GLENDALE, Ariz. — Portland Trail Blazers coach and former Detroit Pistons guard Chauncey Billups lives by the saying “If it ain’t rough, it ain’t right.” The phrase was sewn into his Adidas game shoes during his 17-year NBA career.
On Saturday, Billups’ enshrinement into the Basketball Hall of Fame was formally announced before the NCAA Men’s Final Four games. He said his journey from the Park Hill neighborhood in Denver to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, wasn’t easy, and at one point was full of uncertainty.
Billups was selected No. 3 overall in the 1997 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics out of the University of Colorado. Then-coach Ricardo Patton remembered Billups as a young man who wanted to succeed in the league.
“He was hungry early on. He actually had set some lofty goals for himself, I think at a very early age,” Patton said. “Some players just want to get to the league. Chauncey never just wanted to get there. He wanted to help a team be successful and reach the pinnacle of playing for the championship. He wanted to leave his mark, his footprint.”
Billups was the first draft pick of the Rick Pitino era in Boston. The Celtics traded him midway through his rookie season to the Toronto Raptors. The transition from Colorado to the league wasn’t smooth.
Billups had grown accustomed to dominating talent in his area, but joining the league with bigger and smarter talent proved to be an issue. The former lottery pick spent the early years of his NBA career as a journeyman, playing for four teams in five seasons and trying to find his footing in the league.
“My struggle just happened. It wasn’t nobody’s fault,” Billups said. “I worked hard. I put all I could into it. I just wasn’t ready. It wasn’t like the coach was hating or none of those things, I just wasn’t quite ready. I needed work. I needed to go back to the drawing board … I was underperforming and there were a lot of big, heavy expectations from me that I didn’t live up to, so whatever they thought was true.”
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During the uncertainty and increasing conversations about being a draft bust, Billups identified the weaknesses in his game. He worked with his longtime trainer Joe Abunassar to help improve his handle and decision-making, and worked on ways to create space to get his shot off. The presence of veteran leaders Terrell Brandon and Sam Mitchell when Billups was with the Minnesota Timberwolves helped lay the foundation for the rest of his career.
“These dudes poured into me so it wasn’t just me and my trainer. It was so many people that put on for me to make it,” Billups said. “That’s some of the reasons why I was able to make that turnaround.”
When Billups signed with the Detroit Pistons for the 2002-03 season, it finally clicked. The former journeyman established himself as a starter, and with his shotmaking ability he was nicknamed “Mr. Big Shot.”
“When I got to Detroit, I was actually finally ready to lead and understood the game [and] understood how to play the game at that position,” Billups said. “I was ready then. Once I got there, I just never looked back. It was over. I figured it out.”
In Detroit, Patton believed Billups was on a roster that matched the hunger he had seen in the teenage Colorado product nearly a decade earlier.
“One of the things that I remember or recall him saying was that the team had players that were hungry, players that maybe had struggled in some other areas or with some other teams,” Patton said. “They had a group of players that all were on the same page in terms of just setting out to prove that they were worthy.”
In his first season with the Pistons, Billups recorded a new career high of 16.2 points. Being part of the Pistons roster aligned with Billups’ personality, and he believes the city’s blue-collar mentality was ingrained into the team.
“Let’s go to work. We did the best we could [then] we go home. Ain’t no glitz, no glitter, no nothing,” Billups said. “Well, that’s what Detroit is about, too; that’s what this city is about [and] the fan base is about. It was just a perfect mix. That’s how Ben Wallace was as our leader when I got there, that’s how I am. So, it was just a perfect marriage.”
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His career highlight came during his second year, when the Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 4-1 in the NBA Finals to win their third NBA championship. It was Billups’ first and only NBA title and he was named NBA Finals MVP.
“I took a lot of pride in wanting to show people the chip I always played with, but I took a lot of pride in wanting to show people who I could be, which is why winning a championship, that’s what I cared about,” Billups said. “I didn’t even care about Finals MVP, I just wanted to be able to lead my team to prove to not only me but to the world like that I was gonna be who I said I was gonna be. So that was what it was for me.”
Billups’ induction makes him the second Pistons player from the 2004 championship team to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Ben Wallace, who was a member of the 2021 class. Billups is also joined in by Vince Carter, a member of the 1998 NBA draft class, players Seimone Augustus, Michael Cooper, Walter Davis, Dick Barnett and Michele Timms; coaches Charles Smith, Harley Redin and Bo Ryan; broadcaster/coach Doug Collins; and owner Herb Simon.
In the six years since he became eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2018, this was Billups’ first year as a finalist. He followed the process over the last few years, but he never was fully confident he would become a Hall of Famer. Billups confidence grew when he was named a finalist this year. His induction was no surprise to Patton.
“Certainly for the people that watched him play there wasn’t any question about the worthiness of him becoming a Hall of Famer,” Patton said.
After the announcement in Glendale, Billups planned to fly to Boston to rejoin the Trail Blazers for their game Saturday against the Celtics in the city where his pro career began. In 27 years since he joined the league, he’s stockpiled a long list of life lessons from his journey to pass down to his players.
“That’s something that I have to teach them kind of on the backside. Like for instance, a guy will start going through a tough time or he’s struggling or this is going on or that’s going on. That’s when I can now kind of talk to them about a little bit of my journey, because I don’t talk about me as a player,” Billups said.
“It’s my team and I promised myself that when I took over [and] started coaching, I’m never gonna talk about me and what I did. I’m not that type of person anyway. But the things that I went through I think are very valuable in certain situations when these guys go through things, and that’s a part of the reason why I wanted to do this because I know that I got so much and I’ve been through so much that I can help so many of these guys. So I just pick and choose my spots and when to try to give them that. I know that it can help them.”
During his 17 seasons in the NBA from 1997 to 2014, Billups was a five-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA Defensive team member, and three-time All-NBA player. He played in 1,043 games with the Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks, and the LA Clippers, finishing with career averages of 15.2 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 5.4 assists.
“We don’t win a third NBA championship without Chauncey’s leadership,” former Pistons guard and Hall of Famer Joe Dumars said in a statement. “When the ball was in his hands, you just knew he was going to make the right play.”
Billups said everything that he accomplished in the sport, he did by playing the right way.
“I wasn’t no stat chaser or I’m gonna go get 35 and average 25 and 10,” Billups said. “I wasn’t that player. Most people don’t think that they can reach their goals, get paid, get this and get that when they just play the right way.
“When I say ‘play the right way,’ I play for my team. I didn’t play to make the All-Star Game [or] to be on the cover of ESPN Magazine. I played to try to win and make my teammates better. And by doing that I accomplished being an All-Star. I won a championship playing that way. Now I made the Hall of Fame playing that way. Whether that got me into the Hall of Fame or not, I just I found solace in playing that way.”
