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Just as rosters throughout the NBA have gotten younger, the coaches have too—two of the final four coaches left in the NBA playoffs are in their first year on the job. But this continuous chase for the Next Hot Thing comes at a cost—this year's coaching carousel has been a bloodbath throughout the NBA. Dwane Casey, Mike Budenholzer, Monty Williams, Nick Nurse: all recent former Coach of the Year winners who were kicked to the curb this offseason. Similarly, five of the last seven coaches to make the NBA Finals are no longer with that team—Nick Nurse, Frank Vogel, Budenholzer, Monty Williams and Ime Udoka have all been fired since reaching the Finals. As such, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra took time during his post-game availability to comment on the current state of coaching, lamenting that even the best and most proven coaches are now seen as disposable.
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“I've been think of all the great, proven, experienced coaches who have lost their jobs,” Erik Spoelstra said. “It just doesn't make sense to me. You have proven guy and you have the opportunity to start again without revamping the whole culture. It takes so much time and energy to restart something.”
“I think that's part of the reason we've been able to reboot so many times, over and over” the Heat coach continued, “because we're not reinventing a new culture and then trying to teach everybody and then all of a sudden, two or three years later, somebody else has to do the exact same thing. Particularly with the veteran, proven guys, it's just been stunning [that so many are being fired.]”
