Which NBA Head Coaches Should Have the Hottest Seats in 2024-25?
One of the hallmarks of this era of NBA basketball is movement, and that extends beyond what's happening on the court.
Players are switching teams at an often alarming rate. And coaching turnover feels like it's happening about as rapidly as ever.
One bad (or even mediocre) campaign can almost instantly crank up the heat on a coach's seat. Immediate (and then consistent) success is often the expectation, regardless of how realistic that is.
In that sense, seemingly everyone (except perhaps Gregg Popovich and Erik Spoelstra) could find himself on that proverbial hot seat, but that's not the perspective we're coming from today.
Instead, Bleacher Report's NBA staff will examine some coaches who should be feeling some pressure this season.
Whether they've already had too much time to turn things around, have allowed their teams to grow stale or should have their rosters closer to contention, these are the head coaches who should be feeling a little warmer on the bench in 2023-24.
Taylor Jenkins, Memphis Grizzlies
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Taylor Jenkins isn't far removed from the days when he was among the NBA's most promising up-and-coming head coaches. He finished second in Coach of the Year voting after the 2021-22 season, sandwiching that honor between a pair of 50-win campaigns.
Nothing changes faster than sentiment toward coaches, though, and we've seen much more decorated ones than Jenkins fall out of favor with head-spinning quickness. The two most recent COY winners, Mark Daigneault and Mike Brown, are still employed by their current teams, but only one of the preceding six can say the same. Monty Williams has been fired twice since beating out Jenkins for the award in 2022.
In other words: Jenkins' track record insulates him from nothing, particularly with Memphis' recent shakiness.
Grizzlies star point guard Ja Morant got suspended last year for a litany of off-court issues. While it's unfair to chalk those up to a failure of organizational leadership, Jenkins is bound to catch blame for some of it. A 27-win season in 2023-24 won't help his cause either, even if that monumental slide owed as much to injuries as anything else.
Memphis enters the upcoming season with renewed expectations. Healthy again and hopefully featuring a reformed and motivated Morant, the Grizz look capable of competing for a top-four spot in the West. A slow start could increase the temperature on Jenkins' seat, which might already be warm enough as it is.
The Athletic's John Hollinger, a former Grizzlies exec, noted in May that "Memphis also fired the majority of [Jenkins'] assistant coaches just before the combine; that's always a tell the head coach isn't a great spot."
Jenkins' job security is a topic before the 2024-25 Grizzlies have even played a game.
—Grant Hughes
Billy Donovan, Chicago Bulls
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Billy Donovan is a good NBA head coach, as evidenced by his 60.8 percent win percentage in five years with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
While he's done an admirable job keeping a subpar Chicago Bulls roster hovering around or above .500, this new-look team is far different than the one he was originally hired to lead.
DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso are gone. The team is trying to trade Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević. Josh Giddey, Coby White and Patrick Williams could eventually become something, but they aren't enough to lead this team back to the playoffs right now.
This simply isn't a good fit between coach and team anymore, especially since Chicago should want to be bad. In what projects to be a loaded 2025 NBA draft, the Bulls only get to keep their first-round pick if it falls within the top 10. It will otherwise go to the San Antonio Spurs as part of the 2021 DeRozan sign-and-trade.
Donovan and Chicago aren't going to last long. Whether it's a firing or a mutual split, expect the Bulls to look for a younger head coach who specializes in player development and for Donovan to explore opportunities with a win-now organization.
—Greg Swartz
Willie Green, New Orleans Pelicans
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Urgency is starting to mount for the New Orleans Pelicans as Willie Green enters his fourth season as head coach.
For so long, the team played to its caveats, most of them relating to health. Though the Pelicans have made some fairly aggressive moves (CJ McCollum), they predominantly banked on their core needing time rather than a shakeup.
Not anymore.
