Colorado assistant coach Rodney Billups positions some players during practice in the Coors Events Center on Friday, Feb. 21, 2014 in Boulder, Colo. Billups has coached at Colorado for five years. (Kai Casey/CU Independent)
It’s no secret that former Buff and NBA great Chauncey Billups had a big impact on Colorado basketball back in the ’90s, but not many people know that his younger brother, Rodney, is making an even bigger impact with the men’s basketball program today.
Over the past 20 years, Chauncey has become a common household name for Colorado and NBA fans alike. It all started in 1995, when he began his collegiate career at the University of Colorado at Boulder. During his freshman season as a Buff, he averaged 17.9 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game and 5.5 assists per game. In his second and last year with the program, he improved those numbers to 19.1, 4.9 and 4.8, respectively, and carried Colorado to its first NCAA tournament appearance in over two decades.
Throughout his 17-year professional career, Chauncey moved around in the league nine times to seven different teams. In 2004, he carried the Detroit Pistons to a national title by leading the pack with an average of 21 points and 5.2 assists in the five-game NBA Finals series alone. The performance earned him the MVP title for that series.
When CUIndependent.com asked his younger brother, current CU basketball assistant coach Rodney Billups, about his thoughts on Chauncey’s career, he had nothing but praise.
“He’s battled so much adversity, and he’s got through every obstacle that he’s ever been faced with,” he said. “I think he deserves some type of credit for that, because a lot of people, including the team and the coach that he was drafted by, they gave up on him. And he just stuck with it and persevered, and he’s an MVP guy.”
The MVP moniker, Rodney added, is not something that can be easily achieved at the professional level.
“He’s a champion, and he’s an [NBA] Finals MVP,” Rodney said. “MVP means so much in our game.”
After Chauncey’s illustrious career, there’s no doubt in Rodney’s mind that he deserves a spot in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
“No question,” Rodney said. “Every team he’s been on — and you can go through his history — every team that he’s been on, he’s always been a winner. He’s never been a loser, and that speaks volumes in our game, because our game is based on results.”
While Chauncey’s brief impact on Buffs basketball is undeniable, it’s nothing compared to what Rodney, his younger brother by seven years, has done for the program behind the scenes over the past four years.
When the University of Colorado hired head coach Tad Boyle five years ago, Boyle hired Rodney to become an integral part of his staff. It was something that Rodney, a Denver native, had been dreaming about his entire life.
“I think [Colorado] is the biggest and most successful program in the state,” he said. “I wanted to be a Buff as a student athlete, but I wasn’t as fortunate. Being a part of this is something that I always wanted to do. Being a director of [operations] or being a coach, I knew I always wanted to be a Buff. And it means a lot.”
But Rodney didn’t start out as assistant coach, despite his best wishes. Instead, he used his talents as director of basketball operations for the men’s team.
“Director of basketball [operations], for me, was a little bit different because I wanted to coach,” Rodney said. “I took the job knowing that I wanted to coach, and Coach Boyle hired me knowing that I wanted to coach.”
During this two-year “probation period,” as Rodney described it, he focused on the business side of things. He planned travel, acted as the compliance liaison and the academic liaison and made sure everything in the office was running smoothly.
Even though the work load was often significant, Rodney didn’t mind it one bit. He saw it as great learning experience.
“It was a lot of work, but that’s how I wanted it to be,” he said. “For me, if I’m ever a head coach, I want to know exactly what everyone has to do so I can actually coach them.”
His hard work and dedication paid off. Prior to the 2012-13 season, Boyle promoted Rodney to the long-coveted assistant coaching position. And when he did, Rodney’s range of duties changed slightly, but the amount of work didn’t.
“Everything changed,” Rodney said. “It was like night and day. It wasn’t filling out paperwork all day and just watching practice; it was being engaged with the guys. I got immediate respect from the guys and the community. It’s been great so far. I think [my duties] pretty much stayed the same, other than the compliance paperwork or the academic paperwork. It was some other stuff like recruiting, so I dropped a couple to gain a couple.”
As a recruiter, Rodney explained the difficulty of finding the perfect player when the team only has one available scholarship for the upcoming season. They generally start out with a list of about 60 aspiring college hoops players, which makes the narrowing-down process that much more arduous.
“[Recruiting] is different every year,” he said. “For 2015 we only have one scholarship, so for us to find that perfect guy, it’s a little harder. We only get seven evals a year per kid, so we have to make sure that our evaluation is thorough and when we bring it back to coach [Boyle], don’t waste his time. So we’ll go out and we’ll watch these kids, and after July we’ll reconvene and we’ll talk and we’ll see what exactly our team needs, and then we’ll go from there. In the fall, it’s really specific to each position, each player, and depending on what we need, we’ll go get that guy.”
For now, Rodney is trying to focus on being the guy that the players feel comfortable going to for anything they need.
“I won’t say father figure,” he said. “I’m only 31, so I’m probably still a little too young to be a father for these guys. I try to be the older brother, though. Being that I speak the language [of basketball] and I’m not too far removed from playing, I like to be that guy they can rely on, that’s always going to be there for them.”
The relationships, he explained, are what he values most as assistant coach.
“[My favorite part of being a coach] is probably being out on the court, the camaraderie with the guys, the respect and the dialogue that we have,” Rodney said. “Alongside being with the coaching staff every day, drawing ideas from each other and playing with it and making sure it molds our team. I think that’s the best part of me being a coach.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Alissa Noe at Alissa.noe@colorado.edu.
