Portland Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin took the blame for the team’s controversial decision not to allow its players on two-way contracts to travel with the rest of the team for its first two road games of a first-round playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs.
“That one’s on me,” Cronin told reporters Thursday. “It was more of a miscommunication on my end.”
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Speaking at an end-of-season news conference, Cronin said he did not double-check to ensure the traveling party for the first two games of the series would include Caleb Love, Chris Youngblood and Jayson Kent, the team’s three players with that contract designation. They did make the trip to San Antonio for Game 5, when the Spurs closed the series out with a 114-95 win.
“We’ve talked about doing some traveling party reductions. Next year, we’ll run a little lighter,” Cronin said. “I just assumed that meant including them and I didn’t double-check. And we fixed that mistake, we brought those guys to San Antonio. That was on me for not communicating properly.”
While players on “two-way” contracts — which allow them to spend a maximum of 50 days on the active NBA roster during the season — are not eligible to participate in the playoffs, the Trail Blazers were the only team to exclude them from traveling to road games. Their absences received close examination amid multiple reports, including by The Athletic, of new owner Tom Dundon enacting cost-cutting measures at every possible corner since the NBA Board of Governors finalized his purchase of the franchise in late March.
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According to The Athletic’s Jason Quick, those measures included not offering free T-shirts to fans in Portland for the team’s two home playoff games and requiring team staffers to check out early from their hotel in Phoenix before the team’s Play-In Tournament victory over the Phoenix Suns to avoid late fees.
Cronin did refute reports that Dundon has been seeking a coaching candidate willing to accept an annual salary in the range of $1 to $1.5 million per year, well below market standard.
“A lot of the reports on budget out there were a little misleading,” Cronin said Thursday. “I have talked to Tom a lot about this. We’re going to pay the coach based on some sort of level of shared risk. If it’s a first-time coach who comes with a lot of risk and doesn’t have a market that we have to necessarily compete in, it’ll be one number. If the coach we’re talking to is a 15-year vet and a future Hall of Famer, it’s going to be a completely different number.
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“And Tom isn’t going to flinch at either of those scenarios. We’re going to be very open-minded to what types of people we interview and would potentially bring in. And I’m not concerned about the number at all.”
A team source told Quick last week that the widely reported salary figure for the coaching search is “just not true.”
Tiago Splitter took over as interim head coach in October after Chauncey Billups was arrested as part of a federal investigation into illegal gambling activities. In Billups’ absence, Splitter coached the Trail Blazers to a 42-40 record and the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2021.
While Splitter remains a candidate for the full-time job, the franchise opened its search before the season ended, a practice that is frowned upon league-wide.
“The amount of disrespect (toward Splitter) that’s going on is beyond description,” a league source told Quick. “It’s like, every day, a new name is coming up. It’s the most vicious thing I’ve encountered in 30-plus years.”