Micah Nori after his first Blazers win: ‘Was that ovation for you or me?’ and the ‘best cold shower’ of his life

Micah Nori was asked if a 41-point win was about as close to perfect as a coaching debut gets, and he started with a joke. “No, it’s exactly what we thought we were gonna do, was come out and go on a 20-0 run to start the season,” he said after the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns 124-83 on Wednesday night at Moda Center. Then he got serious. “Great effort by the guys, one of 82, and it was a very good start for sure.”

It was Nori’s first regular-season game and first win as Portland’s head coach. The Blazers scored the first 21 points, led 43-12 after one quarter and never let Phoenix back in. In the locker room afterward, his players soaked him with water bottles, and he kept his message short. “Everybody in there contributed,” he told them. “Hell of a job, fellas.” Later, he told reporters, “It was the best cold shower I’ve gotten.”

What a first win for Coach Nori 🥹 pic.twitter.com/KD7CUVqZQC

— Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) October 22, 2026

‘Treating it like it’s zero to zero’

Nori said the plan was built on two things the team had talked about all week: physicality and protecting the ball in what he called “a possession game.” He thought Portland allowed maybe one offensive rebound and had no turnovers in the first quarter. The second quarter bothered him more. Portland won it only 29-27, and he said the Blazers gave up 15 points off second chances and turnovers. So the halftime message was to treat the second half “like it’s zero to zero.”

He liked how the starting five set the tone with what he called “our line of scrimmage,” being physical up the floor against Devin Booker and Jalen Green, even when Portland played small. He singled out Robert Williams III. “Rob’s physicality was great,” Nori said. When Toumani Camara picked up two fouls, “we were able to get Sidy in and kind of still hold water,” he said, meaning Sidy Cissoko.

Lillard off the ball, and an ovation ‘for you or me’

Damian Lillard scored a game-high 25 points in 24 minutes in his first game since his Achilles tear. Nori said the key is that Lillard no longer has to bring the ball up and run pick-and-roll every trip, with Ja Morant and Deni Avdija there to handle it. He said that was true for Avdija as well, who “had to carry a lot” last season when injuries hit. Now Portland can move both of them off the ball and attack closeouts. “Anytime you give Dame any bit of air space, he’s gonna knock one down,” Nori said. He also called Lillard “a really good screener,” which forces defenses into a choice on switches.

Asked if he got emotional at the crowd’s reaction to Lillard, Nori said he did, and then he told a story on himself. “I asked him, I said, was that ovation for you or me?” he said. “We all knew who it was for, but I mean, how can you not get emotional?” He said he did not know Lillard was going to speak to the whole crowd before the game.

On Morant, who was playing his first game for Portland, Nori said the sample was “very, very small” but that Morant is “competing at the highest level now because he knows that he’s on a team that has a chance to win some basketball games.” He was careful to add, “I’m not saying that he didn’t compete in Memphis, but I know that he was hurt.” He praised Morant’s defense and his passing, including late lobs to Williams.

Nori also made a case for Camara as a shooter. Since Labor Day, he said, Camara has hit about 52 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes in the team’s practice facility. “I don’t think it’s an aberration,” he said. With Lillard pulling defenders away, he expects Camara, Cissoko and others to get “nice, open looks.” He said Scoot Henderson’s 1-for-5 first half came on good looks, too.

Mom and dad in the building

Nori’s parents were in the arena. He said his 84-year-old father and 82-year-old mother flew from Middletown, Ohio, with a connection through Phoenix, “which my mom should never be a travel agent.” His wife, Melissa, was there too. “My dad coached me from the time I was three, four foot high,” he said. “It’s a full circle.” His daughter, a freshman at South Carolina, had classes on Thursday, and he said the rest of the family was watching from home.

He said the night went past anything he had pictured. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we were gonna have the start we did, and play as well as we did, and win by as many as we did,” he said. “If you could bottle this and carry this forward for 82, then I think that would be any coach’s dream.”

He did not let it last long. “There’s a big one in Sac that we got in two days,” he said, “which is the great thing about the NBA. They just keep coming at you.” Portland plays at the Sacramento Kings on Friday at 10 p.m. ET, which is 5 a.m. Saturday in Cairo.