Micah Nori takes over as Trail Blazers head coach, says Portland will play hard, smart and together

“I think for five of the interviews they said, ‘Micah you are our No. 2,’” Nori said, citing his recent experience interviewing for the New York Knicks in 2025. “‘You were phenomenal, but Mike Brown’s done it before. We’ve never seen you in that seat.’ When you slide over, everybody says it’s that 18 inches. Do I get discouraged? Absolutely not. You don’t stay in this thing for 28 years starting where I started (by getting discouraged).”

Nori, who spent the past five seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves, had interviewed for multiple head coach vacancies, including the Knicks last year, the Chicago Bulls earlier this month and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2024. He began his NBA career as an intern for the Toronto Raptors in 1998.

After nearly three decades of coming to Portland with the visiting team, he is eager to be on the other side.

“After 28 years of coming out here and seeing all the red, seeing all the noise, it’s just very tough to play (here),” Nori said. “I’m super excited to be a part of it, and I can promise you that every single night — and I don’t like promises and guarantees — but we will play hard for 48-plus, we’re going to play smart for 48-plus and we will play together for 48-plus.”

Nori addressed areas of improvement for the Blazers, including turnovers and 3-point percentage. He noted that next season will see the return of Damian Lillard, who is fourth on the list of the NBA's all-time 3-point shooters. Lillard sat out last season with an Achilles injury.

The Blazers made the playoffs this season for the first time in five seasons under interim coach Tiago Splitter, who was hired this month by the Bulls. Splitter coached Portland to a 42-40 record and a five-game loss to San Antonio in the first round of the playoffs.

Nori emphasized the opportunity he is getting to be a first-time head coach with a team that just made the playoffs.

“Things happen for a reason, my wife always tells me that,” Nori said. “And to sit here and say we have a playoff roster, adding a future Hall of Famer in this great city and this great fanbase, the support that we get. It’s an opportunity that I could not pass up, and I’m ecstatic to take. That’s why I get choked up, because it’s better than what I could have ever imagined.”

In the 2024 playoffs, Nori stepped into a role as in-game head coach after Minnesota’s Chris Finch suffered a knee injury. That experience showed Nori he was ready to be a head coach.

“I learned that I could do it. And I can do it at the highest level in a Western Conference playoff Game 7.” Nori said. “Now, I’m not going to lie, thank goodness for Anthony Edwards, Naz Reid and Karl-Anthony Towns. I helped a little bit, but they did 90% of it. But I learned that you can’t micromanage every single thing. You have to get good people around you and trust people.”

Nori also responded to criticism about his contract leveled by Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, the National Basketball Coaches Association president, who called the deal "a slap in the face to our value” in an interview with ESPN. The contract has just one guaranteed year and back-to-back team option years.

Nori, who sits on that board of the organization, said he had a conversation with Bickerstaff and it had no bearing on him.

Cronin rebuffed suggestions that the terms of the deal hurt Portland’s ability to get its preferred coach, saying the team hired the coach it wanted.

“To me, it’s done, it’s finished,” Nori said. “This is one of these things, you can have 8 million people watching this press conference; you can have 100,000. Next week, nobody’s really going to care about this press conference. What they will care about is what we do.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA