1) ’81-’82 Lakers: Paul Westhead

It all started with an innocent bike ride. A highly respected assistant coach, Jack McKinney was given arguably the best position in the league when the Lakers hired him in 1979. McKinney named his friend Westhead as his top assistant and the season got off to a solid start. Los Angeles had just defeated the Nuggets at home to improve to 10-4, when McKinney suffered life-threatening injuries crashing his bike while riding to Westhead’s house to play tennis. Westhead was named interim coach, brought over Pat Riley from the broadcast booth as his new assistant, and stuck to McKinney’s up-tempo strategy en route to a 1980 championship. When the ’80-’81 title defense was a complete disaster, ending with a shocking first round upset loss to the Rockets, Westhead decided it was time to change up the playbook. His offensive “System” was slower, more deliberate, and designed around Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which didn’t sit well with young star Magic Johnson, who started openly bad mouthing Westhead to the press after the Lakers started ’81-’82 with a 2-4 record. Meanwhile, veteran All-Stars Abdul-Jabbar, Norm Nixon, and Jamaal Wilkes were grumbling to Westhead and to Lakers management over Johnson’s petulant behavior. It’s debatable whether Jerry Buss made the decision to fire Westhead because he considered the new offensive style boring, or if it was Johnson getting in his owner’s ear. Either way, Westhead was let go after 11 games and replaced with Riley, who led them to a championship at the end of the season and then three more by the end of the decade.

2) ’10-’11 Pistons: John Kuester

It’s difficult to imagine a more volatile situation than the one Kuester stepped into in his NBA head coaching debut. A basketball lifer, Kuester had nearly three decades of assistant coaching experience when the Pistons hired him in 2009 but none as an NBA head coach. He inherited a roster headlined by aging franchise legends Rip Hamilton and Ben Wallace, overpaid disappointments Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, and a broken-down Tracy McGrady. Detroit missed the playoffs in ’09-’10 for the first time in nine years and that was just the beginning of Kuester’s woes. One would think that his assistant role under Larry Brown on the ’03-’04 Pistons title team would grant Kuester some leeway with that team’s hold-outs but it was a specific incident with Hamilton that started the drama. About halfway through the ’10-’11 season, with the team floundering below .500 again, Hamilton berated Kuester during a practice in full view of players and staff. Things only escalated from there, with Kuester benching Hamilton indefinitely, followed by the other veteran players boycotting a morning shoot-around in solidarity, then Kuester playing a six-man rotation in a game against the 76ers, leaving Hamilton, Wallace, and McGrady on the bench. When Kuester was ejected from that game after arguing a call with a ref, cameras caught McGrady and Wallace laughing on the sideline as their coach was escorted off the court. Kuester somehow lasted until the end of the season, likely because the owner was about to sell the team and didn’t want to make drastic, last minute changes.

3) ’00-’01 Nuggets: Dan Issel

Issel’s first tenure as Nuggets coach wasn’t a total disaster, but it certainly didn’t end well either. After guiding Denver to one of the biggest playoff upsets in league history in 1994, a first round takedown of top seeded Seattle, Issel seemed to lose control of his players the next year and stepped down as coach right before the All-Star break, citing exhaustion. It was therefore a surprise when the Nuggets chose to hand him the keys as general manager in 1998, and maybe even more surprising that the notoriously short-tempered Issel accepted. After a difficult season with Mike D’Antoni coaching, Issel soon took the reins on the sidelines again too. The roster was lacking in talent, thanks in no small part to Issel’s decision to draft the stiff Raef Lafrentz third overall (ahead of Vince Carter, Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce, no less). Denver finished ’99-’00 well removed from the playoff race, but were showing some promise early the next season, until a disastrous road trip ended with four straight losses. Issel blamed his players’ lack of focus, especially Nick Van Exel, who was rumored to be demanding a trade from management. When the team returned home from their road swing, Issel scheduled a practice on a planned morning off, drawing the ire of team captains Van Exel and George McCloud, who organized a player boycott. About half the roster ignored the embargo and showed up anyway, but the damage was effectively done. Issel did manage to continue on as coach for about another year, when he was finally fired after getting caught on camera lobbing a racial slur at a Latino fan.

