A day many expected would arrive has indeed arrive. The Washington Wizards, off to a 2-15 start, have fired coach Flip Saunders, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
After a 2-15 start to the season, the Washington Wizards have fired Flip Saunders as coach, a league source tells Y! Sports.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) January 24, 2012
Saunders departs after posting a 51-130 record in two-plus years as the Wizards' coach. He was brought in to lead a team built around Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison to contention, and instead stuck around for almost two calendar years once it was broken up. Saunders had one year and $4 million left on his deal after this year.
To be honest, as nice a man as Saunders is and as earnestly as he tried, it just wasn't working. This was the right move to make, so long as it's the first of many to turn this program around.
More to come as it happens.
UPDATE: Ken Berger reports that Randy Wittman will take over. Michael Lee confirms.
UPDATE: This explains Nick Young's benching.
Source says something happened between Nick Young and Flip Saunders at halftime of #Wizards #Sixers last night.
— Craig Stouffer (@CraigStouffer) January 24, 2012
UPDATE: Andray Blatche was just on 106.7 The Fan and said, among other things, that he wasn't aware of any altercation between Saunders and Young.
UPDATE: This from Ken Berger should all be blockquoted:
Tempers flared during the first half of that game, as players were "upset about being subbed out" when the Wizards were down by as many as 30 points, a person with knowledge of the situation told CBSSports.com.
"At that point," the person said, "no one had the right to complain about anything."
Berger also said that more changes are expected.
UPDATE: It's now official. Here's Ernie Grunfeld in the press release.
“We felt the team had become unresponsive and we will look to Randy to provide a different voice and a change in philosophy moving forward,” said Grunfeld. “We have been transparent in how we would evaluate our team this season and we were disappointed in the lack of development of our players at this point in our rebuilding plan.”