5 NBA Coaches Already on the Hot Seat
The NBA's annual furniture sale could soon be in full swing. Less than a month into the 2015-16 season, seats around the Association are already heating up and, in some cases, singeing the behinds of head coaches.
Slow starts in Sacramento, Los Angeles and Memphis, among other places, have sparked speculation about potential changes in leadership to come, especially with some accomplished coaches (i.e. Tom Thibodeau, Scott Brooks) currently watching the league from the comfort of their couches.
And this isn't just coming from frustrated fans attempting to broadcast their displeasure 140 characters at a time. ESPN.com's Marc Stein had some rumblings to report last week. So did USA Today's Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt.
It's possible this bluster will blow over in time and that coaches everywhere will be able to breathe easy, but who am I kidding?! This is the NBA, a league whose coaching carousel has been known to spin out of control.
There may not be any imminent sackings on the horizon, but these five sideline-minders would do well to update their resumes when they have a spare moment to do so.
George Karl, Sacramento Kings
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Dysfunction? With the Sacramento Kings?? Nooo...
George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins are reportedly at odds again already. According to the Big Lead's Jason McIntyre, Cousins cursed out his head coach in front of the rest of the team following Sacramento's 18-point loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 9.
You didn't need to be Miss Cleo to see that clash coming, especially in the wake of a 1-7 start. The partnership between player and coach has been shaky from the jump. According to USA Today's Sam Amick, there were folks in Boogie's camp who had history with Karl and didn't want the Kings to hire him in the first place.
Since then, things have deteriorated between Karl and his gifted pupil, as NBA.com's David Aldridge recalled:
"Cousins doesn't trust Karl; Karl didn't think Cousins was in good shape last season, and said so, and pushed for the Kings to trade Cousins during the summer.
To paraphrase the great Keith Jackson, they just plain don't like each other.
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But Boogie, though powerful in California's capital, has yet to spin his vitriol into anti-Karl action. Per Bleacher Report's Ric Bucher, "Sources both inside and outside of the organization say Cousins has enough authority that if he truly wanted Karl gone, he would be already."
Others within the organization might not be so inclined to kick Karl to the curb just yet. For one, Sacramento is on a three-game winning streak, courtesy of Cousins' incredible play. The team probably wouldn't have dug such an early hole had its superstar center not succumbed to an early Achilles strain.
Secondly, Karl's only been on the job since February and is owed nearly $11 million on his contract. Even for a billionaire like Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, shelling out that kind of cash to yet another coach to stay away doesn't seem like a sound business decision.
And, perhaps most importantly, the front office has Karl's back—for now. General manager Vlade Divac insisted to the Sacramento Bee's Ailene Voisin that, contrary to reports, he didn't ask his players if he should fire Karl and he supports the future Hall of Famer.
"George’s job is not in jeopardy," Divac said. "Absolutely not. Nothing has changed. I believe in him. I believe he is good for us. Yes, we struggle, but you can see the way we played tonight, we have the talent, and we will turn this around."
And if they don't? Then Karl could really be in a bind.
Dave Joerger, Memphis Grizzlies
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For the Memphis Grizzlies, with three straight 50-win seasons and five consecutive postseason appearances in their back pockets, any extended slowdown in performance is bound to bring any underlying turmoil to the surface.
As it happens, the Grizzlies' sluggish start (i.e. five double-digit losses, bottom-five ranks in both offensive and defensive efficiency, per NBA.com) has inspired a fresh round of speculation involving head coach Dave Joerger and team owner Robert Pera. ESPN.com's Marc Stein recently recapped the unsteady history between the two:
"The biggest source of vulnerability for Joerger, of course, is the fact that Pera has internally questioned Joerger's leadership in the past and nearly fired him once before, only to patch things up in a stunning about-face in May 2014 when Joerger, deep in talks with the Minnesota Timberwolves, got a new three-year contract. Another potential complication: Pera is known to be a huge fan of Tom Thibodeau, has pursued him before and could be moved to make a run at Thibs before someone else does.
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An old-school coach like Thibodeau would be nothing new for Memphis. Two-and-a-half years ago, the Grizzlies ground their way to the Western Conference Finals under Lionel Hollins, a hard-headed traditionalist in his own right.
Of course, Hollins' on-court successes couldn't spare him the ax from Memphis' new-age regime. Apparently, Joerger's philosophical grounding in modern basketball won't save him either if he doesn't have a deep postseason run to show for it.
