In 2025, the right and wrong trend of the coach’s frenzy of being dismissed!

Recalling the 2020 NBA Orlando Quarantine Park, although it was five years ago, most of the main players at that time were still active in the league, and some of the championship teams that year were able to retain some of the original teams.

But outside of the players, the situation is completely different for NBA head coaches.

Among the 22 teams that entered the quarantine park at that time, only Heat head coach Spo is still in his original position, and everyone else is dismissed. Among the other eight teams that did not enter the quarantine park, only one head coach is still on duty: Steve Cole from the Golden State Warriors.

In recent years, the championship is no longer enough to ensure the safety of the head coach's position. The Raptors, who won the championship in 2019, eventually fired champion coach Nick Nass four years after winning the championship. Judging from the four years now, it has been a long period of safe winning the championship.

Vogel led the Lakers to the championship in 2020 and was fired in 2022; Budenholzer led the Bucks to win the Cup in 2021 and was dismissed in 2023; Mike Malone was fired by the Nuggets at the dangerous moment of the remaining three games of the regular season this season after leading the team to the top in 2023.

This is not just a champion curse, but people outside the champion are also dangerous. Among the 16 teams that made it into the playoffs last season, three of them fired their head coach after the playoffs; the other one was the Bucks, who fired their head coach in the middle of the season. Then, Adrian Griffin left silently after temporarily leading the team to 30 wins and 13 losses.

And beyond these people, the most surprising case of the coach's dismissal of Jenkins should be the Grizzlies' fire. At that time, the Grizzlies had a record of 44 wins and 29 losses. In the last two healthy and complete seasons, they once led the team to second place in the Western Conference. These outstanding resumes still failed to help him win safety. Because these head coaches were dismissed too bizarrely, some of them even forgot that Mike Brown, who was selected as the best head coach in 2023, was also swept out by the Kings this season.

This seems to be the general trend of the modern NBA. As long as the team encounters a little resistance, no matter how outstanding the previous performance is, the final result is often the firing of the head coach.

And the current trend seems to be still spreading. I originally thought that a certain team had succeeded because of this and took the lead. But when we look at the inventory, most teams that made changes eventually stagnated and even became worse.

Of course, there are also some successful cases. For example, the Lakers, although they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the management should not regret replacing Ham with Redick, but the premise is that they should not have changed from Vogel to Ham from the beginning, but even so, it is already good for the Lakers to get Redick now. But for other teams, they are not so lucky.

Take the Bucks as an example. They fired Budenholzer after a 58-win season, and then Griffin's winning rate when he was fired had hope of 57 wins. However, his problems began to be exposed long before the season was over, and he was finally kicked out. Rivers then became Griffin's successor, with a record of 17 wins and 19 losses last season, while the Bucks this season had 48 wins and 34 losses.

The Kings are similar. Brown led the team to win 48 wins that year when he won the Best Head Coach. The next year, due to injury problems, the victory dropped to 46 wins. Because of fierce competition in the West, the division ranking dropped from third in the West to ninth in the West.

The team management obviously was unwilling to accept this decline. After the team started the season, Brown had to be dismissed. Christie, who took over, led the team to a record of 26 wins and 22 losses, which seemed better, but in Brown's 31 games in office, the team's net efficiency was +1.6, while Christie's net efficiency was 0 in 48 games. If explained from a data perspective, the king in the second half was just lucky, and his actual performance was actually worse than the first half.

These two changes to coaches did not happen alone, both of which were accompanied by major lineup changes. The Bucks of the Budenholzer era got Lillard with Holiday trade, while the King lost Fox later. In addition to the above teams, the Suns are another special case worth referring to, and they change their head coaches faster. In 2023, they fired Monty Williams after being eliminated in the second round. Around the 2023 trading deadline, the lineup of Vogel, who succeeded, was completely different from that of Monty.

9 core players who played for more than 100 minutes in the playoffs during Monty's period, and only three of them remained in the team in Vogel's period. As a result, Vogel's Suns were swept out in the first round, and the result of the management's change of coaches was obviously failed.

Then they found Budenholzer. Although the lineup was slightly adjusted and joined Tyame Jones, Ryan Dunn and others, among the players who played at least 600 minutes in the 2025 season, 7 were from the opening roster. The result was even worse. The Suns fell out of the playoff spot, and Budenholzer lost his coaching position again, and the Suns welcomed their fourth head coach in four years.

When a team fails to hire four coaches within four years, we have to wonder whether the problem lies with the coach or the team?

Recalling the hasty decisions before, these mistakes seem to be traced back to management in many cases.

For example, Vogel won the championship in his first season as the Lakers. In the second season, James and Davis played a total of 81 games, and the Lakers are still the first team in the NBA's defensive efficiency. But a year later, he was fired. Looking back at that year, what happened?

The Lakers sacrificed their bench depth for Westbrook, which is also the key to the Lakers' collapse. Although it is difficult to say clearly who should be responsible for this deal, it is certain that the deal definitely did not come from Vogel, and the reason for his final dismissal was mainly because of the failure to repair the sequelae of damage caused by others.

Similar situations have been very numerous in recent coach firing cases. The same is true for Malone to be dismissed from the Nuggets. He hopes to continue to win while the role players are veteran teams, but general manager Booth hopes that he can use more young players he selected, so he sent off Malone's veteran players again and again, but the young players he selected are very embarrassing.

Once the lineup becomes worse, the team's performance will naturally become worse. This is a very basic logic, but in the end the head coach takes the blame.

This is also a fact that modern teams are unwilling to but must accept. According to the current concept, the growth of a team must not only improve upward, but also be able to persist in linear growth. If the transaction does not bring about expectations, it is not the team management that makes the transaction, but the head coach who must always train the new lineup.

If you are eliminated in the first round this year and cannot reach the second round next year, then this season is a failure; if you win a championship but cannot bring a second one, then the head coach is a failure. And behind this, no one cares about the changes in the team lineup in the previous year and this year.

This is a standard that is basically difficult to meet. There is only one championship in a season. The above mentioned Cole, Spoel, and even Popovich, who had just stepped down as head coach due to physical problems, happened to be the only people who have led the team to win the championship many times.

From the current trend, the team's lineup changes rapidly and stars move frequently. It is obviously more difficult to win the championship multiple times than that in the past. Over the past six years, six different teams in the NBA have won the championship, and the league is also interested in breaking the dominance of a single team. Under this general trend, it is really worth thinking about whether to continue to "establish a team dynasty" as the standard for coaches.

If we use modern standards to measure the above three famous coaches who have won the championship many times, imagine if the Heat, who holds James, only won 9 wins and 8 losses at the beginning of 2025, can Spoil still retain the coach position? If Popovich's record after taking over the Spurs is 17 wins and 47 losses, will he still stay with the Spurs? Even Kerr led the team to win the championship last season but failed to defend the title this season. Does he still have a chance?

According to this standard, many great coaches will lose the opportunity to become legends in a changing environment, and now how many excellent coaches are losing opportunities? At least we don’t know at the moment, and no one can verify the results in the future.

Of course, not all coaches are excellent, and it does not mean that the team can never fire the coach. Sometimes it is necessary to change coaches, and many times the coaching problems are quite obvious. For example, the Bucks Griffin, whose coaching shortcomings have existed since the beginning, and the Lakers no longer followed his command a few months before the Lakers fired Ham.

It is difficult to give a unified standard for team changes coaches. The situations of each team in the league are different, and it is necessary to look at the problem from a comprehensive perspective. However, in the frenzy of coaches being dismissed this season, sometimes one question is really needed:

"Is the team head coach really the root cause of the problem? Or are they just the easiest person to take the blame?"