All Aboard the Coaching Carousel!

In sports, we typically associate failure with a team's inability to perform. We point to players underperforming, team chemistry lacking and a general lack of desire to compete. Now think about that for a second and compare it to the job market. If an employee (player) underperforms, what happens to them? They are fired. When a company (team) underperforms, who gets fired? The employees (team). But who's left with a comfortable settlement or a nice stock option? The higher-ups, the head honchos, in sport's terms, the team personnel. Yet, when we look at the way in which job performance is evaluated in professional sports, it is markedly different than in the actual job market.

Let's take the Washington Wizards as an example. Any devoted NBA fan is well aware of the struggles Washington has been having this season. It's fairly safe to say that they are the worst team in the league. They underperform in nearly every aspect of the game and almost always come out (except against the Knicks curiously) with an overly lazy attitude towards the game of basketball. Now if you were the boss of the Wizards, what would you do? Well, any reasonable and sane person would say to themselves that the players should be held accountable for the team's failures right? Wrong. In the NBA and the other 3 major sports, it is team personnel that frequently is blamed for a team's troubles. We all know the Wizards are an underdeveloped team that is likely years away from aggressively competing in the NBA. Surrounding young John Wall with selfish players like Andray Blatche, Rashard Lewis and JaVale McGee simply isn't going to do it. Yet, who takes the fall when the team struggles? Not Blatche, not Lewis and not McGee. Instead the blame is placed on Flip Saunders, the head coach, who had little to no role in choosing the players for his team this season. We all know that Flip Saunders has an impressive coaching pedigree. Heck, he led the Pistons to the NBA finals in 2006 (albeit in losing fashion to the Miami Heat) in his first season as head coach of the team. So clearly, the guy knows how to win. Yet, when the team struggles, the blame is placed squarely on the head coach whether they like it or not.

Now, the Flip Saunders example is of course just one of many in sports. We could mention Paul Westphal and the Kings, Larry Brown and the Knicks, Joe Torre and the Yankees, Raheem Morris and the Buccaneers, Jack Del Rio and the Jags, but the list could keep going on and on. Of course, when are you in the shoes of the owners of these teams, it is much more financially responsible to drop a coach as opposed to a player. But that does not make it any more reasonable. Players know they are guaranteed jobs for a great length of their professional career. Most know that if they play their cards right, a team will always be willing to take a chance on them and for a very nice amount of money as well. The same cannot be said for coaches. Give a coach a 5 year contract nowadays, and you're lucky if he makes it past two. These are jobs we're talking about. When you fire a coach, sure he might find a job elsewhere but the accountability has got to be rerouted towards those who are truly responsible for the team's failure. No ones likes getting fired. Especially when you're not the one who should be solely accountable for it.