Coach Scott Brooks, who led the Oklahoma City Thunder to their only NBA Finals appearance in 2012 and took them to the playoffs five straight years before missing out this season, was fired Wednesday by the team.
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The team announced the dismissal, couched under the ever-popular “parted ways,” on its website.
“This is an extremely difficult decision on many levels,” general manager Sam Presti said in the release. “Scott helped establish the identity of the Thunder and has earned his rightful place in the history of our organization through his seven years as a valued leader and team member.”
In any event, it shows once again that life as an NBA head coach is a tough, tough gig.
The Thunder overcame a 4-12 start, playing without injured Kevin Durant for all of that stretch and without point guard Russell Westbrook for 14½ of those games after he broke a bone in his hand on the second night of the campaign, to finish 45-37, losing a tiebreaker to the New Orleans Pelicans for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
That was despite reigning MVP Durant missing 55 games with a Jones fracture in his right foot that eventually required bone-graft surgery, playing without shot-blocker Serge Ibaka for 18 games and missing Westbrook—the NBA scoring champion at 28.1 points per game—for 15.
Reserve Anthony Morrow played in 74 games, the most of any member of the team and the only player to miss fewer than 10 games.
But in the end, the 41-25 finish wasn’t enough to save Brooks.
“He led us, man,” Durant told ESPN.com of Brooks. “He made sure everybody was emotionally stable because we had a lot of guys in and out of the lineup and he kept everybody together. That’s what your head coach is supposed to do. I can’t really say nothing about it because he did his job. He kept us together.”
Brooks took over as interim coach on Nov. 22, 2008, replacing P.J. Carlesimo after a 1-12 start to the season, and was named head coach on a permanent basis shortly after the 2008-09 season ended.
He was named NBA Coach of the Year in 2009-10 after guiding the team to a 27-win improvement, from 23-59 to 50-32, and getting the Thunder into the playoffs in their second season after the franchise was moved from Seattle.
The young club reached the Western Conference Finals in 2011 and the NBA Finals in 2012 before bowing out in the second round in 2013 after Westbrook was injured during the first round.
Oklahoma City was back in the Western Conference Finals last season, losing to the San Antonio Spurs.
In parts of seven seasons, Brooks was 338-207 and 39-34 in postseason play.
A 5-foot-11, 165-pound point guard, Brooks began his collegiate career in 1983 at TCI, averaging 3.8 points, 1.4 assists and 1.2 rebounds as a reserve and transferred to San Joaquin Delta College for his sophomore season. He played his final two years at UC Irvine, where he averaged 23.8 points, 3.8 assists and 2.4 steals as a senior in 1986-87.
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After playing in the Continental Basketball Association and the World Basketball League, he made the Philadelphia 76ers out of training camp in 1988 and wound up playing 10 seasons in the NBA with the 76ers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers.
He averaged 4.9 points and 2.4 assists per game in 680 career games and was a lifetime 37.2 percent 3-point shooter.
He also picked up a championship ring as a reserve for the 1994 Rockets.
He served as a player-coach for the Los Angeles Stars of the American Basketball Association in 2000-01 before being named head coach of that league’s Southern California Surf in 2001-02.
He came to the NBA as an assistant in 2003, spending three years with the Denver Nuggets and one with the Sacramento Kings before joining Carlesimo’s staff in Seattle in 2007.
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