When management didn't move fast enough, these teams took matters into their own hands, undermining their coach and questioning his authority until there was no choice left but to fire him.
1) '81-'82 Lakers: Paul Westhead
It all started with an innocent bike ride. Jack McKinney was a highly respected assistant coach around the league when the Lakers hired him in 1979 for their head job. It was a perfect time to take over the team. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was aging but still highly effective, and considered McKinney a confidant and friend, while young stars Jamaal Wilkes and Norm Nixon were just coming into their own. And then there was a fellow rookie with McKinney named Magic Johnson. McKinney named Westhead, the longtime head coach at La Salle, 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 decided to take a bike ride to Westhead's house to play tennis. In a freak accident, McKinney stopped at an intersection and lost control of his bike, flying over the handlebars and landing face first on the pavement below. Though he recovered from the life-threatening facet of the injuries, McKinney had lingering mental effects and could not resume his coaching duties. Westhead was named interim coach, and later offered the head job when it became apparent McKinney wouldn't be returning that season. Westhead asked Pat Riley, then a TV color commentator, to join him on the sidelines, and stuck to McKinney's installed systems. It worked to the best possible effect, with the Lakers winning the 1980 championship. But the '80-'81 follow-up was a letdown, as Johnson missed much of the regular season with a serious knee injury and the Lakers limped to the West's #3 seed. They were summarily shocked by the Rockets in the first round and after spending the summer stewing and embarrassed, Westhead thought it was time to make some changes to McKinney's old playbook. Most of his new plays were designed to get Kareem more involved in the half-court offense, a strategy that didn't sit well with his youngest star, who wished to push the ball in transition whenever possible. Tensions came to a head after the Lakers started the '81-'82 season with a 2-4 record and Johnson was publicly throwing his coach under the bus. Meanwhile, Abdul-Jabbar, Wilkes, and Nixon privately grumbled over Magic's petulant behavior. Even as the team won five in a row, it was clear that the electric, jovial energy had been sapped from the Lakers' locker room and sideline, and owner Jerry Buss gave Westhead the pink slip. It's debatable to this day who was more responsible for Westhead's ouster, Buss or Johnson. Many claim that it was Buss, feeling residual guilt about choosing Westhead over McKinney, and interested only in winning with an entertaining product on the floor, that goaded Johnson into turning on his coach. No matter the true impetus, the end result was Riley as head coach, and six months later the Lakers were celebrating another championship, their first of four with Riley in charge.
2) '10-'11 Pistons: John Kuester
After a brief playing career of his own in the late '70s, Kuester got his coaching start under Rick Pitino at Boston University. He eventually became head coach at George Washington, then an assistant for six different NBA teams. After three decades in the coaching business, he was getting his first shot as a head coach in the NBA for the Pistons in 2009, and truth be told it's hard to imagine a worst situation to step into. After reaching at least the Conference Finals for six straight seasons, the Pistons had floundered in '08-'09 under first year coach Michael Curry, finishing below .500 and getting swept out of the playoffs' first round. Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace were gone, Ben Wallace was a shell of his former self, and Rip Hamilton was aging fast. General manager Joe Dumars had lavished ridiculous contracts on perpetual disappointments Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, and was attempting to patch further holes by signing a past-his-prime Tracy McGrady. In Kuester's first season, Detroit missed the playoffs for the first time in nine years, and in his second season things somehow got worse. One would think that Kuester's time as an assistant under Larry Brown when the Pistons won the 2004 title would serve him well in relationships with that team's hold-outs, but it was a specific incident with Hamilton that really started the drama. In early January, with the team floundering well below .500, Hamilton supposedly blew up at Kuester during a practice, berating him in front of the other players and staff. The next night Hamilton received the first "DNP - Coach's Decision" of his career that didn't involve resting up for the playoffs, and was shifted to the bench for the remainder of the season. When several Pistons veterans boycotted a morning shoot-around in solidarity with Hamilton, Kuester responded by leaving Hamilton, Prince, Wallace, McGrady, and several others affixed to the bench for an entire game, as he used just a six-man rotation. Angry with a ref's call that night during the second quarter, Kuester stormed onto the court and was ejected from the game. Cameras caught McGrady and Wallace laughing on the sidelines as their coach was escorted to the locker room. Even after all that, Kuester lasted until the end of the season, probably because the owner was in the process of selling the team and didn't want to make any drastic changes. After the sale became final, Kuester was almost immediately let go. He has since become a scout for the Lakers.
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 a surprise then 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 reigns 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 he 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 possible of 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.