Word: theus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lately, a staggering number of them are disappearing. So far this season, which is barely a quarter of the way over, six NBA head coaches, or 20% of the total, have already been fired; the latest victim, Sacramento's Reggie Theus, just got the news on Monday. That's a new record for axings before Christmas. The other casualties include Sam Mitchell, the 2006-07 NBA Coach of the Year for the Toronto Raptors, fired by the club on Dec. 3; Maurice Cheeks, the beloved ex-champion point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, canned by the Sixers last weekend despite...
...That may all be true. But for every Lawrence Frank - whose New Jersey Nets reeled off 13 straight wins after he replaced a deposed Byron Scott in 2004 - there are many more instances where early-season firings fail to change a team's fortunes. Excluding Sacramento, which just fired Theus on Monday, the winning percentage of the five teams before their coaching dismissals was .277 (23-60). Since the firings, those five teams have gone a combined 7-28, a .200 winning percentage...
...root, this year's coaching turnover is an indictment of poor management decisions and unrealistic expectations. If these owners didn't make bad hires in the first place, there'd be no fans daring them to clean house. Sacramento hired the former NBA player Theus, for example, before the 2007-08 season based on just his two strong years of college coaching at New Mexico State - not exactly an NCAA powerhouse. Carlesimo, once a successful college coach at Seton Hall University, had never meshed with pro players: in the 1990s, he failed in both Portland and Golden State, where...