Terry Stotts, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, agreed to resign, the team announced on Friday.

"I have the utmost respect for Terry and what he has accomplished these past nine seasons. This was a difficult decision on both a personal and professional level but it's in the best interest of the franchise to move in another direction," said Trail Blazers' president of basketball operations Neil Olshey in a statement.

Stotts took over the team in 2012. Before that, he was the assistant coach under Rick Carlisle in the Dallas Mavericks and won the NBA Championship in 2011. The Trail Blazers only missed the postseason once under Stotts in his first season. After that, they made the playoffs for eight straight years, the longest in today's NBA. Stotts' 402-318 coaching record is also the second-longest in franchise history.

However, the team still fired him with almost no hesitation after the Trail Blazers were eliminated by the Denver Nuggets 4-2 in the first-round playoffs. In fact, Stotts would have been sacked years ago if it weren't for the backing of the team's ace Damian Lillard.

What created more food for thought was the posts by Lillard on Instagram after Game 6: "How long should I stay dedicated? How long til opportunity meet preparation." He also tagged Olshey.

When asked who he preferred to coach the Trail Blazers, Lillard told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports on Friday: "Jason Kidd is the guy I want." Kidd is currently working as assistant under Frank Vogel in the Los Angeles Lakers, which just lost the series to the Phoenix Suns 4-2 on Thursday.

Back to Stotts, the main reason of him losing the job is Portland's underperformance in the post season. Despite the eight-playoff-qualification streak, they were knocked out in the first-round five times. In 2018, they were swept by the West's No. 6 New Orleans Pelicans 4-0 in the first round.

Some of Portland's problems come from Stotts. For example, they averaged 21.4 assists per game, the fewest in the league. They are also one of the least aggressive teams on defense with only 6.9 steals per game (No. 25). As a result, Portland only scored 11.6 points on average via fast break, which rank No. 19 of all teams.

All of the above make the team's offense very predictable and dangerously reliable on Lillard. That partly explained why the team lost Game 5 against the Nuggets when Lillard drained playoff record 12 triples to get 55 points and 10 assists.

Nonetheless, Stotts should not be held responsible for all of the Trail Blazers' problems. The team's front office has never found the best help for Lillard. C.J. McCollum makes one of the worst perimeter defensive pair in the league with Lillard; adding Norman Powell and Carmelo Anthony solved the team's scoring problem in the wing position at the cost of sacrificing defense. Jusuf Nurkic has become more of an offensive liability and he does not even have a qualified substitute.

Lillard joined the Trail Blazers in the same year with Stotts and he has been nothing but loyal to Rip City. Many of the Lakers' fans commented under his Instagram post, trying to recruit him for the purple and gold, which need to find successor for 36-year-old LeBron James.