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The Trail Blazers have agreed to a deal with Minnesota Timberwolves assistant Micah Nori, making him the team’s third head coach since October and the 17th in its 56-year history.
Nori, a first-time head coach with nearly 30 years of NBA experience, takes over for a franchise that has spent most of the past year swimming through a black hole.
By now you are likely familiar with the sequence of events. Chauncey Billups was arrested by the feds for his alleged role in a gambling conspiracy. Damian Lillard watched the season in street clothes after making his prodigal return. Just by nature of having Yang Hansen on the roster, the team became one of the most popular teams in China. Thrown into the deep end, interim coach Tiago Splitter weathered a slew of injuries and led the team back to the playoffs for the first time in five years. Then, as a finale, Texas billionaire Tom Dundon took control of the franchise late in the season, quickly earning the moniker “El Cheapo” for various cost-cutting measures while dividing the city over how much to subsidize his plans for a vaguely defined arena renovation.
One of Dundon’s strategies in this regard involved trying to see how little he could pay somebody of quality to coach an NBA team, which Tuesday’s hiring of Nori more or less vindicates.
Though terms are yet to be disclosed, it is assumed that Nori’s deal will make him the lowest-paid head coach in the league by a wide margin, as Dundon had reportedly been angling to pay in the range of $1 to $1.5 million. Splitter balked at this and after a confusing sequence of events now finds himself coaching the Bulls.
Nori’s deal will definitely make him the least secure head coach in the league, however, as his is a “one-year deal with team options for each of the next two seasons” according to Jason Quick of The Athletic. NBA coaches typically get at least four years guaranteed at a base annual salary of about $5 million.
Nori, 52, beat out Boston assistant Tyler Lashbrook and now finds himself at the top of the org chart for the first time in his career—one that’s been about as unusual as that of anybody who’s ever coached an NBA team. Nori grew up playing baseball, football and basketball for his father in Middletown, Ohio before earning a baseball scholarship to the University of Indiana. (Nori’s son Dante was a first-round pick in the 2024 MLB
Draft.)
In 1997, while coaching baseball, he was given an opportunity to work as a low-level staffer for the Toronto Raptors because their head coach, Butch Carter, was a family friend. Nori worked his way through the ranks in Toronto and eventually became an assistant coach before parlaying his experience into stops in Sacramento, Denver and Minnesota, where he has served as Chris Finch’s lead assistant since 2021.
Nori is very funny, giving famously good sideline interviews. His sense of humor, slight twang and background in a different sport have led to fairly apt comparisons to Ted Lasso. (This is fitting, as we at WW have referred to the Blazers as being a fairly compelling television show.) Nori even won a regional Emmy award for a series of on-camera whiteboard breakdowns he did while working for the Timberwolves.
With arena negotiations set to drag on into the coming season and Lillard poised to make his return in a Blazer jersey for the first time since 2023, Nori will take center stage this fall for a season that promises to be as dramatic as any before.
One of the most pressing questions facing the team—on the floor at least—is who will be joining Lillard on the opening night roster. New owners are known for making splashy, all-in trades for star players, and with Lillard turning 36 in a few weeks and with the team possessing several promising young players and a treasure chest of future draft capital, a trade seems imminent.
The team’s pursuit of Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo ended Monday when he was traded to Miami. However, veteran stars like Jaylen Brown, Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard still appear to be available for the right price.
The Blazers answered their biggest open question by hiring Nori. Dundon got to have his cake and, based on the terms, he ate it too, leaving Nori to navigate choppy waters as he learns how to lead a team for the first time in his career.
