Avery Johnson was fired as head coach of the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday, one month after he was named Eastern Conference Coach of the Month for October and November, and two weeks after Deron Williams complained about the team’s offensive system.
Brooklyn entered the season with high expectations after acquiring Joe Johnson in the offseason and re-signing Gerald Wallace. They started off 11-4 and won five games to end November, but they’ve slid since then and are now 14-14.
News of Johnson’s firing came as a surprise to many people, including LeBron James, who questioned the move:
Avery got fired? He was just coach of the month wasn’t he? That’s like a player get Player of the Month then gets traded the next month #NBA
— LeBron James (@KingJames) December 27, 2012
Avery Johnson’s son, Avery Jr., was much more blunt:
This is a fuxking Outrage. My dad is a great coach, he just got coach of the month and they Fire him. #Smh. Completely new team he had.
— Avery Johnson Jr. (@itsaveryjohnson) December 27, 2012
The expectations were way to high for this team. We didn’t even have a losing record…. Didn’t even give my dad a full season. #OUTRAGE
— Avery Johnson Jr. (@itsaveryjohnson) December 27, 2012
I’m sorry are best players couldn’t make open shots. Yeah that’s my dads fault totally…
— Avery Johnson Jr. (@itsaveryjohnson) December 27, 2012
The truth is the Nets were projected to be anywhere from the third to sixth-best team in the Eastern Conference. Johnson even kept expectations low before the season, saying the Nets were not a championship team, despite what ownership may have believed. At 14-14, they’re currently eighth in the conference and only a few wins away from being where they were expected to finish.
Does the firing seem premature? It sure does to me, but when Deron Williams is unhappy, coaches get fired. First it was Jerry Sloan, and now it’s Avery Johnson.
GM Billy King says ownership made the final decision to fire Johnson, but Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski says King made the call.
At his press conference, King made it clear he was dissatisfied with the job Johnson had been doing.
“Watching us, we just didn’t have the same fire we had when we were 11-4,” Kind said. “I’ve been trying to talk to Avery to figure it out, but we weren’t able to pinpoint what was missing. You lose by 17 to the Celtics, you lose to the Knicks like you did, you lose to Milwaukee … these are teams that you talk about competing (against).”
King says he told Johnson that he wasn’t reaching the players anymore.
“We didn’t like the direction we were going,” he said.
I dunno, maybe they should have given it another week to see where it went.
