Well. Well well well. Well.
The Cleveland Browns just fired head coach Hue Jackson.
(waits for the deafening cries of “What took them so long?” to subside)
Really, what took them so long? The man was 3-36-1 over two and a half seasons.
Also shown the door: offensive coordinator Todd Haley.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Cleveland
On a totally related note, Cleveland fired head coach Tyronn Lue on Sunday. I believe this is the first firing of the NBA regular season.
He was 128-83 over three years, and had one NBA championship and three finals appearances to his credit. But…the team is 0-6 for the first time since 1995.
We have our first firing of the NBA season. You know, the NBA season that hasn’t started yet.
Phoenix Suns general manager Ryan McDonough out.
From ESPN:
He drafted the likes of Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, TJ Warren, Alex Len, Dragan Bender and Deandre Ayton. He had some early success, but the Suns are still in the same rebuilding mode that they were in when McDonough was hired. The team went 155-255 during his tenure.
The Suns also had five different coaches under McDonough. Last season, they fired coach Earl Watson three games into the season and named Jay Triano interim coach. In the offseason, they named Igor Kokoskov head coach.
In other news, I missed this story until Popehat tweeted part of it. Ken White’s take on this was more “look at the stupid things clients do”, which surprised me: I’ll touch on the reason why shortly.
Summary: the Los Angeles Dodgers (and other baseball teams) may be in trouble. Legal trouble.
…
…
FanGraphs has an interesting supplemental piece. The part that jumps out at me – and the one that I’m surprised Ken wasn’t all over:
Did the Dodgers do the RICO? I am not a lawyer. But the person who wrote the FanGraphs article is: I think she presents a good argument that, if the Dodgers are found guilty of human trafficking, that’s a “predicate offense” for RICO purposes.
Mail and wire fraud are also predicate crimes. So one count of human trafficking, and one count of wire fraud…to quote FanGraphs:
Admit it: wouldn’t you love to see the Department of Justice seize the Dodgers in asset forfeiture and try to run a baseball team? I know I would: a government run baseball team would make the 1899 Cleveland Spiders look like a model of competence and sanity.
The Browns actually won a second game this season. The New York Football Giants are 1-4. And the worthless San Francisco 49ers lost, which is good: but to Arizona, which is bad.
Also: Mike Stoops out as Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
None.
The loser update will return at the start of the NFL season next year. There may possibly be special updates between now and then, but it will definitely be back in 2019 (assuming we all live that long).
Our short national nightmare is over:
The Republic of Texas Biker Rally and the Heat Wave car show will go on at the Travis County Exposition Center, but the Travis Central Appraisal District will have to scramble to find another venue for thousands of property tax protest hearings after county commissioners voted Tuesday to continue contract negotiations for the two highly popular events.
After a heated debate, commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday, with County Judge Sarah Eckhardt and Commissioner Margaret Gómez against, to move toward contracts with the event organizers on renting the Expo Center, leaving the appraisal district out of the mix.
Chimene Onyeri, the guy who shot Judge Kocurek: life in federal prison.
Paul Molitor out as manager of the Minnesota Twins. 78-84 this season and no playoffs.
The Dallas Wings, who are a team in the WNBA, fired their head coach Fred Williams yesterday.
The root cause was apparently not that the Wings have lost eight games in a row: they are 14-17 so far this season, and could conceivably make the playoffs. The root cause appears to have been that Mr. Williams and the team president/CEO got into “a postgame altercation”. It isn’t clear to me if punches were thrown or exactly what the nature of the altercation was: either it was serious enough that CEO Greg Bibb felt compelled to fire Williams before the season ended, or (possibly) Mr. Bibb is just a little oversensitive.
In any case, the Wings are still one game ahead of…that’s right, the Las Vegas Aces.
(Apologies for linking to ESPN, but the Dallas paper was really obnoxious about ad blockers. I couldn’t find any mention of this in the Statesman or HouChron.)
Dwane Casey, NBA coach of the year, has been fired by the Toronto Raptors.
Casey was 320-238 over seven seasons:
On the road back from Dallas, but quickly:
Stan Van Gundy our as Detroit Pistons head coach.
Blogging from the passenger seat of a Mazda RX-8 (or really any moving vehicle) is harder than you might think. Updates to come.
More blood in the streets:
Steve Clifford out as head coach of the Charlotte Hornets.
196-214 overall, two playoff appearances where they never got out of the first round, and 36-46 this season with no playoffs.
I guess yesterday was the end of the NBA regular season.
Everyone knows how much I care about the NBA, but with the end of any regular season in sports comes the wave of firings.
Jeff Hornacek out as head coach of the New York Knickerbockers. He was 60-104 over two seasons. (Also out: assistant coach Kurt Rambis.)
Frank Vogel out as head coach of the Orlando Magic. 54-110 over two seasons. (Various assistants got canned as well.)
And just for the record, the loser trophy this year goes to…the Phoenix Suns? Yep: 21-61 this season. This would call for a coach firing, except the Suns already fired their coach back in October.
More surprising: not only did the notoriously bad Philadelphia 76ers not have the worst record this year…they were 52-30, and are in the playoffs.
Tubby Smith out as head basketball coach of the University of Memphis.
He was 40-26 over two seasons. It doesn’t look like this is related to any sort of scandal, unlike some other recent firings. But this is interesting:
…Smith’s dismissal is more related to off-court factors than the on-court product.
Attendance at home games fell to a 48-year low this year. As a result, the athletic department could miss out on an $800,000 payment from the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the school’s lease at FedExForum.
Donations to the athletic department also fell by $1.1 million during the 2016-17 fiscal year thanks in large part to a drop in men’s basketball season ticket sales.
Kevin Ollie out as men’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut.
Even better: the university is claiming “just cause” for the firing. Apparently, it’s not just that the team had a non-so-great season, but there’s also a possible recruting scandal simmering.
Possibly more later on.
He died doing what he loved: drinking whiskey and complaining about the Oscars.
“Ironically, he was giving his opinion of what someone was wearing that he thought was ugly, then asked (his wife) Patti to refill his whiskey,” Michael Solomon, former chief executive of Tower, said.
He died by the time his wife came back with his drink.
I’m not clear on what was “ironic” about that, and the obit is useless: who was wearing the “ugly” clothes?
Kevin Stallings out as basketball coach of the Pittsburgh Panthers after two seasons.
Jason Kidd was fired yesterday as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
In case you were wondering, this is a NBA team.
ESPN says this is the third NBA firing this year. (Memphis and Phoenix were the other two.)
He was 139-152 overall.
They lost to New England on Saturday.
And head coach Mike Mularkey was fired today.
He was 21-22 overall.