Lionel Hollins, Brooklyn Nets
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Speaking of Lionel Hollins, he's not exactly standing on solid ground with the Brooklyn Nets either. Then again, what coach would be in the wake of a 1-9 start?
So far, the Nets aren't blaming their bungling beginning on their coach. General manager Billy King, for one, seems to understand that responsibility for Brooklyn's struggles to date—and those sure to come—doesn't rest solely on Hollins' shoulders.
"We’re in this together," said Nets general manager Billy King, per the New York Post's Tim Bontemps. "This is not on one person. We’ve got to figure it out amongst ourselves—players, coaches, management—and dig ourselves out of this hole."
King, of course, was largely responsible for that hole's existence in the first place. With the blessing of billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov, he traded for Joe Johnson, Deron Williams, Gerald Wallace, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, among others. All but Johnson have moved on, leaving Brooklyn' chest of draft picks bare until 2019.
As such, a bleak future awaits the Nets, as if the present is any more pleasant. King may not be inclined to fire the man he hired on as coach in the summer of 2014—to a four-year deal, no less. And, as USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt recently posited on an episode of the NBA A to Z podcast, the Nets' extension talks with King from earlier this year suggest they may not be inclined to fire him either.
But there's been no word since then of King coming to an agreement with the team. If Brooklyn settles in at the bottom of the barrel, King could still get the boot.
And if he goes, Hollins figures to follow at some point.
Byron Scott, Los Angeles Lakers
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Remember when the Los Angeles Lakers hired Byron Scott to be their head coach in July 2014? Remember how long it took the team to pull the trigger, when it was clear weeks (if not months) before then that Scott would be the choice?
They wouldn't have gone through all that trouble then just to fire him now, less than halfway through his contract...would they?
In the big picture, probably not. Scott inherited a mess of a squad last season and saw his already-limited roster crippled by injuries literally from the first game of 2014-15 onward.
The Lakers did well to bring in some veterans (Roy Hibbert, Lou Williams, Brandon Bass, Metta World Peace) this past summer. But with the team so focused on developing youngsters like Julius Randle, D'Angelo Russell and Jordan Clarkson into long-term cornerstones, in between Kobe Bryant's fits and starts on the floor, the current campaign was bound to be another tough one for Scott.
That reality—along with Scott's close ties to Bryant, the organization and the city of Los Angeles as a whole—hasn't done much to insulate him from the scorn abounding in Lakerland in the wake of a 2-8 start.
"I know a lot of people aren't happy with our record and where we are," Scott said, per the Los Angeles Times' Mike Bresnahan. "But I'm happy with the progress that we're making, especially at that [defensive] end of the floor. That was the main objective coming into this season, to form an identity on that defensive end and let everything else kind of take care of itself."
Patience was always going to be pivotal for the Lakers in their attempt to navigate the choppy waters around the Black Mamba's eventual retirement. But Scott may not have much of that to bank on in the midst of a third straight trip to the lottery, in the wake of the worst season in franchise history and with his own credibility further undercut by his calamitous tenure in Cleveland.
Sam Mitchell, Minnesota Timberwolves
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All things considered, Sam Mitchell has done a solid job with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their defense (once a top-five outfit) and their record (once 4-2) have both suffered significantly since Ricky Rubio went down with a sore knee.
On the whole, though, Mitchell has had his squad, replete with precocious youngsters and veteran mentors, competing on both ends at a level that must have the late Flip Saunders smiling in the hereafter.
Yet, the "interim" tag remains attached to Mitchell's title as head coach. He returned to Minnesota last season to assist Saunders and was thrust into the top job during the offseason as the franchise's all-time leader in wins sadly died of Hodgkin lymphoma.
Mitchell may well earn the full-time gig if the team responds well to his leadership over the course of an 82-game campaign. At the very least, he'll get to prove himself before any further decisions are made next summer, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Patrick Reusse suggested:
"The interim title also can be taken as a reflection of Mitchell’s current job status," Reusse wrote. "He’s good for this season, but what happens after that is anyone’s guess, including (presumably) owner Glen Taylor."
Ultimately, any decision about Mitchell's future in Minnesota will come down to much more than just his past performance. As Bill Simmons suggested on a recent podcast, the Wolves will need to nail their next coaching hire, since whomever it is will be charged with transforming Rubio, Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, Zach LaVine and Company from a collection of gifted prospects into a terrifying team out West.
Mitchell might be the one, but if the Wolves find a more appealing choice elsewhere, the incumbent could be gone after a single go-round.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
