I hope you can forgive my language, but the NBA is really starting to piss me off. If it weren’t for the fact that I am a fan of a team in the league, I would not watch it. We’re used to the players being a bunch of prima donna babies, but you would think the people in charge would actually have some brains. Sorry to disappoint you, but they just proved they do not. I’m warning you now that this one may be a long and bumpy ride.
What Happened?
Well, how much time you got? There is no other league that will blame failure and shortcomings on a coach more than the NBA. In a matter of weeks, three head coaches have been fired. Darvin Ham from the Lakers, Frank Vogel from the Suns, and most recently J.B Bickerstaff from the Cavaliers. The Lakers got knocked out of round one this year but made it to the west finals last year. The Suns were swept in round one this year but made it to round two last year. The Cavs are the only team here that improved from losing in round one the year before to making it to round two, only to lose against the Celtics this time.
A team that won the in season tournament went downhill from there. They haven’t made any real effort to add more talent, but might draft LeBron’s kid just because. Oh yeah, totally Darvin Ham’s fault. So he got fired two years in.
A team that has totally gone backwards since losing to the Bucks in the finals will be on their third coach in three years. A group that spent so much energy and resources on pairing Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal with Devin Booker forgot to build a bench. They blamed Monty Williams and got him fired the season after winning coach of the year, only to bring Frank Vogel who was scapegoated by the Lakers and now just got scapegoated by Phoenix. Makes perfect sense. Oh by the way, the team signed Vogel to a five year contract worth 31 million, and he will now get paid not to coach the team. On top of this, his replacement is Mike Budenholzer who two years after winning a title got scapegoated and fired by the Bucks. Do you have a headache yet? I sure do, and it’s about to get worse.
And now, the Cavs have the AUDACITY to fire a coach who was finally starting to make forward progress with a young talented core. And, before this coach was hired, the team had a mutiny against the coach before him forcing a midseason retirement. What the actual (insert bleep here) is happening!?
Well, I’ll tell you what is happening. Coaches are getting blamed for players not stepping up, injuries, and poor roster construction. You can’t expect them to make chicken salad with chicken poop. The Lakers and Suns are going backwards because of decisions the front office made. Did the Suns learn nothing from what happened in Brooklyn? The big three of Larry Moe and Curly, sorry I mean Kyrie Harden and Durant, barely were all on the floor at the same time. The dynamics just didn’t work. So instead of shying away from this failed model, the Suns put Ed Edd and Eddy, better known as Durant Booker and Beal together thinking there is no way this will happen to them. Surprise! Can somebody queue up one of those Perry Mason moments where it hits the dummy criminal that they messed up?
Back to the Lakers for a second, who somehow managed to get older, slower, and less talented since winning the title in 2020. I do not understand how general manager Rob Pelinka still has a job right now. He destroyed a promising team with a promising future. Now the Cavs have just made the dumbest mistake in recent franchise history in letting go of J.B Bickerstaff who just looked like he was starting to figure it out. Growing pains are going to happen against a young playoff team going up against the best team in basketball. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do.
Nothing New
All of the teams mentioned here except for the Celtics have made stupid decisions with coaches as of late. The Nets fired Steve Nash as coach because Durant stomped his feet and had a tempter tantrum like a toddler. The Bucks have had three coaches in three years. They fired Budenholzer to hire Adrian Griffin, who got fired mid season in his first stint as a head coach as the second best team by record in the east. They replaced him with Doc Rivers who had signed a contract with ESPN and somehow got worse when he showed up, which was capped by a second straight season of getting upset in the first round by a lower seed in five games. I’m not done with Cleveland yet either. Before losing the last two coaches they had, they let go of Ty Lue two years after they won a title because “King James” decided to make it all about him again and quit on another team. Honestly, this is disgusting.
Continuity brings continued and sustained success and these teams have not had any semblance of that. They have nobody to blame but themselves. There is a difference between making a change because you have to and making a change just for heck of it. The NBA has gotten away with this for years. Front offices are so lost on what needs to be done because they keep trying to one up another team’s mistake to show they can do it better. Instead, they are continually setting themselves back. If these front offices need a reminder of how a team operation is supposed to run, you can always tune into reruns of Night Court.