Security of tenure

In the NBA presently, except for Greg Popovich who’s practically untouchable calling the shots for San Antonio and is still recovering from a stroke, there are only two coaches whose incumbency perhaps are guaranteed until they decide to call it quits – Miami’s Erik Spoelstra and probably Golden State’s Steve Kerr.  The rest of the 27 other coaches in the league don’t have that advantage.

With less than 10 games to go in the season, the Memphis Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins.  The team’s strange coaching change this late won’t help their final playoff seedings.

Interim head coach Tuomas Iisalo had the LA Lakers baptize him with icy waters when the trio of Austin Reaves, Luka Doncic and LeBron James froze and declawed the Grizzlies at the FedEx Forum last Sunday morning.

Well, only two things are sure to come out of this move.  One, the team will sweep or win at least half of their 8 remaining games and dislodge the Lakers as fourth seed and make a deep playoff run.   Two, Memphis could tumble and fall as they have strong contending teams ahead on their schedule like Boston, Denver, Minnesota and the Warriors.  The last two teams mentioned particularly will give them a hard time because of playoff seeding.

Jenkins was in his sixth season as Memphis head coach, and he guided the team to the postseason three times and is the franchise’s all-time winningest coach since relocating from Vancouver.  But the team had other ideas and thought it better to move on from him.

With all the generic statements of appreciation for Jenkins’ stay with the team, Memphis GM Zach Kleiman gave a short statement on the firing, saying he thought hard about it and ended with giving Jenkins the pink slip.  “I came to the conclusion that this is for the best interest of the team, and urgency is a core principle of ours, so I decided to go on with the move.”

There’s no clarity as to the reason of the firing if we base it on Kleiman’s “for the best interest of the team.”  Firing a coach is inevitable but the timing just weeks before the playoffs is way off.

Along with Jenkins, two other assistant coaches were fired, Patrick St. Andrews and Noah LaRoche.  It was reported that Ja Morant was not happy with the new offense instituted this year that involves lesser pick-and-rolls.  If a star is unhappy, teams will usually find ways to please, thus Jenkins had to go to maximize Morant’s use.

In professional sports, there never is security of tenure, be it for star players, more so for coaches who can be abruptly dumped.   Jenkins won’t be jobless for long as he will be one of the top coaches available when other teams decide to overhaul their coaching staff next season