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Coaching an NBA team comes with a lot of perks, but job security is not one of them. Save for a handful of exceptions (Erik Spoelstra and his new $120M deal, Mike Malone, Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr), pretty much everyone's clock is ticking from the minute they're hired. 

Dwane Casey got canned following the season in which he won Coach of the Year. Monty Williams took the Suns to the Finals and got let go. Mike Budenholzer and Frank Vogel were fired two seasons after delivering a championship. Nick Nurse four years after. 

So nobody is safe. Least of all are the five names on the following list, which is our CBS Sports coaching hot seat rankings as the calendar has flipped on the 2023-24 season. 

1. Wes Unseld Jr., Washington Wizards

This team is a mess, which isn't all that surprising when your big offseason move is to bring in Jordan Poole, who has largely been something of a caricature of a basketball player this season. 

The Wizards are 6-30 entering play on Wednesday, the third-worst mark in the league to Detroit and the Spurs. They've lost five straight, eight of their last nine and 25 of their last 29. They own the league's worst defensive rating and a bottom-five offensive and net rating.

Kyle Kuzma is the only guy playing halfway well, and he's a decent bet to be traded. They waited way too long to trade Bradley Beal. None of their draft picks have hit (we'll hold out hope for Bilal Coulibaly. Johnny Davis was an epic bust and Deni Advija isn't moving any needles). Rui Hachimura is gone, and it feels like before long Unseld -- who was hired before the 2021-22 season -- will be, too. 

2. Monty Williams, Detroit Pistons

I'm half convinced Williams wants to get fired. The Pistons basically forced him to take the job by throwing him what was, at the time, the largest coaching contract in history at six years, $78.6 million (Popovich and Spoelstra have since passed him). 

What kind of returns has Detroit seen in the infancy of its investment? A 28-game losing streak en route to a 3-34 record entering play on Wednesday. This has happened with five lottery picks on the roster (we're not going to disingenuously classify Marvin Bagley and James Wiseman as "lottery picks" any longer, and it's a stretch to do so for Killian Hayes). 

Williams has played the core four of Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson together for an average of 5.4 minutes per game this year. That's fine if you're prioritizing winning over development, but the winning clearly isn't happening, so where's the development? 

Thompson, who appeared to be one of the more uniquely impactful young players we've seen in a while, has had his minutes cut in half. Ivey has spent much of the season in and out of lineups. Williams likes to play all-bench lineups that get murdered and his faith in Isaiah Livers, Wiseman and Bagley, the latter two having proven to be highly detrimental players -- is head-scratching. 

Williams got used to coaching veterans in Phoenix. He was hunting a championship. It just doesn't seem like he's taken well to leading a bunch of kids, and as a result, everyone, perhaps with the exception of Cunningham (who I don't think is quite as good as his No. 1 overall pick status suggests he should be, and therefore I think he's playing about level with his current abilities) is underperforming. 

Overall, this team does some pretty undisciplined stuff. Defensively they can look like they're asleep on basic coverages. Even if their players aren't as good as a lot of people thought, Williams is certainly not pushing them forward. If it continues, he's probably not going to be employed for long -- unless Detroit basically says we don't care how bad we get we're not going to pay Williams AND a new coach. That's certainly a possibility, but in a pure basketball sense, Williams' seat has to be on fire. 

3. Darvin Ham, Los Angeles Lakers

I would have Ham higher on this list if some recent reports hadn't surfaced saying he's relatively safe ... for now. But things change very quickly in the NBA. I would guess, behind the scenes, they already are, even if Buss HQ is beaming out the right messaging at the moment. 

A week ago, The Athletic reported a "deepening disconnect between Ham and the Lakers locker room," citing "six sources close to the team."

On an episode of the No Cap Room podcast, Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer called the chatter around Ham's job status "the tip of the iceberg of this guy being legitimately on the hot seat right now."

LeBron James pretty clearly took a shot at Ham by going out of his way to credit Tyronn Lue, his former coach, for the Clippers' success following the James Harden trade. 

