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[Saba Sports News] The NBA has developed a troubling trend of firing head coaches—no matter how successful they’ve been—and Carmelo Anthony thinks he has a solution.
On Tuesday, the Denver Nuggets stunned the basketball world by firing Michael Malone with just three games left in the regular season. The move came despite Malone leading the team to eight straight winning seasons and delivering a championship just two years ago.
He’s not alone in getting the boot after success. Mike Brown was dismissed by the Kings despite being named Coach of the Year in 2022. Mike Budenholzer was let go by the Bucks two years after winning it all. Nick Nurse met a similar fate in Toronto, fired three seasons after leading the Raptors to a title.
Speaking on his *Wave Originals* show “7PM in Brooklyn,” Anthony called out the league’s growing coaching carousel and floated a radical solution to stop it.
“Why are y’all paying these coaches that much money just to let them go and still pay them?” Anthony said. “If I pay you for four years, you’re staying four years. I don’t care what the record is. I’m not wasting $75 million on a coach to work two years and then get fired. You’re going to coach whether we’re great or trash. I don’t care what fans say—you’re finishing your contract.”
Anthony went on to propose that coaches’ salaries be counted as part of the team’s overall salary cap.
Right now, only player salaries are included in the cap, giving teams freedom to spend big on coaching staff without any financial penalty. Anthony argued that if coaches’ salaries counted against the cap, teams would be much less trigger-happy with firings.
Of course, implementing a system like that would face plenty of hurdles. It would require ownership support and likely collective bargaining from coaches, who currently aren’t unionized. And given the high salaries many coaches enjoy, there’s little incentive for them to cap their own earning potential.
Still, Anthony’s take has sparked a conversation—one that might keep owners and front offices thinking twice before making their next move.