Not so sure about it not being a big deal? A dude got himself elected president using Twitter. JC is on his soapbox. DJ is a no show as well as JQ. The writers might be waiting to say "I felt this way all along...". My feeling is they will wait for more water under the bridge to say where they stand.
Those are articles... they are intended to be objective. Opinion pieces, or "columns" generally take a little longer to come out. Let's see what Monday holds.
I also suspect the rape stuff will become more common knowledge in the next few days. It’s not as well known as what Kidd did.
I may get blasted for saying this, but I now wonder if the current climate in Portland might actually help this quickly blow over rather than create a backlash. On one hand, the Blazers did not go with a woman to be the first head coach in the NBA but instead went with a man who over a decade earlier was implicated in an alleged sexual assault on a woman. I am not sure of all the specifics but as I recall he was never charged for it. So my question is, in the current political climate that we have in Portland, is the media (and what seems to be a group of full-time protesters) really going to try to tarnish the image of yet another black man who may have been falsely accussed of a crime? Are they really going to go there? If he was convicted then yes of course they would. But as we all know he was not even charged. I just can't see them going out of their way to attack his reputation. Nor should they.
I have been a die hard NBA fan for over 20 years and never heard of this before. It's gonna become a big deal if we (fans and media) keep adding flames to it like a lot on here like to do. Billups and Neil may have to answer some questions about it from the media, mainly that dick John Canzano and Jason Quick. Other than this, this is just being overblown. Just ignore it going forward. And some want to wonder why Neil is a dick to Portland media sometimes, I would get sick of Portland media myself.
It sucks that we'll never know what happened. If Billups raped someone he shouldn't ever be hired in the NBA. At the same time the last year plus should've opened people's eyes as to how prejudiced the legal system is against black males. I could see a young rich black man being advised to just pay her off so it goes away even if you're innocent because that's the easy way out without having to go through a trial where being black might automatically make some people think you're guilty, especially in Boston over 20 years ago. That's not to say Chauncey should get a pass or it should be ignored because it's certainly just as likely that he did it. I'd be interested to hear how many rapists have only ever committed one rape. Seems like more of a pattern behavior (See Deshaun Watson) versus a one time thing but want to see data on that. It does seem odd that there has been no other women coming forward or anything bad about Billups other than this one incident. Again, that doesn't mean it didn't happen but I also struggle with how to approach the situation. So I guess I'm not going to take a hardline stance against him because I don't know what happened but I'm also not going to just say it's okay either. I do think Billups needs to address it in his introductory conference. I'm curious to see what he says about it.
It’s just interesting because I’d bet if you went into the Kobe death thread not many people were talking about his rape. He was being remembered as this great guy and I happen to know it wasn’t the only time he sexually assaulted a hotel worker so I imagine it happened quite a bit. The Billups situation was much murkier. There were multiple people there. It’s not as cut and dry as the Kobe rape case. With Kobe it was him and the woman in the room. If rape happened, it was him. 100%. The Billups thing feels a lot like the Ray Lewis case where there were multiple people involved and someone knows what happened. We will never know the truth because the woman was unconscious. But if Billups was there and he didn’t do it, he knows who did. That makes him guilty of either participating or protecting someone.
Watch and see Billups response to this himself in the media. He is a smart person and well spoken, I bet he answers it and hopefully what he says eases these extremes and we just all move past this shit. Fucking drama mainly from Portland media and fans smh.
Well in that case...but if he can address it, at this point he should. Better for all parties involved, address the "now" monkey in the room, move on and lets talk basketball and this team and off season moves. Looking forward to what he can bring to the Blazers and finally seeing Dame play under a different coach than Stotts for the first time.
I do find it odd that not a single woman other than the one involved has said anything bad about Chauncey's behavior that I've seen at least. Usually when a high profile person is accused of something like this you have others coming forward too. It doesn't mean he didn't do it but from all accounts he's not that type of person. It makes the waters a little murkier.
It’s tough because coming to Billups defense labels you as unsympathetic to women to many people, and that’s not the case. The amount of men accused of stuff is huge. However women should always be taken at their word when they claim any type of assault. It’s a very tough situation. Paying people off may or may NOT indicate any type of guilt. It’s impossible to tell.