4) ’05-’06 76ers: Maurice Cheeks

A floor general extraordinaire as the 76ers’ point guard in the ’80s, Cheeks was welcomed as a returning hero when he took over the team’s coaching position in 2005. He was fresh off a disappointing stint as head coach of the Blazers, as the team fell from title contenders to mediocrity, but Cheeks avoided much of the blame as his roster had been packed with rapidly aging veterans and burdensome personalities. It was believed that his experience dealing with notoriously difficult personalities like Rasheed Wallace, Shawn Kemp, and Bonzi Wells would prepare him to coach Allen Iverson and Chris Webber in Philly. But despite playing in an especially weak Eastern Conference, the 76ers struggled to win consistently and were eliminated from playoff contention after an embarrassing late season loss to the lowly Magic. Less than an hour before tip-off of their ensuing, meaningless game against the Nets, Cheeks was informed by a reporter that his two veteran stars, Iverson and Webber, were nowhere to be found. After verifying himself that their lockers were untouched, Cheeks backpedaled with the press, trying to play it off that he knew all along they wouldn’t be there. It was announced that Iverson and Webber were missing the game with injuries, but it was obvious that Cheeks had no idea they didn’t plan on even showing up to be on the sidelines. The whole crew came back again in ’06-’07, and Webber and Iverson seemed to exert perpetually decreasing levels of effort on the floor. Both were soon shipped out of town, Iverson in a trade to Denver, and Webber in an unceremonious waiving. Though he had obviously lost control of his team, Cheeks managed to hang around until early in the ’08-’09 season, when he was fired after another slow start.

5) ’92-’93 Spurs: Jerry Tarkanian

You would never know it from the steady tenure of Gregg Popovich (23 years and counting) but the Spurs once had a reputation as a revolving door of coaches. From Morris McHone to Larry Brown to Cotton Fitzsimmons to Babe McCarthy, the franchise’s history is lousy with high-profile coaching failures. But all of them pale in comparison to the 20-game reign of Tarkanian. “Tark the Shark” had ruled over UNLV for nearly two decades before he finally bit on an NBA offer. He had previously turned down the Lakers in 1977, citing worries over being able to connect with pro players, which would prove to be a prescient attitude. But after reaching the summit with his Runnin’ Rebels and winning the national championship in 1990, Tarkanian saw nothing left to prove at the NCAA level and accepted a job with the Spurs two years later (UNLV getting sanctioned by the NCAA over recruitment violations during Tark’s tenure was certainly a factor as well). He took over a solid team highlighted by a young David Robinson but with a gaping hole at point guard. Despite Tarkanian’s protests, the team executives deigned that no one needed to be added to shore up the position. Already fuming over the decision, things only got worse when his players turned on his authoritarian style. It was everything Tarkanian had probably dreaded at the NBA level, as veterans like Dale Ellis and Antoine Carr started to openly question his strategy in indirect platitudes to the media. After a 9-11 start he was mercifully fired and replaced by John Lucas, who subsequently led the team to the second round of the playoffs. Tarkanian, then aged 62, vowed to never coach again at any level, but two years later he was back on the sidelines at his alma mater, Fresno State.

6) ’11-’12 Trail Blazers: Nate McMillan 

After years of being a league laughing-stock for their self-perpetuating “Jail Blazers” reputation, Paul Allen slowly rebuilt his Portland team into what he considered an exemplification of moral rectitude. This finally culminated in ’07-’08, when the team jettisoned Zach Randolph and officially started to rebuild around LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, and Greg Oden. Unfortunately for Allen, and his hand-picked coach, Sonics legend McMillan, two of these three centerpieces turned out to be as fragile as porcelain dolls. By the ’11-’12 season, Roy and Oden were essentially retired and McMillan’s best players after Aldridge were J.J. Hickson and Nicolas Batum. He also had two new veterans on the roster, Raymond Felton and Jamal Crawford, that were about to cause a lot more problems than they were worth, and remind everybody of the “Jail Blazers” heyday. The team got off to a slow start that season, and McMillan reportedly chewed out Felton and Crawford specifically during a film session. The pair of veteran guards didn’t appreciate the scolding and supposedly led a slow-crawl revolt against their coach. After neither player was traded at the deadline of the lockout-shortened season, it was obvious that McMillan’s days were numbered. After an especially egregious 42-point loss to the Knicks in mid-March, the Blazers announced that McMillan had been fired, replacing him with assistant Kaleb Canales for the remainder of the year. Neither Crawford nor Felton returned for the ’12-’13 season, and soon the team underwent a much more successful rebuild around Aldridge and Damian Lillard, with Terry Stotts as coach.

