NBA Coach Firings Reveal the Hypocrisy of Team Politics
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Eddie Jordan. Sam Mitchell. PJ Carlisimo. Randy Whitman. Maurice Cheeks. And on Tuesday, Sacramento Kings coach Reggie Theus joined the ranks of NBA coaches who have lost their jobs this season.
In pro sports, the job of a coach is almost always under scrutiny but the fact that six coaches have lost their jobs before Christmas is close to unprecedented in the modern NBA.
It is especially glaring considering the fact that four of the six fired were African American, one of whom, the Toronto Raptors’ Sam Mitchell, was the NBA Coach of the Year just two seasons ago.
The head coach has become a scapegoat for the mistakes made by management. Philadelphia signed would-be star Andre Igoudala to a ridiculously long-term contract after eight months of quality production, then signed oft-injured free agent power forward Elton Brand. Both moves were made by general manager Ed Stefanski.
But when the team failed to live up to early expectations, in what has become something of a trend in the league, coach Maurice Cheeks was the first to feel the heat. The conventional wisdom is that the coach is the easiest to go, it costs too much time and money to try and revamp a roster; and the owner doesn’t want to shake up upper level management.
But when ownership can’t show a little patience and loyalty to a coach and his staff, it can neutralize a coach’s ability to run his ball club. If players know that the coach is easier to replace than they are, they are less likely to adhere to authority of the coach.
Case in point: former Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson. Like Mitchell, Johnson was a former Coach of the Year. The former point guard had led his team to the NBA Finals in 2006 and to the best record in the league in 2007 but when team owner Mark Cuban made the executive decision to trade up-and-coming point guard Devin Harris (a Johnson favorite) for 35-year-old superstar point guard Jason Kidd, it signaled that Cuban had lost faith in Johnson’s approach.
Soon, the team was struggling to adjust and Johnson was struggling to communicate with Kidd. Young forward Josh Howard’s behavior during the playoffs showed disrespect for Johnson’s authority. He threw himself a lavish birthday party the night before an important playoff game and the media ran rampant with stories that Johnson had lost control of his locker room. Within a month, he was jobless.
The NBA has had a stronger track record than most sports when it comes to hiring minority coaches but hiring coaches means little if they’re never given the chance to generate a turnaround. With so many coaches fired so early in the season, it seems unrealistic to think that they’ve had much of a chance to have an affect on their teams. But the bottom line is that so long as coaches are forced to suffer the repercussions of general managers’ and owners’ mistakes, the coaching carousel will continue to spin. – todd williams
