The Portland Trail Blazers have hired Micah Nori to be the team’s next head coach, while giving him a surprising lame-duck contract.
The Nori hiring was first broken by The Athletic’s Jason Quick, who was previously reported to be a finalist for the job. Interestingly, Nori only got a one-year guaranteed contract from the Blazers with two team options attached to it.
“BREAKING: Micah Nori has agreed to become the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, sources tell @TheAthletic . Nori was lead assistant of the Minnesota Timberwolves for the past five years. Nori, 52, signed a one-year deal with team options for each of the next two seasons,” Quick wrote on X.
BREAKING: Micah Nori has agreed to become the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, sources tell @TheAthletic. Nori was lead assistant of the Minnesota Timberwolves for the past five years. Nori, 52, signed a one-year deal with team options for each of the next two seasons.
Typically, NBA head coaches get multiple years of guaranteed money when they are hired to lead a team. But Nori only has one guaranteed season before the Blazers can move off of him, making this a true lame-duck contract.
It shows you that new Blazers owner Tom Dundon is not committed to Nori, as the team options give him the option to let Nori go if he doesn’t like the job he is doing in Portland next season.
We already know that Dundon couldn’t agree to terms with former interim head coach Tiago Splitter last year, as he was said to be lowballing Splitter on his next contract. Splitter was reportedly not happy with the contract offer that Dundon made him, and he ended up leaving to go to the Chicago Bulls instead.
Nori, though, was willing to take what the Blazers offered him to get his first chance of being a head coach in the NBA. Although just one guaranteed season of pay is a tough look, there are two team options attached to the deal, so if he does a good job for the team in Dundon’s eyes, he can be back for two more years beyond the next as part of this new deal.
The 52-year-old Nori has been an assistant coach in the NBA since 2009, working for the Toronto Raptors, Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, and most recently, the Minnesota Timberwolves.
He has drawn rave reviews at all of his stops along the way and has been said to be one of the top head-coaching candidates around the league for several years now. However, up until this point, he was not offered the head-coaching job for any of the NBA’s 30 teams. At long last, though, he has a team that he can call his own.
Just getting one year is going to lead to plenty of question marks from fans and media about how committed the Blazers truly are to Nori as the team’s head coach going forward. But either way, the one-year deal gives him a chance to prove to Dundon that he’s the right coach to lead the Blazers now and into the future, and if he does a good job, Dundon will keep him around.
But if the Blazers take a step backwards next year, this might just be a one-year stint for Nori in Portland.
Adam Martin Adam Martin is a sports journalist with over 15 years of experience. He has a speciality in MMA, while also covering the Big 4 Sports. Adam is currently a contributor to Heavy.com, with previous experience working for The Toronto Star, Sportsnet, theScore, Bookies, BJPenn.com, and MMAOddsbreaker.com. More about Adam Martin
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