Who fired Cheeks? We know it wasn't the GM who hired him

Philadelphia's Maurice Cheeks saw the writing on the wall 10 days ago, when Sam Mitchell of Toronto became the third coach to be fired in the first five weeks of the NBA season.

Before a home game against the Lakers, a reporter pointed out that Cheeks' situation was similar to Mitchell's: Two coaches who hadn't been hired by their current general managers, whose teams had made quantum leaps to earn them contract extensions, only to face heightened expectations this season.

'We made the decision -- or excuse me, I made the decision,' Ed Stefanski says Saturday. (AP)

"Oh, don't say that now," Cheeks said, employing the final tool at the disposal of a coach about to lose his job -- gallows humor.

Cheeks became the fifth NBA coach to be fired this season when he was let go Saturday. Tony DiLeo, the assistant vice president and assistant GM, was installed as the interim coach. Fittingly, the Sixers were preparing for a home game against the Wizards on Saturday night -- the battle of the interims.

The carnage in the coaching ranks is staggering, but only underscores how fragile the existence can be -- especially if you have not been hired by your GM. Cheeks, Mitchell and former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan were not chosen by their bosses, and to a degree, P.J. Carlesimo's hiring with Seattle/Oklahoma City was not GM Sam Presti's idea.

In Minnesota, Randy Wittman was a joint production by Kevin McHale and owner Glen Taylor. But the ailing roster bore McHale's fingerprints, which is why McHale was booted from the executive offices to straighten it out.

Still, a person with knowledge of the Sixers' situation said team president/GM Ed Stefanski remained solidly in Cheeks' corner in recent days, which begs the question: Who fired him? Either some minor stylistic differences between Cheeks and Stefanski reached a breaking point during the current stretch of losing four out of five -- including back-to-back to Cleveland -- or someone upstairs pulled the trigger.

"It must have come from upstairs because Eddie was convinced that Mo hadn't lost the team," the person said. "Eddie had every intention of keeping him. "

The person said the only act that could've doomed Cheeks with Stefanski would've been insubordination -- running too many plays for the fading Andre Miller, for example, or straying too far from the up-tempo style that made the team successful last season. The appointment of DiLeo -- a 19-year veteran of the Sixers' front office and a "yes man," the person said -- also points to forces higher than Stefanski pushing Cheeks out the door.

Stefanski seemed to admit as much with his opening comments at Saturday night's news conference: "We made the decision -- or excuse me, I made the decision -- because I felt we were not progressing the way we wanted to progress."

Either way, Cheeks' situation most closely paralleled that of Mitchell, whom GM Bryan Colangelo inherited. But Colangelo's plans to install a Euro-style coach who would spread the floor, push the ball and nurture former No. 1 pick Andrea Bargnani went by the boards when Mitchell won 47 games two years ago and was named Coach of the Year. Mitchell got a three-year extension, which is the new kiss of death in the coaching ranks, replacing the dreaded "vote of confidence."

Cheeks, too, received a contract extension back in February -- one year with the option for a second, which amounts to the bare-minimum security an NBA coach can have. He was coming off a season in which the Sixers surprised even themselves by making the playoffs and playing a competitive six-game series against the Pistons.

But Cheeks didn't want to hear about how his contract extension meant anything that night against the Lakers, the same night Mitchell's extension didn't mean anything, either.

Mo Cheeks is fired 5 days after the T-Wolves dismiss Randy Wittman. (Getty Images)

"That doesn't necessarily mean you're safe," Cheeks said. "That just means you have a little time on your hands and it makes you a little comfortable. It doesn't mean you're safe. We all understand what this entails and we take the good with the bad."

The Sixers started the season 9-14 despite Stefanski's dramatic addition of free-agent power forward Elton Brand, who has struggled mightily after playing only eight games last season due to an Achilles injury. In trying to adapt the team's freewheeling style to accommodate Brand's post presence, Cheeks went away from the roster's strengths. It was a lose-lose proposition.

"In Mo's mind, that gave him an excuse to play a different way in order to keep (Brand) involved and active," the person familiar with the team's thinking said. "Brand hasn't exactly been an up-and-down guy, whereas Eddie doesn't think that's true."

Cheeks' predicament seemed to have reached the critical stage when Stefanski said recently that "patience" was not in his vocabulary. If the decision wasn't forced on him, then Stefanski broke the mold of being loyal and patient with his coach, a practice he learned at the right hand of Rod Thorn in New Jersey. Loyalty, however, is one thing when you hired the coach and something quite different when you didn't.

With the possible exception of Toronto -- which has enough talent to squeak into the playoffs under interim coach Jay Triano -- it will be another lost season for all these teams and their coaches from the temp agency. Either way, Colangelo, Stefanski, Presti, and Washington's Ernie Grunfeld (if he survives) will start anew next summer with coaches they can support for more than 20 or 25 games. Taylor, the bungling Timberwolves owner, in all likelihood will begin the next era of incompetence in Minnesota with a new coach and a new GM. At some point, you have to wonder when these guys will run out of retreads, not to mention paying customers.

"You want to win now," said Chris Bosh, whose Raptors are 2-3 since Mitchell was let go. "That's what we've been talking about, that's what we've been working toward. I think there's extra motivation to get some wins and make changes and just try to refresh everybody's mindset."

No other sports league boasts as many refreshed mindsets as the NBA, where coaches -- and the bumbling franchises that keep firing them -- are the most endangered of species.