Today’s National Basketball Association (NBA) has continuously changed the engines of various professional teams. The “head coach” has lost value not only to NBA teams but also to the league. The NBA is now known as a star-driven league. NBA coaches have been more disposable due to the league having less patience.
According to Brian Freliich at Chance, a statistical magazine, the average tenure of an NBA head coach is only three to four years. Whereas Alex Kennedy at Hoopshype, a sports affiliate of USA Today, reports that among the four leagues, the National Basketball Association, National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball(MLB), the NBA had the highest rate of coaching changes.
A new head coach is hired in the NBA more frequently than in the NHL which is every 2.6 seasons, the MLB, every 3.1 seasons, and the NFL, every 3.4 seasons.
An example of an NBA franchise lacking patience was when the Los Angeles Lakers fired head coach Frank Vogel, three years after winning a championship. Vogel coached the Lakers to a championship in the 2020 bubble season. However, after a first-round elimination the following year, he was automatically put in the hot seat.
In 2022, Vogel had even less success by missing the playoffs, which led to his termination. His short tenure is due to the market eagerly wanting teams to succeed. One wrong move can cause a coach to get discarded.
Basketball legend and former Lakers star, Shaquille O’Neal commented on Vogel’s situation in disgust of the Lakers. “I would’ve quit. I would have been like, ‘I quit, and all the other coaches thinking about coming to take this job, don’t waste your time,’’ O’Neal said on his podcast, “The Big Podcast with Shaq” when sharing what he would have done in Vogel’s position.
This issue of firing coaches catching the attention of remarkable NBA alum further emphasizes the problem. The Los Angeles Lakers later hired Darvin Ham the following offseason.
Another example of a huge market team firing a coach no matter what success may come is the Toronto Raptors. Back in 2018, Toronto Raptors’ head coach Dwayne Casey won the award “Head Coach of the Year”. This was not his only accomplishment, during this year the Raptors finished 59-23, securing the most wins in franchise history.
Yet, this same year, the Raptors were swept by Lebron James who led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the eastern conference semifinals. Dwayne Casey was let go less than 48 hours after the loss. Casey’s hard work and leadership with the team had flushed away.
Larger markets are known to change coaches if no success is shown, but now smaller markets are doing the same as well. An example of this is the Milwaukee Bucks when they fired former head coach Jason Kidd. Kidd had coached the Bucks from 2014, the 15th season to 2017, the 18th season. Even with one hundred forty-two wins, Kidd was still fired in 2018 because they had consecutive losses.
General manager of the Milwaukee Bucks, Jon Horst shares the reasoning for firing Kidd, “You have short windows in the NBA to build toward contention and actually contend, and we didn’t wanna waste time in putting our team in the best position to do that,” Horst said. It seems that such windows in the NBA focus more on losses than wins.
Later the Bucks hired Mike Budenholzer, who coached them to the championship in 2021, the following year and then the Bucks lost in the eastern conference semifinals. In 2023, even with the Bucks best players injured, the front offices decided to fire head coach Mike Budenholzer after success.
The NBA head coaches are becoming less valuable and expendable. Something needs to change. A conversation with The National Basketball Association regarding their methods of firing should be evaluated.
Spartan Echo 