Winning NBA Coach of the Year award doesn't lead to job security

Perhaps Jerry Sloan should be thankful he's never won the NBA Coach of the Year award.

If he had, it seems likely that he wouldn't be coaching the Utah Jazz right now — at least judging by recent trends in the Association.

Mike Brown, winner of last year's top coaching honor, is still with the Cleveland Cavaliers — but he shouldn't start feeling too comfortable. He may be looking for a new job in the not-too-distant future.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it seems like winning coach of the year honors is the beginning of the end, the kiss of death — or whatever you want to call it.

Byron Scott, the 2007-08 winner with the New Orleans Hornets, is the latest casualty. He was unceremoniously fired Thursday just nine games into the season with the Hornets a disappointing 3-6.

"Accountability was our theme this past summer," Hornets vice president Chad Shinn said in a statement released by the team. "We talked about the fact that everyone on our staff is held to a certain standard of performance and we didn't feel this was happening at the head coach level."

Hornets general manager Jeff Bower didn't go very far in his search for Scott's replacement. In fact, all he had to do was look in the mirror to find the guy who he felt was right for the job — as Bower made himself the coach despite no previous head coaching experience.

Helping Bower as New Orleans' top assistant will be Tim Floyd, the former Bulls and Hornets head coach who resigned during the summer after a controversial stint coaching at USC.

But while the Hornets were unquestionably off to a slow start, was it really necessary to fire Scott just nine games into the season?

"We weren't comfortable with the amount of progress we were seeing," Bower told the media on Thursday.

So much for loyalty in the NBA.

Scott, with considerable help from All-Star point guard Chris Paul, led the Hornets to a 56-26 record in 2007-08. New Orleans then beat Dallas in the first round of the playoffs before giving the Spurs a tough, seven-game series in the second round.

Last season the Hornets took a step backward, going 49-33 and losing in the first round of the playoffs to the Denver Nuggets.

Often the inability of a coach to get along with the star player is a reason for what seems like a premature dismissal. Magic Johnson famously spoke out against his coach Paul Westhead early in the 1981-82 season. And Westhead was almost immediately fired — despite the fact that together Johnson and Westhead had led the Lakers to an NBA title in 1980.

But it appears that Paul had no problem with Scott.