Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that the Thunder have fired head coach Scott Brooks and will begin searching for the next coach to be widely undermined by the basketblogging community.
Woj adds that Sam Presti went out to meet Brooks in California to deliver the news in person, and that Brooks will be a candidate for the jobs in Denver and Orlando, teams populated with players comparable to the Thunder’s 4-12 roster slots. He also reports that Billy Donovan, coach at Florida, is a possible replacement for Brooks, while Russ and KD-favorite Kevin Ollie said today he’d stay at UConn for the foreseeable future. (No word on NBA nerd-favorite Alvin Gentry, but fingers crossed.)
Brooks had one year remaining on his deal at $4.5 million, which the Thunder will now eat.
Wojnarowski has a rich history of reporting on the Thunder’s personnel moves:
Why didn’t officials give him longer than an hour to consider a final four-year, $54 million offer before trading him?
“After everything we established – everything we had done – you give me an hour?” Harden told Yahoo! Sports on Monday afternoon. “This was one of the biggest decisions of my life. I wanted to go home and pray about it. It hurt me. It hurt.”
Asked if additional time might have caused him to accept a deal several million dollars short of the $60 million maximum contract Harden had long sought, he responded: “Who knows? Another day, who knows what another day would’ve done?”
[Yahoo]
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