The Cleveland Cavaliers made the speculation that has surrounded the team for the past few weeks reality on Thursday, firing head coach Byron Scott.

Scott was “released” from his duties in Cleveland (the team’s word) after compiling a record of 64-166 and successfully guiding the team into the NBA lottery for three consecutive years.

In other words, Scott did what he was ostensibly hired to do.

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Byron Scott’s coaching record in three Cavs season was 64-166 – a .278 winning percentage. It is the worst winning percentage for any Cavs coach who patrolled the sideline for at least one full season.

It’s worse than Bill Fitch (.412), who presided over a half-decade of expansion-era futility in early ‘70s, before the Miracle of Richfield gave the franchise its first taste of respectability. It’s worse that Bill Musselman, a Ted Stepien hire (.287).

It’s worse than Randy Wittman (.378), John Lucas (.298) or Paul Silas (.473).

The NBA is a business driven by wins and losses, and if you’re a coach who has too much of the latter and not enough of the former, you’re not going to hang onto your job.

That’s the simplest explanation for why Scott was fired on Thursday.

Even though the Cavs were most definitely in a rebuilding mode, where talent acquisition and player development takes precedence over winning for winning’s sake, wins still equal progress. If a young team wins games, it means the players are doing enough right to get leads and hang onto them until the final buzzer.

Scott’s teams raced out to leads, but repeatedly fell apart in the fourth quarter – most infamously after holding a 27-point second-half lead against Miami in late March, a loss that certainly rubbed the fan base the wrong way, and probably didn’t win Scott any additional support in the Cavs inner sanctum.

Way too often, the Cavs were caught with a collective deer-in-headlights stare when the time came to prove their mettle and put a game in the win column. And if you peel back the onion layers on Scott’s tenure, that’s the real reason why the Cavs will be searching for a new coach this spring.

It’s three years post-LeBron, and the Cavs are still searching for an on-court identity. Scott tried to install some form of the Princeton ball-motion offense, but too often, Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters were left to freelance. Tristan Thompson seldom, if ever, had plays run through him. The center position was an offensive black hole once Anderson Varejao was lost for the season.

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This week will bring an end to the 2012-13 NBA season for the Cleveland Cavaliers and, for the third consecutive season, the Cavs will be sitting at home when the playoffs begin.

Much has been made over the past few weeks about the future of Cavs coach Byron Scott, who carries a record of 64-164 as he closes out his third year as coach, making him the longest-tenured coach of a Cleveland sports team. It’s not so much the losing – after all, the Cavs have openly been in rebuilding mode almost from the day Scott took the job – but the historic nature of the losing.

From blowing 20-plus point leads numerous times – including Tuesday night’s in Indiana, when the Cavs became just the second team in the shot-clock era to lose a game that they led by more than 20 points with less than nine minutes to play – to an ongoing lack of attention to defense, many are wondering if Scott will be back for a fourth season when the Cavs return this fall.

All the talk about Scott’s coaching future made us start to wonder just where Scott ranks among Cavs coaches throughout the years. We started following sports in the mid-1970s, so we’ve actually seen every head coach that’s ever led the Cavs onto the hardwood.

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I thought I knew the NBA. I have been following the league for years. I have seen good teams, I have seen bad teams and I have seen treadmill teams. There are varying degrees, but every single NBA team falls into one of those aforementioned categories. While the Indiana Pacers are technically contending for a championship, it would take a series of magnificently large miracles to make that happen. On the other hand, the Miami Heat are playing like a buzz-saw and look unstoppable.

When the Lakers traded for Steve Nash and subsequently traded for Dwight Howard, Cleveland fans quickly began to worry about how that would affect the Cavaliers in the upcoming draft. When Cleveland traded Ramon Sessions to the Lakers, part of the package was the ability to swap this year's Heat pick with that of the Lakers. Even though Miami was coming off a championship, the Lakers added two hall of fame level players and gave up very little to do so. The discourse changed to about how the difference in picks would now be negligible.

Instead, the Cavs are counting on a team led by Mike D'Antoni, Dwight Howard and a fresh-off-surgery Metta World Peace to win the next two games against the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets. To add insult to injury, the Cavs are also finding themselves in a position where they are counting on Antawn Jamison. We've seen this movie before and we know how it ends. At the time of writing, the Lakers have a 1 game lead on the Utah Jazz for the 8th and final playoff spot. However, the Jazz's next two opponents are the Minnesota Timberwolves and Memphis Grizzlies.

In his 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," Kurt Vonnegut continually segued between topics with the refrain "so it goes." I can't help but think of that line when I think about the current state of Cleveland sports. The Los Angeles Lakers, who have only missed the playoffs 5 times in their 65 year history, need to win out the season in order to get in as an 8th seed. Without Kobe Bryant, that is a tall order. To make matters worse, the Lakers have only missed the playoffs twice since the NBA lottery was instituted in 1985. 

Literally the one time in my adult life where I actually want the Lakers to be good, they're not. I can't even enjoy myself some schadenfreude at the expense of obnoxious Lakers fans.

So it goes...

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