- Luke Walton’s odds sit at +115 to be next head coach to leave post.
- Scott Brooks is not far behind with odds of +190.
- Dwane Casey, Steve Clifford, Terry Stotts are among others listed for this NBA prop bet.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Sportsbooks have listed current Sacramento Kings head coach Luke Walton as the head coach most likely to be fired or to quit the soonest.
Walton has compiled a 167-226 record as a coach between his time with the Warriors, Lakers and Kings. He has never had a winning season as a full-time head coach.
Walton signed a four-year deal in April of 2019 and still has the rest of this season as well as two more years remaining on that contract. There’s no question that Walton has had an unsuccessful time as a head coach, but is he the next one to get canned?
Next Head Coach To Permanently Leave Post Odds
- Luke Walton +115
- Scott Brooks +190
- Dwane Casey +400
- Steve Clifford +650
- Terry Stotts +650
- Billy Donovan +1500
- Stephen Silas +1500
The Longshots
To figure out which head coach is the next to go, you first need to find out whether the coach is going to get fired at all. These odds show coaches that are likely to lose their job, could possibly lose their job, as well as ones who probably won’t.
NBA bettors looking to bet on a longshot, may want to stay clear of these names. These are the coaches that will likely be in the same spot at the start of next season.
Stephen Silas (+1500)
Stephen Silas has had maybe the worst-case scenario become his reality as his time as head coach of the Houston Rockets.
Silas is a first-time head coach in the first year of his contract. He was expecting to inherit a roster with perineal MVP candidate James Harden who was teaming up with five-time all-star John Wall, six-time all-star DeMarcus Cousins, and one of the league’s fastest rising stars in Christian Wood.
After the James Harden trade saga at the beginning of the year ended, injuries between Wall and Wood significantly hurt the team’s ability to play quality basketball. Cousins ended up getting waived and in the blink of an eye, the Rockets were on a 20-game losing streak.
Given what Silas has had to deal with this season, it would be an injustice to fire him after just one year.
Billy Donovan (+1500)
Billy Donovan is in the first year of his four-year contract with the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls have a 24-33 record as of today, but the recent addition of Nikola Vucevic to pair with Zach LaVine make this a very interesting team moving forward.
Donovan is a proven winner as a coach, and it’d be surprising to see someone who is just a year removed from winning the NBA Coach’s Association Coach of the Year be fired without a full season of this newly formed legitimate duo. The Bulls could even make the playoffs this year.
The Middle of the Pack
Moving on to some more realistic options that you can still get a good price on at Bovada, these coaches could very well be moved on from at some point, but likely won’t be the first coach fired.
Terry Stotts (+650)
Terry Stotts is a more than capable NBA head coach and has been with the Portland Trailblazers since the 2012-2013 season. Aside from his first year with the team, Stotts has led the Trailblazers to the playoffs in each of the last seven seasons.
The problem with Stotts is the inability to make an NBA Finals. Under Stotts’ leadership, Portland has been bounced in the first round four times, the conference semifinals twice and the conference finals once.
It’s within the realm of possibility that Portland’s management decides it’s time to move on in hopes of a coach than can propel the team to a championship level. With that said, it’s highly unlikely that Stotts is fired before the end of the season as Portland currently sits at sixth in the Western Conference.
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Steve Clifford (+650)
Steve Clifford is in his eighth season as an NBA head coach and has yet to make it out of the first round of the playoffs. In his third year as the head coach of the Orlando Magic, Clifford finds his team a half-game back from the worst record in the Eastern Conference.
The Magic recently traded all-star big man Nikola Vucevic to Chicago for a younger center, Wendell Carter Jr., and could be painting the picture that Orlando is ready to start from scratch.
This would make it likely that Clifford’s days would be numbered as the Magic’s coach.
Dwane Casey (+400)
Dwane Casey is just in a tough situation. Not many people would say Casey is a bad coach, as his last five seasons in Toronto amounted to a 263-147 record (averaged 52.6 wins per season), but that he is simply a coach on a bad team.
Casey did make the playoffs in his first season with the Detroit Pistons, but went 20-46 last season and currently holds an 18-40 record this year which is good for last place in the Eastern Conference. Regardless, the Pistons were expected to have a rough season.
The team does have some young talent, but is in no position to get much better without the addition of some all-star level talent. Like Clifford, it might come down to if management just wants to start fresh.
The Favorites
The following coaches are the favorites for a reason. It’s pretty much unquestioned that their days are numbered, and it might just be the question of which of these two gets fired first.
Scott Brooks (+190)
Entering this season, Scott Brooks had seen a steady drop in the Washington Wizards’ record each season that he had been there. He won 49 games in his first season, 43 the next season, 32 the year after that and finally just 25 games last year.
The Wizards currently hold a 24-33 record and could potentially make a run in the new extended playoff format, but many would argue that this is an underachieving team with the likes of Russell Westbrook and Bradley Beal.
If Washington does miss the playoffs, this would be the third straight season under Brooks in which the team didn’t reach the postseason. Plus, Westbrook and Beal are both expected to leave the team within the next two years, so a coaching change wouldn’t be far behind.
Luke Walton (+115)
Luke Walton has just had no success as a head coach. This marks Walton’s fifth season as a head coach and will likely be the fifth time his team has failed to reach the playoffs.
Walton has never had a winning record in his career, is currently 5.5 games back of the tenth-seeded Spurs and allows a league-worst 118.6 points per game.
Walton’s teams have finished as a bottom 10 defensive unit in three of his previous four seasons while also finishing in the bottom half in terms of offensive scoring in three of his four years. There are many issues with the Kings organization, but Walton makes the easiest scapegoat as the head coach.
Last year Vlade Divac got fired, this time around it could be Luke Walton.
Nick got involved with the world of sports at a young age and never turned his back on it. He graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Broadcast/Journalism. In his free time, you can catch him at the bottom of the leaderboards on any video game he’s playing.