Here's the bottom line: The Lakers, despite enjoying the best collective health they could ask for from their best players, are 19-19 and clinging to the last play-in spot. Since winning the In-Season Tournament, they have lost 10 of their last 15 games. 

Also, go look at the history of Lakers coaches post-Phil Jackson. Nobody has lasted more than three years -- not Luke Walton, Byron Scott, Mike Brown, or Mike D'Antoni. Even Frank Vogel was gone two years after he won a championship. 

So if you think Ham, by getting the Lakers to a Western Conference finals berth last season, has earned him some significant level of security, think again. His seat is hot. I don't care what a few reports to the contrary currently say. 

4. Steve Clifford, Charlotte Hornets

Clifford is extremely popular around the league, but there just isn't any positive momentum around this Hornets team. It's tough to judge Clifford fully with LaMelo Ball having missed more than half of last season and the last six weeks of this one, but they haven't exactly won with Ball anyway. 

Last season the Hornets were 13-23 with Ball on the floor and this season they're 5-10. It's not just Ball. Mark Williams has been out the past month. Gordon Hayward hasn't played in two weeks. Miles Bridges missed three weeks to start the season while serving a suspension. No. 2 overall pick Brandon Miller looks good, but he's surely not moving the needle enough for a bad team. Terry Rozier has done all he can. 

Ball is close to returning. If he gets back and the Hornets, who are 8-26 with a bottom-five offense and defense, continue to lose, Clifford could well be on his way out, even if he hasn't had enough talent or health to truly gauge his performance. 

5. Billy Donovan, Chicago Bulls

This feels like a classic "we have mutually agreed to part ways" situation. The Bulls have been legitimately trying to win three of Donovan's four seasons, and he is barely a .500 coach even if you throw out his first season (when they still had some real players). 

That doesn't mean the Bulls' front office has put well-imagined rosters on the floor. They traded the pick that became Franz Wagner for Nikola Vucevic. They were fooling themselves into thinking the DeMar DeRozan-Zach LaVine pairing was going to be a title contender.

They did try to pair up Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso to address the defense, and those two were destructive together, but Ball's career being in jeopardy has thrown a wrench in the plans. Still, those plans were faulty to start with. This is a team that pinned its hopes on old players in a strategy that dates back to bringing in Dwyane Wade. 

I don't think anyone would argue that Donovan is a superior coach, but his eventual exit won't entirely be about his actual coaching. This is just a team that desperately needs a fresh start on all fronts. Zach LaVine needs to be traded. They should've already traded DeMar DeRozan, who's set to become a free agent this summer. And once the rebuild starts, it's hard to imagine Donovan being around for the next phase of Bulls basketball. 

Keep an eye on ...

  • Chauncey Billups, Portland Trail Blazers: It's a young, rebuilding team so he's going to get some leeway, but Billups hasn't established any kind of good vibes during his time in Portland, and that includes when he had Damian Lillard at his disposal. 
  • Adrian Griffin, Milwaukee Bucks: The Bucks have exactly zero time to allow Griffin to learn on the job. The defense taking a big step back isn't surprising given the swap of Jrue Holiday for Damian Lillard, but Griffin didn't help matters in the early going by trying to install an aggressive, high-attacking system that brought Brook Lopez out of his typical drop coverage and went against the strength of the Bucks' personnel. Lillard, meanwhile, just hasn't gotten going offensively. If the defense is going to be worse, and Griffin also can't figure out how to get the most out of Lillard as he adjusts to not having as much control of the offense as he's used to, he might have to go if the Bucks hit an extended rough patch. 
  • Frank Vogel, Phoenix Suns: I would be surprised to see this one happen, but the offense is not Vogel's strength and man are the Suns a snooze to watch. They're a .500 team with a supremely stagnant attack, and if the defense was supposed to be Vogel's strong suit, that hasn't been very good either. The Suns don't shoot 3s and don't protect the rim. The math game is never in their favor, which makes them too reliant on Devin Booker and Kevin Durant going berserk from the midrange. Bradley Beal basically being out all season is Phoenix's one excuse, but right now this is an absolute average team all the way across the board, and that's not what Vogel was brought in for.