Gentry gets fired as coach of Pelicans
The New Orleans Pelicans are looking for a new coach to oversee the still nascent Zion Williamson era.
The Pelicans fired 65-year-old coach Alvin Gentry on Saturday after the club missed the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons.
New Orleans went 30-42 this season, finishing with just two victories in its final eight games despite the presence of top overall draft choice Williamson and first-time all-star Brandon Ingram in the lineup until the club was eliminated from playoff contention with two games to play.
But basketball operations chief David Griffin asserted during a video media conference that a coaching change might have been forthcoming even if New Orleans had rallied to capture one of the Western Conference’s final playoff spots.
“The wins and losses have very little to do with this,” Griffin said. “This is really about the process. This is about the shared vision of how we’re going to go forward and what this looks like as we build.”
While Griffin declined to answer specific questions about potential candidates, he said he expects the club’s coaching search to move deliberately, in part because many candidates are on the staffs of teams that have made the playoffs.
Griffin has known Gentry since both worked for the Phoenix Suns from 2004 to 2010, and said the decision to change coaches was “really difficult on a human level.”
Griffin also emphasized that Gentry’s coaching ability was never in question.
“He hasn’t forgotten how to coach and this isn’t about any shortcomings that we perceived in that way,” Griffin said. “This is far more about finding the right fit and a shared vision for a very young and ambitious group moving forward.”
Bubble honors: Portland’s Damian Lillard was unanimously selected as the top player of the NBA’s seeding games at Walt Disney World, after averaging a league-best 37.6 points in the eight games.
Phoenix’s Monty Williams, who led the Suns to a perfect 8-0 record in the bubble, was chosen as the top coach of the seeding-game schedule.
Joining Lillard on the first team for games played at Disney between July 30 and Friday’s end of the seeding-game season was Phoenix’s Devin Booker, Indiana’s T.J. Warren, Dallas’ Luka Doncic and Houston’s James Harden.
Booker was second in the Bubble MVP race, with Warren third.
Second-team selections were Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, Brooklyn’s Caris LeVert, Denver’s Michael Porter Jr. and Dallas’ Kristaps Porzingis.
Trail Blazers 126, Grizzlies 122: A fourth consecutive down-to-the-wire finish, a fourth consecutive win for the Portland Trail Blazers.
They needed all that just to get into the playoffs.
Damian Lillard scored 31 points, CJ McCollum had 14 of his 29 in the fourth quarter – including a pair of big jumpers over Ja Morant late – and the Blazers clinched the NBA’s final playoff spot by beating the Memphis Grizzlies in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Portland’s reward: a matchup with the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, starting Tuesday. Jusuf Nurkic had 22 points and 21 rebounds for the winners, who got 21 points from Carmelo Anthony.
Morant scored 35 for Memphis, which got a 22-point, 16-rebound day from Jonas Valanciunas and 20 points apiece from Dillon Brooks and Brandon Clarke.
It was the start, and the end, of the Western Conference play-in series – a wrinkle the NBA added to the restarted season because the coronavirus pandemic meant no team would play its allotted 82 games. Portland finished eighth in the West, Memphis was ninth, and the Grizzlies needed to sweep a two-game matchup to advance.
They had a chance, up eight in the final quarter, before Portland did what Portland does in the bubble – find a way at the end.