NBA - Sixers fired Maurice Cheeks

By Audrey Nolan

The Philadelphia 76ers decided to fire head coach Maurice Cheeks after a bad start this season, following a record of 8 loses in the last 10 games, which was not good at all for the team’s President Ed Stefanski, who chose not to take this very far and decided to replace Cheeks, mostly because he knows that the team has everything it needs to win the games.

Last season the 76ers had a big turnaround at the middle of the season when they recovered from an 18-30 start and made it to the playoffs afterwards. The team is known for their running fast break, but recently it has been very slow. During last season, their fast break helped them to make it to the playoffs at the end, but right now is just becoming all bad again.

On Tuesday Cheeks had a press conference to thank all the 76ers fans for their support and also to proclaim his responsibility for the bad start of the team the season. He explained that sometimes the bad performance of a team happen just because the coach is not working the way they expect and even though he thought that he was doing his best, it was not like that for the team.

"I think it would have been selfish for me to just pick up and leave and go and not show my appreciation to the people that have supported me," Cheeks said. "I pretty much grew up in this town. Things don't always work out the way you expect them to, I take solace in the fact I did the best I could."

In the offseason the 76ers signed Elton Brand and Andre Iguodala for $80 million contracts and gave another $25 million to Louis Williams as a good movement to improve their bad start of last season and to have a team with intentions to make it to the playoffs; when they had such a poor start they decided that it was not the team who was not working, it was the coach so the replacement came, placing the team’s assistant general manager Tony DiLeo for the rest of the season.

Coach Maurice Cheeks started his basketball career as player of the West Texas State University in 1974, where he still holds the third leading in scoring record in WTSU history. In the 1978 NBA draft he was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers, where he played as point guard for 11 of his 15 years of career as player. He helped the team to reach four NBA finals and earned one NBA championship in 1983. He retired from the NBA in 1993 ranking as third all-time in steals and eighth all-time in assists.

After his retirement as player, he coached in the Continental Basketball Association for one year and he later spent seven seasons being assistant coach for the Philadelphia 76ers until 2001 when they got to the NBA finals. Later that year he was hired as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and under his four years tenure they got to the playoffs twice. He got fired from the Blazers after an unsatisfactory start in the 2004-05 season. In 2005 he was appointed as the 76ers head coach and in his first two years the team didn’t make it to the playoffs but despite that, the Sixers extended his contract one year and they got all the way to the quarterfinals of the playoffs where the fell to the Pistons.

Coach Cheeks is a very popular figure, and very loved by fans and media. We all hope the best for him in the future.

About the Author

Audrey Nolan is a top senior copy writer on NBA games and sports action for the online sports betting: http://www.instantactionsports.com. Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety on your site, make sure to leave all links in place and do not modify any of the content.