New Orleans flipped two first-round picks, Dyson Daniels and Larry Nance Jr. for Dejounte Murray this offseason. It is currently trying to figure out what's next for Brandon Ingram. And if what's next for Ingram is an extension, they'll have to explore other avenues of adding a center—and planning around the next contract for Trey Murphy III.
Overarching uncertainty increases the pressure Green will face in 2024-25. He has won more than 51 percent of his games in New Orleans and oversaw two playoff appearances despite plenty of bad injury luck, much of it impacting Zion Williamson. But even the most valid excuses shield him only so much.
While the Pelicans are not out of other cards to play, they have reached the point at which any underachieving or harbingers of unrest are easier to address by changing the head coach rather than the roster.
—Dan Favale
Chauncey Billups, Portland Trail Blazers
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When the Portland Trail Blazers parted ways with assistant coach Rodney Billups—brother to head coach Chauncey Billups—many around the league expected the Blazers to make an offseason coaching change. But that didn't happen. Portland is set to start the season with Billups on the bench.
Billups was hired in 2021 to coach Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. However, the Blazers sent McCollum to the New Orleans Pelicans before the trade deadline in February 2022, and then they traded Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks last fall.
The reset may have been needed, but it's different from what Billups signed up for.
As of now, Billups is headed into his final season (Portland has an option for 2025-26). But it may be time to part ways. Maybe that should have happened before the offseason, when teams like the Phoenix Suns had open coaching positions.
This isn't a referendum on Billups as a coach. It's just an unfortunate situation for the former NBA champion, who's now tasked with guiding a young team through a lengthy rebuild.
—Eric Pincus
Quin Snyder, Atlanta Hawks
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Mediocrity has seemingly been the calling card of the Atlanta Hawks for a few years now. In each of the three seasons before 2023-24, they won between 41 and 43 games.
Of course, one of those campaigns was a COVID-shortened one that ended with a conference finals appearance, but that team just got hot at the right moment. For the most part, Atlanta has felt about as close to the middle of the road as an NBA team can be.
And while it's still early in his tenure there (he took over midway through 2022-23), Quin Snyder has done little to change that. In fact, going 36-46 in 2023-24 gave the Hawks their worst winning percentage since 2019-20.
Of course, Trae Young and Dejounte Murray weren't a great fit. But for a coach who's been known for his offensive creativity, the inability to make that duo work could be as much of a concern as it is an excuse.
Now that those two are split up, the Hawks should at least have a high-octane attack with Young and several intriguing, developing wings like Jalen Johnson and Zaccharie Risacher.
If, on the other hand, Atlanta remains around or below the middle of the league, the front office might start to wonder if someone else could maximize this roster.
—Andy Bailey
Doc Rivers, Milwaukee Bucks
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As he readily relayed, Doc Rivers walked into a tricky situation last season. Hired in late January, he had to fashion the Milwaukee Bucks into title contenders on the fly, all while navigating around injuries to Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton.
Even if graded on a curve, though, it's hard to assess Rivers' first half-season in the Gopher State as anything other than a failure. Milwaukee was 32-14 when he arrived and went just 19-23 after, including a first-round loss to the sixth-seeded Indiana Pacers.
That dismal showing should increase the scrutiny on Rivers, who no longer has the built-in excuse of taking over midway through a campaign. He'll have a full offseason, training camp and regular season to return the Bucks (champions in 2021) to juggernaut status.
Due to the collective age of this roster, this franchise faces as much urgency as anyone. Rivers will have no margin for error. He either needs to pave a path back to the top of the Eastern Conference, or Milwaukee will have to replace him with someone who can.
The Bucks have to get this right. They made an all-in wager on Damian Lillard being their missing piece—effectively hand-delivering Jrue Holiday to the Boston Celtics in the process—and they seemingly don't have a backup plan. If this can't work now, what would convince Antetokounmpo things will be any better moving forward?
Milwaukee must start fast and maintain momentum throughout the 82-game marathon. Even the slightest sign of slippage could cause this front office to rethink its commitment to Rivers.
—Zach Buckley
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