billups had said that “not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how every decision that we make could have a profound impact on a person’s life.” Olshey took a sip of bottled water and appeared to glance at a public relations official for the organization, who then cut off Quick, though Billups appeared willing to respond.“Jason, we appreciate your question,” the official said. “We’ve addressed this. It’s been asked and answered. Happy to move on to the next question here.”The 1997 accusation came from a woman who said in a lawsuit that on the night of Nov. 9, following an evening at a Boston comedy club, she was raped by Billups, Ron Mercer and Michael Irvin — who is of no relation to the former N.F.L. player — at Antoine Walker’s home. Walker and Mercer were Billups’s teammates in Boston, while Irvin was Walker’s roommate. No criminal charges were filed. Billups and Mercer settled with the woman for an undisclosed amount in 2000, and Walker also settled a lawsuit with the woman soon after. Billups denied any nonconsensual contact, but said he had sex with her.The lawsuit did not affect Billups’s career prospects. It rarely came up, if at all. He played 17 years in the N.B.A., made five All-Star teams and won the N.B.A. finals Most Valuable Player Award in 2004.“I learned at a very young age as a player, and not only a player, but a young man, a young adult that every decision has consequences,” Billups said on Tuesday, in addressing the accusation, “and that’s led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I’ve had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and about what they may have to read about me in the news.”Damian Lillard, Portland’s star guard, publicly lobbied for the team to hire Jason Kidd as its coach and spoke highly of Billups. He has since said he did not know about the accusation against Billups.Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe hiring of Billups immediately spurred a backlash, with the Trail Blazers being accused of glossing over the assault accusation at the expense of more experienced candidates like Becky Hammon, the seven-year San Antonio Spurs assistant who was a finalist for the job. Olshey said more than 20 candidates were considered for the role. Billups’s only coaching experience is this season with the Clippers.The Billups hiring also has brought criticism on the franchise’s biggest star, Damian Lillard, who spoke glowingly about Billups and publicly lobbied for the team to hire the former point guard Jason Kidd, who was recently hired as the coach of the Dallas Mavericks after working this season as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2001, Kidd pleaded guilty to spousal abuse against his then-wife, Joumana Kidd.On Twitter, Lillard addressed some of the criticism for supporting Kidd and Billups, saying: “Really? I was asked what coaches I like of the names I ‘heard’ and I named them. Sorry I wasn’t aware of their history I didn’t read the news when I was 7-8 yrs old. I don’t support Those things … but if this the route y’all wana come at me… say less.”At the news conference, Olshey said that Lillard had been “involved in the process” for hiring a new coach and that he attended some of the video conference interviews. According to Olshey, Lillard also spoke to Billups directly before the hire.“We have different sectors in this organization,” Olshey said. “And, you know, Dame represents the player sector, and we took his input in the process. We value it. It’s important to us to kind of know where he stands. But at the end of the day, this is an organizational decision and the organization believes that Chauncey is the best person to be our head coach.” More