14 years ago today: The Lakers fire Mike Brown five games into the Dwight Howard and Steve Nash season, and Staples Center chants for Phil Jackson

Fourteen years ago today, on Friday, November 9, 2012, the Los Angeles Lakers fired Mike Brown. They had played five games. The team that had just added Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, and that was supposed to chase a championship, was 1-4, and the front office decided it could not wait to see whether things would get better.

Brown is now the coach of the defending champion New York Knicks. The man the Lakers let go after five games won his first title as a head coach in June, 13 and a half years later, and this fall he has been the one asking a slow-starting team for patience.

Five All-Stars and a new offense

The summer of 2012 had looked like a coup. The Lakers traded for Nash, a two-time MVP, in July and landed Howard, a three-time Defensive Player of the Year, in August. With Bryant, Gasol and Metta World Peace, they had a starting five of All-Stars with 33 All-Star selections between them, the league’s highest payroll and its oldest starting lineup, with Nash at 38 and Bryant at 34.

Brown, in his second season after replacing Phil Jackson in 2011, also changed the offense. He installed a version of the Princeton offense, a read-and-cut system that asks every player to pass and move. It was the Lakers’ third offense in three years, after Jackson’s triangle and Brown’s own sets in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, when they went 41-25 and lost to Oklahoma City in the second round.

Nothing came together. Howard was coming back from back surgery in April and played in only two preseason games. Bryant was playing through a sore foot and could not practice. The Lakers went 0-8 in the preseason. Brown said it might take until January for the team to master the new system.

1-4

The regular season started the same way. Dallas won the opener at Staples Center 99-91, with Howard going 3 for 14 at the free-throw line in his Lakers debut. Portland won the next night, and Nash broke a bone in his left leg in that game. The Clippers won 105-95 two days later, and the Lakers were 0-3 for the first time since 1978. They beat Detroit 108-79 on November 4.

The last game was on Wednesday, November 7, in Salt Lake City. Utah led by 10 at halftime and won 95-86. The Lakers shot 25 for 74 from the field, 34 percent, and 32 for 46 at the line.

• Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2012, EnergySolutions Arena, Salt Lake City
• Final: Jazz 95, Lakers 86
• Lakers: Kobe Bryant 29 points (15 of 17 free throws), Dwight Howard 19 points and 9 rebounds (5 of 12 free throws), Metta World Peace 15, Pau Gasol 5 points on 2-of-9 shooting, Jordan Hill 12 rebounds off the bench
• Jazz: Al Jefferson 18 points and 10 rebounds, Randy Foye 17 off the bench, Mo Williams 16 points and 7 assists
• Record after the game: Lakers 1-4

Two days later, the Lakers announced the change on Friday morning in Los Angeles. Assistant coach Bernie Bickerstaff would coach that night’s game against Golden State, and the search for a replacement would start right away.

OFFICIAL: Lakers Relieve Mike Brown of Head Coaching Duties – http://t.co/qApGJ0LS

— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) November 9, 2012

“A difficult and painful decision”

“This was a difficult and painful decision to make,” general manager Mitch Kupchak said in the team’s announcement. “Mike was very hard-working and dedicated, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team to make a change at this time.”

Kupchak said the reasons were simple: the record, and the lack of progress from one game to the next. “After five games we weren’t seeing improvement and we made a decision,” he said. “Maybe it would have changed … with this team, we didn’t want to wait five months and find out it wasn’t going to change.” With owner Jerry Buss in poor health, Howard due to become a free agent the next summer and the stars getting older, the Lakers felt they had no time to spare.

Brown left quietly. “I have great respect for the Buss family and the Lakers’ storied tradition and I thank them for the opportunity they afforded me,” he said in a statement. “I wish the organization nothing but success as they move forward.” Five games in, it was one of the fastest coaching changes in NBA history.

“We want Phil”

Bickerstaff’s Lakers beat the Warriors 101-77 that night. The fans at Staples Center chanted “We want Phil,” and Jackson, who had won five titles in Los Angeles, quickly became the favorite. The Lakers met with him over the weekend, and he asked for a couple of days to think about it.

The Lakers did not wait. They also talked with Mike D’Antoni, Nash’s coach during his two MVP seasons in Phoenix, and on Monday, November 12, they announced D’Antoni as their coach, saying Jerry Buss, executive vice president Jim Buss and Kupchak had been unanimous. D’Antoni had had knee replacement surgery on October 31 and could not coach right away. Bickerstaff went 4-1 as interim coach, and D’Antoni’s first game was a 95-90 win over Brooklyn on November 20.

It did not fix the season. The Lakers were 17-25 in late January and needed a late surge to finish 45-37 and take the seventh seed. Jerry Buss died in February. Bryant tore his Achilles tendon on April 12, San Antonio swept the Lakers in the first round, and Howard left for Houston that summer. D’Antoni resigned in April 2014 with a 67-87 record.

The long way to a ring

Brown’s road back took more than a decade. Cleveland rehired him in 2013 and fired him again after a 33-49 season. He spent six seasons as an assistant in Golden State, where the Warriors won three championships, and in 2022 he took over the Sacramento Kings. In his first season, the Kings went 48-34 and ended the longest playoff drought in NBA history, and Brown became the first unanimous Coach of the Year. Sacramento fired him in December 2024.

The Knicks hired him in July 2025. His first team in New York went 53-29, won the NBA Cup and then went 16-3 in the playoffs, beating San Antonio 94-90 in Game 5 of the Finals on June 13, 2026, for the franchise’s first championship since 1973. Brown had waited 19 years between trips to the Finals as a head coach, a Finals record.

This season, the champions opened 2-4, and after a loss in Philadelphia, Brown told his team to stop chasing home runs. Fourteen years ago, a front office looked at a 1-4 start and decided five games were enough to judge a coach. In New York, nobody is asking that question.