Sports teams have frequently turned a blind eye to actions by athletes and coaches if it helps them get ahead, so I don't think that any previous hires are reason to justify that it's been sufficiently looked into. Any 2021 investigation into something that happened in the 1990s needs to be looked at through the lens that athletes and organizations were really good at making unseemly off-court incidents go away. So the Trailblazers may need to answer on the thoroughness of their investigation. Was it the usual, ask the guy involved for his side? Or did they go above-and-beyond, trying to reach out to the victim, consulting with sexual abuse experts and advocates, etc.?
If they did that, and still found Billups to be the best candidate, then they should have managed the rollout entirely differently, making sure that they were out in front of the issues and assuring fans that they were going above-and-beyond here, instead of clamming up on social media for a few days while Lillard took all of the brunt of the PR fallout.
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