It was after a shootaround during the 2013 NBA Finals when Gregg Popovich received the news from a reporter, which is always his preferred method of information delivery. George Karl had just been fired by the Denver Nuggets, four weeks after winning the Coach of the Year award for leading a team without a superstar to 57 wins and the third seed in the stacked Western Conference.
"It speaks for itself," Popovich said then, with a death stare for the messenger. "It's a pretty volatile job to be a coach in the NBA. Nobody makes us do it. If you've got a job in the NBA, you know it's pretty volatile. It's just a fact. Grass is green for the most part, sky is kind of blue, that's just the way it is."
That way has clearly not changed over the course of the past 18 months, as illustrated by the Sacramento Kings' Sunday night firing of Mike Malone, who had been widely hailed just two weeks earlier for his work with the young, undermanned Kings in the brutal West.
It's earlier than the only in-season firing of 2013-14, when Detroit dumped Maurice Cheeks at 21-29 and John Loyer went 8-24 in an interim role. It's not quite as early as the Lakers bounced Mike Brown, just 11 days and five games into the 2012-13 season—a season that claimed three other coaches (Avery Johnson, Scott Skiles, Alvin Gentry).
However, it just might be the most maddening in recent memory.
Brown had Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash on his roster.
The Kings have projects, prospects and journeymen, with the exception of Rudy Gay, whose absence has improved his two previous teams, and DeMarcus Cousins, a temperamental talent who Malone had appeared to reach like few coaches before.
Since Malone's dismissal, Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski has reported some of new owner Vivek Ranadive's meddling in rotation decisions, including his desire for Malone to force troubled prospect Royce White onto the floor. That, coupled with Malone's reported reluctance to agree to a possible offseason acquisition of Josh Smith—who continues to be a disaster in Detroit—and management's desire for a more uptempo style, apparently contributed to the firing. If so, it wouldn't the first time that philosophical differences doomed a coach.
True, an owner has a right to retain or release whomever he wants, especially if it wasn't someone he hired. That doesn't always make it smart. And if it was in any way about immediate wins and losses—Ranadive indicated prior to the season that it would be—that's delusional to the extreme.
Yes, the Kings had suffered a string of regrettable losses to the Los Angeles Lakers, Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons. But during their recent 2-8 stretch, they also lost to quality teams like the San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets, taking the Rockets to overtime.
Oh, and one other little thing about the Kings' gifted big man:
Cousins, the only player on the roster who regularly gives Sacramento a decided advantage at his position, missed the last nine of those games with viral meningitis.
Even so, the Kings' 11-13 record represented their best winning percentage (.458) since the 2007-08 season, and it was a rather fair accounting of the ability and experience on the roster, at least when compared to what other West powers put on the court.
While mediocrity should not be tolerated in perpetuity, expectations for any coach—after just 96 games on the job—should be tempered with a touch of reality. But that's not an attribute that many owners, accustomed to getting their way in other businesses, possess in abundance.
Consider that, after Popovich—who came down from the front office to replace Bob Hill on Dec. 10, 1996—the next longest-tenured coach with his current team is Miami's Erik Spoelstra, who took over for Pat Riley nearly 12 years later, on April 28, 2008. Rick Carlisle, who had already coached Indiana and Detroit, started coaching Dallas at the start of the same season (2008-09) as Spoelstra, with Scott Brooks taking over the Thunder just three weeks into that season. Twenty-one of the current 30 head coaches didn't start coaching their current teams until the 2012 calendar year. Since Spoelstra took over the Heat, the Kings have had five men coach at least 58 games: Reggie Theus, Kenny Natt, Paul Westphal, Keith Smart and Malone. Tyrone Corbin could be the sixth. Since Popovich started coaching the Spurs, there have now been 10 Kings coaches, as you can add Garry St. Jean, Eddie Jordan, Rick Adelman and Eric Musselman to the prior list. Only Adelman—at 395-229—had a winning percentage higher than .415. Only Adelman (34) and St. Jean (1) have won a playoff game.
Popovich and Spoelstra, men of different generations, have been equally outspoken in defense of their colleagues, while bemoaning the lack of respect for their profession. Spoelstra went so far as to defend a colleague with whom he's not especially close, Indiana's Frank Vogel, last postseason. Spoelstra said it would be "ridiculous" for anyone to speculate about Vogel's future: "Look, they weren't anybody before [him]."
When he finished second to Karl for Coach of the Year in 2013, Spoelstra expressed relief. He noted that he was "probably more pleased" than the winner, since winning tended to put long-term employment in peril—Avery Johnson, Sam Mitchell and Byron Scott are among those fired within two years of taking the award.
"I think six out of 16 playoff coaches have made changes already," Spoelstra said at the time. "That's a tough state for our business and where it is right now. That just doesn't correlate to an objective mind. People's expectations are way off or [they are] just not looking at it objectively."
Then, later that week, on a general media conference call, Popovich was asked to elaborate on his own perspective.
"I think that in some cases one might surmise that some owners think it's easier than it really is," said Popovich, who has never posted a winning percentage below .610 in his 17 full seasons. "It's difficult to win an NBA game, let alone playoff game‑type situation. It's not that easy. You don't just go draft or make this trade or sign this free agent and then it gets done.
"It's very difficult. And when things don't happen quickly, I think some owners become frustrated. Some even take it personally, I believe. Almost like a little bit of an embarrassment because they've been so successful in their own way and have a hard time understanding this business."
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