NBA's speedy coaching carousel slows to a crawl

Chicago's former coach Scott Skiles has the dubious, and rare, honor of being the only coach fired in the NBA this season. Bob Rosato/SI

MAILBAG Submit a comment or question for Steve. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Rare is the NBA season in which there are more legitimate Coach of the Year candidates than there are fired head coaches.

Rarer still is when the ratio is five-, six- or seven-to-one, as it is this season.

This, however, isn't an in-depth look at the leading candidates to win the 2007-08 Red Auerbach trophy (Superficial look? We like Rick Adelman, Byron Scott and Doc Rivers in that order). Instead, this is a head-scratching, chin-rubbing reminder that we're just two weeks away from the end of the NBA schedule and only one head coach has been cut loose in-season.

So far, we have had the Chicago Bulls dumping Scott Skiles as their traditional Christmas lump o' coaching coal. That's it. No one else in more than three months, an eternity by coaching job security standards.

So the question now is: What gives? It would be nice to think that the NBA somehow is evolving into a more advanced life form, less dependent on brutal, abrupt and often cosmetic changes on its sidelines, and suddenly more patient, more mature and more sober in letting an obviously select group of qualified experts do their jobs from beginning (training camp) to end (draft night).

It would be nice to think that my dog is going to start dropping golden eggs in the backyard, too.

"I hope. That would be great," said one Western Conference coach who hasn't been fired lately but, like most, has been fired at least once.

(By the way, that is the biggest subset of NBA head coaches; of the 30 men currently holding down jobs, 16 of them have been fired from similar positions elsewhere. Eleven more are working in their first NBA head coaching gigs, which leaves just three -- Phil Jackson, Pat Riley and Nate McMillan -- who have moved from one team to another without some boss insisting.)

The stability seen this season is a departure from the past two, when five men got symbolically escorted to the gym door, their whistles, DVDs and motivational books proverbially cardboard-boxed up. Memphis' Mike Fratello (30 games in), Minnesota's Dwane Casey (40 games) and Milwaukee's Terry Stotts (54 games) all got canned with the '06-07 season in progress. The year before, Seattle dumped Bob Weiss after 30 games while Miami's Stan Van Gundy "stepped down" (yeah, right) just after the Heat's middling 11-10 start.

Skiles' solo status among the fallen stands in even starker contrast to what happened in '04-05 and '03-04, when NBA general managers and owners cut head coaches the way the Fed's Ben Bernanke has been cutting interest rates lately.

In '04-05, six coaches weren't allowed to finish what they had begun. Cleveland's Paul Silas, Denver's Jeff Bzdelik, Minnesota's Flip Saunders, New York's Lenny Wilkens, Orlando's Johnny Davis and Portland's Maurice Cheeks all succumbed to player revolt, management unrest, media pressure or old-fashioned losing. And that doesn't include Hubie Brown, Rudy Tomjanovich and Don Nelson, three warhorses who stepped away from the Grizzlies, Lakers and the Mavericks for health or personal reasons.

1 of 2