Hardwood Knocks, Episode 115 — From Doc and Kidd, to Donovan and Clifford: Hot-Seat Meter for NBA Coaches
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Seventeen NBA teams. Seventeen bad, to weird, to uncertain starts.
Seventeen head coaches.
Sixty minutes.
An unknown number of jobs in jeopardy.
In the latest episode of Hardwood Knocks, Andy and Dan look at all 15 teams with records of .500 or worse, add in the Portland Trail Blazers and New Orleans Pelicans, and decide whether their head coaches should be worried about being canned before season’s end.
A vast majority of these sideline-stalkers have nothing to worry about. The Los Angeles Lakers’ Luke Walton and Memphis Grizzlies’ David Fizdale are too new to their posts. They aren’t getting the ax. Other clipboard-carriers have basically earned the right to keep their jobs as long as they want—such as Rick Carlisle of the Dallas Mavericks and Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat. A select few are simply coaching terrible teams that were supposed to be terrible (Sup, Dave Joerger?).
But these disclaimers don’t apply to everyone. Nor do they necessarily inoculate each person they affect.
Will Fred Hoiberg last the year with the Chicago Bulls merely because they’re as bad as advertised? Will the Utah Jazz resist reevaluating Quin Snyder’s status because they lost players over the offseason and are slogging through injuries now?
And then we have the clear-cut cases—coaches indubitably on the hot seat: Doc Rivers with the Los Angeles Clippers, Steve Clifford with the Charlotte Hornets, Alvin Gentry with the New Orleans Pelicans, even Jason Kidd with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Will they all last the year?