Whipped Cream Difficulties

Tom Fitzgerald out as general manager of the New Jersey Devils.

Although the Devils (40-34-3) entered Monday still mathematically eligible for the playoffs, they were seven points out of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot with five games left.

The way I read the ESPN article, they actually started out okay this season. But they lost a key player (Jack Hughes) to a “freak hand injury in mid-November that kept him out for 18 games”.

Missing Hughes was only the beginning, with the Devils losing five straight to end November and begin December. It was the first of four separate four-game losing streaks that made it difficult for them to attain consistency in a challenging Eastern Conference landscape.

Shortly after my previous post, word came out: the Chicago Bulls have fired general manager Marc Eversley and “executive vice president of basketball operations” Arturas Karnisovas. Tribune. Sun Times. ESPN.

Karnisovas and Eversley were hired to run the Bulls front office at the start of the 2020-21 season and went 224-254 across six seasons. Chicago achieved only one wining season under Karnisovas’ leadership, in 2021-22, which is also the only year the team made the playoffs — a five-game, first-round exit to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2022.

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At the trade deadline, Chicago flipped over a large portion of its roster, dealing away seven players, including fan favorites such as Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu in an effort, as Karnisovas deemed it, “to get out of the middle.” But Chicago’s deadline moves did not dramatically improve their lottery odds or gain any pieces the team sees as part of its future, sources told ESPN. One of the players the Bulls acquired, Jaden Ivey, was dismissed last week after several social media posts ranging on topics including religion, anti-gay sentiments and depression.

Patrick Roy out as coach of the New York Islanders.

The Islanders have lost four in a row and seven of their past 10 games, going from comfortably in a playoff spot to needing help down the stretch in a competitive Eastern Conference race.

Amaka Agugua-Hamilton out as head coach of the University of Virginia women’s basketball team.

This is mildly interesting: UVA got as far as the women’s sweet 16 this year.

Agugua-Hamilton led the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000. She went 70-58, including a 29-42 mark in ACC play.
Virginia became the first double-digit seed to reach the regional semifinals since 2022 and pulled off the upset of the tournament, knocking off No. 2 seed Iowa on the road in double overtime in the second round.
It became the first First Four team to advance this far, before falling to TCU.

But: the backstory seems to be that she “created an environment where her support staff had feared for their jobs due to abusive behavior towards them and threats to fire them”.

Virginia sports reporter Jerry Ratcliffe reported, following the announcement, that the entire women’s basketball team, except for two players, had been preparing to enter the transfer portal.