Free Ballin’

A great man in his own mind once wrote, “Most NBA coaches are hired to be fired.”  I could just as easily have put it, “Nearly all NBA coaches…”   Phil Jackson’s job is safer than anyone’s this side of Mike Krzyzewski and Gregg Popovich and Jerry Sloan are also untouchable; but no other coach in the NBA has real job security.  And though Paul Westphal is this year’s early leader for NBA Coach of the Year (along with Rick Adelman), he still spends every day on thin ice, along with the rest of his peers.  There’s no better example of this than Westphal’s own coaching history.

As an up-and-comer in the early 90s coaching the Phoenix Suns, Westphal’s teams won 62 games, 56 games, and 59 games (including one loss in the Finals and two losses in the Western Semi-Finals).  In his fourth season with the Suns, the team got off to a slow start and Westphal got the ax before the all star break.  Why did they start slowly?  Well, it didn’t help that Charles Barkley came into the season fat and took a while to get going.  Other than His Plumpness, the team consisted of Kevin Johnson, rookie Michael Finley, and a bunch of guys who couldn’t score.  They had never played defense (A.C. Green and Dan Marjele were the only consistent defenders on the roster during Westpal’s tenure) so when they stopped scoring, they stopped winning.  Also, I don’t know if it’s true, but I read at the time that Westphal was (is?) a gentle, easy going guy who never ever cussed, and that after three successful seasons, suddenly that was a problem.

Two years later (’98–’99, the strike year) Westphal got another shot with the Supersonics—but not really.  Westphal was hired as a placeholder for the just-retired Sonic Nate McMillan, who also started that season as assistant coach.  The Sonics started the ’00–’01 season 6–9, and that was it for Westphal; he was canned and McMillan took over.

Look, I’m not saying Westphal is some beautiful genius; he seems like a good coach—nothing special, but a good coach.  But like nearly all coaches, his win-loss is almost entirely dependent on his roster.  Sure, a new coach sometimes gets the troops moving faster, and a coach can also lose his team.  But if you look at multi-year samples; the rosters tell you almost everything.  (I’ll write about Sacramento’s roster tomorrow).  Understand, I’m not saying Westphal is going to get canned anytime soon; he won’t.  Coaches aren’t fired when their team is exceeding expectations.  But that success just raises expectations, and makes the ice all the thinner.