You think there's panic on Wall Street? Have you seen what's happening on NBA benches?
A league-record six head coaches were fired in the first six weeks of the season. Just like that, 20 percent of the coaches are gone, and it's almost certain more will follow before the season is finished.
The list of the departed:
• Eddie Jordan, fired by Washington with a 1-10 record. In his five-plus years on the job, he became the first coach to lead the Wizards to four straight playoff appearances.
• P.J. Carlesimo, fired by Oklahoma after a 1-12 start. He held the job for about a year.
• Sam Mitchell, fired by Toronto with an 8-9 record. He led the Raptors to the playoffs the last two seasons and was the 2007 NBA Coach of the Year.
• Randy Wittman, fired by Minnesota with a 4-15 record. He survived nearly two years as head coach.
• Maurice Cheeks, fired by the 76ers with a 9-14 record. He took the team to the playoffs last year, his fourth season as coach.
• Reggie Theus, fired by the Kings with a 6-18 record. His stay lasted 18 months.
Who's next? Possibly the Grizzlies' Marc Iavaroni or the Clippers' Mike Dunleavy.
All of which means either NBA execs are terrible judges of coaching talent, or they are simply too impatient to win immediately, especially in the current economy — or all of the above.
There's something to say for patience. The Utah Jazz, reflecting an organizational philosophy that extends even to their players to a great degree, have stuck by Jerry Sloan for 20 years — making him the most tenured coach in professional sports.
While resisting the occasional calls for Sloan's head from fans, the Jazz also have qualified for the NBA playoffs 17 times in those two decades. San Antonio's Gregg Popovich is a distant second in tenure, with 12 years, followed by Dunleavy, who has been coaching the Clippers since way back in 2003.
The firing of coaches is too often a marketing ploy, a way to tell fans the club is trying to do something, anything, to right the ship and keep selling tickets. But it doesn't often work that way. The combined records of the aforementioned teams at the time they fired their coaches was 29-78; their combined records since hiring new coaches: 12-44.
Sometimes the impatience reaches ridiculous levels. Mike D'Antoni averaged 58 wins per season for four years in Phoenix and won three division titles, but Suns management grew restless when he failed to win an NBA championship and soured on him. He sought employment where he felt more appreciated and signed with the New York Knicks, with the Suns voiding the last two years of his contract. The Suns have shown similar impatience with players, trading them away in a desperate attempt to reshuffle what was once one of the league's strongest teams.
"It really burned that we had four straight years of competing at the highest level, yet, in the end, (management's) attitude was like we didn't win a championship so we didn't do anything," said D'Antoni.
The same thing happens in other professional sports, of course. In the NFL, the San Diego Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer shortly after he compiled a league-leading 14-2 record in 2006. The cause: A clash of egos with management and restlessness over the team's failure to go deep into the playoffs. The Chargers are 18-13 since Schottenheimer's departure.
The New York Giants came this close to firing Tom Coughlin the last couple of seasons, and all he did was win the Super Bowl in February.
This is not a new sentiment, but too often coaches are scapegoats. Many of them don't even have control over their players or little input in trades, free-agent signings and draft choices, yet they are held accountable for the team's performance.
"When we hired Jerry (as head coach)," says Larry Miller, the Jazz owner, "he said, "'I'm only going to ask you for one thing. If I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions.' I've always honored that."
Sloan has experienced the best and the worst of coaching in the NBA. In 1979, he was given his first head coaching job by the Chicago Bulls, the year after the Bulls had finished with the worst record in the Western Conference (31-51). Sloan was 45-37 in his second season and the Bulls advanced to the playoffs, but he was fired midway through his third season when the team was 19-32.
"There was not a lot of patience in Chicago," Sloan once said of that time.
There isn't a lot of patience anywhere in the NBA these days.
E-mail: drob@desnews.com