7) ’01-’02 Bulls: Tim Floyd

When he took over as coach of the New Orleans Hornets in ’03-’04, Floyd was asked to describe his previous tenure in Chicago. He summarized it as “hell” and accused general manager Jerry Krause of purposefully building a losing roster. Krause responded by sarcastically ruminating that he hopes Floyd’s new players don’t turn on him in New Orleans like his old ones did in Chicago. Floyd’s former player, Charles Oakley, had harsher words, directly predicting that the coach would last “three-to-four months, tops” in his new gig. Floyd did survive the entire season, leading the Hornets to the playoffs with a 41-41 record, but was still fired after losing a first round series against the Heat. It wasn’t a particularly impressive coaching season by most standards but was arguably a huge success compared to his time with the Bulls. Targeted by Krause for years as his heir apparent to Phil Jackson in Chicago, Floyd took the job in 1998 with a seemingly sincere expectation that he would be coaching Michael Jordan. Instead, he found himself guiding players like Dickey Simpkins, Rusty LaRue, and Kornel David to dead last in the Eastern Conference in ’98-’99. When the young team failed to show much improvement in the next two seasons, Floyd came into ’01-’02 knowing he was on the hottest of possible seats. He found himself soon beset on all sides of his roster, as his young centers Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler were disappointed in their lack of playing time, while veterans like Oakley, Brad Miller, and Ron Artest started to publicly question his leadership. After the Bulls suffered a franchise record 53-point loss to Minnesota, Oakley was fined $50,000 for stating that Floyd was an “amateur” coach who only kept his job because the team didn’t care about winning. Meanwhile, Miller kicked a chair into the stands after another loss, which struck and injured a fan, while Artest clashed with Floyd over the team dress code. The embattled coach finally resigned on Christmas Eve, turning the team over to his assistant Bill Berry. His one season with the Hornets was almost assuredly his final chance at coaching in the NBA, as subsequent gigs in the NCAA with USC and UTEP have been unsuccessful.

8) ’78-’79 Jazz, Elgin Baylor

Baylor was something of a tragic figure when he joined the coaching staff of the expansion New Orleans Jazz in 1974. Just two years removed from retiring, he was considered one of the five or six greatest players ever at that time but had played in eight NBA Finals with the Lakers without winning a title. Then he could only watch as his teammates finally brought a championship to Los Angeles immediately after he retired. The star player on his New Orleans roster was a brash young shooting guard that had emulated him growing up in the Carolinas. Baylor and Pete Maravich actually had a lot in common, from their humble beginnings to their transcendent natural skills to their otherworldly drive to win at all costs. Unfortunately, they shared two more things that submarined any chance at mutual success: a lack of defensive skills or effort, and a major knee injury in their prime. The ’77-’78 Jazz were a solid team on paper, with Gail Goodrich as the secondary scorer, Truck Robinson as an interior presence, plus solid role players in Aaron James, Rich Kelley, and Slick Watts. But Maravich missed 32 games due to injury and the Jazz wound up just missing the playoffs. Things only got worse heading into ’78-’79, as Robinson held out of training camp for a new contract and began openly disparaging Jazz management and coaching for their blind commitment to the oft-injured Maravich. Rather than quietly stick by his coach and mentor Baylor, Maravich began firing his own shots in the media, making statements like “I’m the highly-paid white boy, so of course it’s my fault.” With Robinson destroying team chemistry, and Maravich again missing chunks of games due to injury, New Orleans ownership considered it time to clean house. They started by trading Robinson at the deadline for pennies on the dollar, then firing Baylor after the season, a turn of events he alluded to as “getting out of prison.” Maravich was then waived during the ’79-’80 season. He signed immediately with Boston and contributed to their run to the 1980 Conference Finals before retiring. Baylor has never coached again, instead taking over as the hapless general manager of the Clippers for 22 years.