NBA Rookie Rankings: Final Season Rankings
April 19, 2013NCAA Rumor: Big Ten to divide into East, West divisions
April 19, 2013The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Mary Schmitt-Boyer got a telephone interview with Byron Scott and quotes the now-former Cavaliers head coach.
“I’m disappointed, more than anything,” Scott said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think I got a fair shake.”
While his sentiment is understandable, this is an issue of framing. The Cavaliers were never designed to win a whole host of games this season and everyone knew it. The question, as always, is why exactly was Byron Scott fired? Was it truly a matter of wins and losses, or were there more factors?
Our own Andrew has weighed in on the topic earlier today.
It wasn’t fair that Chris Grant was giving Byron Scott undrafted D-League players and forcing him to give them meaningful NBA minutes. It wasn’t fair that Byron had to coach a starting five containing two rookies and two second-year players. And it certainly isn’t fair that he was fired before he could see his rebuilding work through to the end.
Unfortunately for Byron Scott, professional sports aren’t about fairness. And even more unfortunate for Byron Scott, firing him at this time was absolutely the right move for this franchise.
As I have weighed in over the last day or so, I’ve continually said that this couldn’t be just about wins and losses. I think it was about superlative losses and superlative losing streaks. Ultimately, with regard to fairness, that’s unfair to fans and the team chose their best path was to make a change.
10 Comments
In post-firing statements Grant and Gilbert have been pretty darn clear about their reasons. Like this from Grant: “Defensively we need to be better. We have not started [a replacement coach] search yet, but will look for someone with strong defensive principals, a good teacher with a good work ethic.” Gilbert also mentioned defense as a priority and overall team progress.
Whether or not firing Byron was fair, I don’t think the FO have left the reasons murky.
I think it is fair to make around $15 million ($4 mil deferred to next year) for 3 years of service that led to about as many wins (64) as any first time head coach could have pulled off with the same roster during the same time frame.
I wouldn’t care how fair anything is if I was given $15 million
Dude…you were sub-.300 during your time here, yes? What’s not fair?
In 2 weeks, Byron will be named the assistant coach of the golden state warriors and talk about how nice it is to be on a team that’s trying to win.
winner!
🙂
“I got too many chances. If i were in charge I would’ve fired me a loooong time ago” – no one ever. Of course he thinks he got a raw deal. I agree to some degree but if he can’t manage his timeouts and substitution patterns in a low pressure situation, what makes anyone think he can in the pressure cooker that is the playoffs? Personally I’m pulling for Mike Brown or Stan Van Gundy
That’s the problem these days in general.
This is the first time I’ve seen the ‘full’ quote. The ‘strong defensive priciples’ is what gets talked about but the ‘good work ethic’ seems much more telling.