Marc Iavaroni Fired

Breaking news on Yahoo! NBA

Halfway through another lost season, the Memphis Grizzlies fired coach Marc Iavaroni on Thursday night.

Team spokesman Dustin Krugel confirmed Iavaroni’s dismissal, but would not say who would coach the Grizzlies on Friday night against the Knicks. General manager Chris Wallace was traveling to New York.

Memphis has lost seven straight and 15 of 17 to fall to 11-30 after Iavaroni led the team to a 22-60 record last season, his first as an NBA head coach.

Iavaroni’s firing was first reported by TNT and The Commercial Appeal.

No word on the replacement as of this post.

He couldn't really do much with the roster he had but I guess he probably could've achieved a little more success. Chris Wallace made a bunch of bad moves as GM apart from acquiring Mayo.

http://www.nba.com/2009/news/01/22/Iava ... index.html

Johnny Davis expected to take over in the interim, with Lionel Hollins perhaps taking over again to finish out the year.

I guess it's to be expected, if Eddie Jordan, Sam Mitchell and Mo Cheeks couldn't keep their jobs, then Iavaroni had no chance.

Well the Grizzlies have been struggling lately, but you should not blame the coach for putting together a team which is simply too young and to far away from its peak. John Paxson for example recently admitted that his Bulls roster did not give the best opportunities to Coach Del Negro and that he takes the blame for that. Thats a good sign imo.

I hope stu jackson or bryan hill comes back as a coach for the grizzlies. At least their looks were interesting.

Well the Grizzlies have been struggling lately, but you should not blame the coach for putting together a team which is simply too young and to far away from its peak. John Paxson for example recently admitted that his Bulls roster did not give the best opportunities to Coach Del Negro and that he takes the blame for that. Thats a good sign imo.

I agree, though in all fairness the Bulls aren't going to fire Del Negro this early in his tenure especially when they're still paying out Scott Skiles' contract for another year (or two?). Nevertheless, it's good to see Paxson take the blame for that because he's made some bad moves the last couple of years.

Back to Iavaroni, it's not surprising given the way coaches have been shown the door this year or the perennial approach of putting the blame on the coach when the team loses but it's still a bit hasty given he was only in his second season with the team and they haven't had an imposting roster this year or last. A young roster with potential and some talent, sure, but not one that should be expected to do great things. I guess the pressure is there to do something when the team struggles and coaches will always be a popular scapegoat in these situations but I think it further demonstrates how impatient teams are these days, expecting too much too soon.

The Grizzles offered Avery Johnson the job for coach, but he turned them down

He's probably in no rush to return to the sidelines, at least halfway through the year. Perhaps after what went down in Dallas, he's rather take a full season off and evaluate his options and the coaching vacancies this coming offseason. It seems unlikely he won't look at coaching again, though I like his work on ESPN.