5 NBA coaches who could be on the hot seat

Holiday season is approaching, which typically means that for a small subset of NBA coaches, the chopping block beckons.

With Kevin McHale getting his walking papers from the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, here are five other pink-slip candidates to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.

Dwane Casey, Toronto Raptors

It came as a mild surprise when Casey was retained after the Raptors' epic flameout in last season's playoffs. He preceded GM Masai Ujiri in Toronto - he is, in fact, the fifth-longest tenured coach active in the NBA - and received tepid support from the team's best player after last season.

Now, a 2-6 slide after a franchise-best 5-0 start, a trio of late-game snafus to fumble away three straight winnable contests, the curious (mis)use of the team's ostensible big man of the future, and a crunch-time offense that's treating DeMar DeRozan like he's peak Kobe Bryant (note: he's not), have perhaps loosened Casey's hold on his job.

Of the Raptors' six losses this season, five have been decided in the game's final minute. Their point differential suggests they're better than their record, which can be taken either as a sign things will stabilize in time, or that Casey is simply clumsy at making adjustments as games get older and tighten up. The eye test certainly bears out the latter.

This isn't anything new. The Raptors were 29-11 in games decided by 10 or more points last season, but just 20-22 in games decided by single digits. The year previous, they were 24-6 and 24-28 in such games, respectively.

Casey's effectively a lame-duck coach anyway (he's in the second year of a three-year contract, but the third year is a team option), so it's doubtful the Raptors will make a midseason change unless things really go off the rails. But it's looking increasingly likely that there will be fresh legs stalking the sidelines in Toronto next year.

Dave Joerger, Memphis Grizzlies

The Grizzlies have turned it around of late, winning three straight going into the weekend, but It was only two weeks ago that rumors out of the mid-south had Joerger on the hot seat.

The reasons the team might part ways with the 41-year-old coach go beyond a a subpar record. Joerger's history with owner Robert Pera is far from smooth, evidenced by when he openly interviewed for the Minnesota Timberwolves' head-coaching vacancy in 2014.

Despite questions about their players' effectiveness in a changing NBA, the Grizzlies have sustained a strong defensive reputation - one they are not living up to this season. Through 12 games, they rank 28th in the league in defensive efficiency, the lowest mark the franchise has hit since 2009-10.

Add in reports that Pera is believed to be enamored with Tom Thibodeau, and one wonders if a change won't be made in an attempt to squeeze the most out of the Grit-and-Grind era's twilight years. Memphis currently sits at 6-6, straddling the line between playoff contention and the lottery.

George Karl, Sacramento Kings

Let's make one thing abundantly clear: it would be ridiculous for the Kings to remove Karl now, and hire their fifth head coach since 2012. Let's make another thing abundantly clear: the Kings are capable of anything.

The team had a tidy three-game win streak snapped Wednesday, and sit at 4-8 going into Thursday's game. Somehow, the perpetual dysfunction of the Karl-DeMarcus Cousins relationship keeps resolving itself - on the surface, at least.

Until the next flare-up.

Would the Kings seriously entertain trading their franchise center to the Boston Celtics for a pair of first-round picks and salary filler, as some have suggested? Or would owner Vivek Ranadive simply fire Karl the same way he unceremoniously dumped Michael Malone 24 games into last season?

It's not a rhetorical question. Nobody actually knows.

Lionel Hollins, Brooklyn Nets

It's not Hollins' fault the Nets dumped all their draft picks and mortgaged their future for what turned out to be a single playoff series victory, but the fact his team has no incentive to be bad means he'll likely have less rope than contemporaries like Brett Brown, or even Byron Scott (more on him shortly).

While much of the Nets' focus this past offseason was on ducking the luxury tax, they did pony up for Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young. It was a play at short-term relevancy ahead of perhaps the most crucial free-agency summer in NBA history, and so far it has failed. The Nets are 2-10, and headed for a high lottery pick that could well land a franchise-altering star ... for the Celtics.

Hollins has failed to establish anything resembling an identity in Brooklyn. The team's culture has been uninspired, their play plodding and predictable. This season, they've been a catastrophe at both ends of the floor (29th on offense, 25th on defense), and though they've perked up of late - with wins over the Rockets and Hawks, plus a near-upset of the defending champs - this may be one of those situations in which the front office decides it needs to make a "statement" - for lack of anything else to do, essentially.

At a certain point, someone always has to take the fall.

Byron Scott, Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers, unlike the Nets, have every reason to be as terrible as possible this season: The only way they keep their first-round pick is if it lands in the top three.

Their surest road to that kind of ineptitude may be keeping Scott, whose tactics are fossilized, whose offensive sets show no demonstrable rhyme or reason, and who - for all his bloviating about the importance of defense and toughness - has now coached five consecutive teams with defensive ratings that rank 26th or worse. That's nuts.

Still, even given the lottery considerations, Scott may force the front office's hand if he keeps nailing rookie D'Angelo Russell to the bench. The Lakers picked Russell second overall this summer with the expectation that he'd be their point guard of the future. Right now, he's averaging 5.5 fourth-quarter minutes per game, tied with Ryan Kelly for ninth on the team, and nearly four minutes fewer than Lou Williams is getting.

Wins don't matter for the Lakers right now. Russell's development does.

(Dis)honorable mention

Alvin Gentry, New Orleans Pelicans

The Pelicans are a ghastly 1-11 - likely to be 1-12 after Friday's matchup with the San Antonio Spurs - and their postseason hopes are disappearing by the minute.

Still, it's difficult to see Gentry, in his first season on the bench in New Orleans, not getting an early pass from team ownership. The Pelicans are decimated by injuries, including to Anthony Davis.

On Wednesday, they dressed only nine players. Two of them were Kendrick Perkins, and the now-waived Jimmer Fredette.