New Favorite Emerges in Trail Blazers' Head Coaching Search

Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon is under fire for reportedly laying off around 70 people earlier this week.

“Talked to one person who survived the cuts today who said it feels like they just looked at a spreadsheet of salaries and cut the highest ones without any regard for what anyone does and how important they are,” The Rose Garden Report’s Sean Highkin posted on X.

Dundon and the rest of the Blazers’ brass will have to make at least one hire this offseason, and it’s a pretty important one: head coach.

The Blazers were written off when Chauncey Billups, head coach since 2021, was arrested after the first game of the 2025-26 NBA season last October.

But Tiago Splitter took over as interim head coach, and the Blazers surprisingly posted their first winning record and reached the playoffs for the first time since the 2020-21 season. They won their first Play-In Tournament game against Phoenix to become the seventh seed and lost their first-round series against San Antonio in five games.

Splitter has reportedly been under consideration to remain head coach, but NBA insider Chris Haynes reported Thursday that Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy “has emerged as one of the finalists” for Portland’s head coaching opening. The Blazers have requested permission to meet with him.

Van Gundy, 64, has not been a head coach since 2007.

His NBA coaching career began as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks in 1989 before he took over as the Knicks’ head coach during the 1995-96 season. Van Gundy went 248-172 in the regular season as Knicks head coach, including an NBA Finals appearance in 1999. Then, he posted a 182-146 regular-season record as the Houston Rockets’ head coach from 2003 to 2007.

Van Gundy was a beloved ESPN analyst before reentering the coaching ranks as the lead assistant on Ty Lue’s Clippers staff in June 2024.

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This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 8:29 PM.