Mo Cheeks is Gone, Back to the Merry Go Round

The NBA is one big circus of coaches. I'm not sure what the mentality is with general managers, but it seems like once a month of every season there's another NBA coach getting fired. Maurice Cheeks, in his fourth season with the Sixers, was let go this weekend by the Sixers after his team just never took things to the next level as hoped, and in fact have gone through a slump in recent weeks. Now another coach will lead the team (temporarily it will be Tony DiLeo) until he proves that he cannot take the team to the next level, and so on and so forth. (Sorry to be negative Tony, even after winning today, but let's face facts, you're already on the hot seat, just like every other coach...). All in all, this is the fifth firing of the year in the NBA. In other words, don't get too comfy on your folding chair if you run a pro basketball team.

The NBA's internal job opening department must go through reams of paper to keep up to date with all of the new job postings, and each team's HR department must be scrambling to keep up with all of the interviews, personnel info, and health insurance plans with so many changes. Interestingly, it always seems to be the same coaches getting circulated amongst the teams. To a certain extent that's true in every sport, but seemingly more so in basketball. The Sixers are a perfect example, having had 6 different coaches in the last ten years and 12 different coaches in 20 years. That's a far cry from the Utah Jazz, where Jerry Sloan has reigned for the entire time in that span. But unfortunately, more teams are like the Sixers in this regard than the Jazz.

At any rate, best of luck to Mo Cheeks in whatever he does, and hopefully Tony DiLeo proves himself worthy enough to hang around for a while. Ultimately, as the saying goes, you can't fire the players, you fire the coaches, so we'll see how that old motto plays out. And we'll see how DiLeo's term plays out...