The NBA conference finals wrapped up last week with both the New Jersey Nets and the San Antonio Spurs earning a chance to vie for the NBA championship. This time of year is usually the same old story for me, but my dying interest in pro basketball was resurrected earlier in the playoffs when the loathsome Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from their quest for a fourth straight title.

The assurance of a Laker-less final just brightened my spirits. I can’t remember the last time I was actually this excited about the NBA Finals.

But, is anyone else?

The focus these last few days in the NBA hasn’t been on how this year’s series should actually go more than five games, or that Jason Kidd may finally win the big one, or even how future Hall of Famer David Robinson could end his illustrious career with a championship. Nope, instead of talking about the reason the whole season is played, the main focus of the media has been on one thing — coaching changes.

The NBA coaching carousel has become more and more ridiculous every year of the new millennium, and shows no sign of slowing down this off-season. As of right now, nearly one-third of the teams in the league are without their coach from last season. Three of them are playoff teams.

Let’s start with the Detroit Pistons. Head coach Rick Carlisle took over the struggling Pistons two years ago when the team had some young talent but wasn’t even close to being a playoff team. In fact, the Pistons were just coming off of a 50-loss season the year before Carlisle took over. In his first year as head coach, Carlisle completely revamped the Pistons, leading them to a 50-win season and a much-needed playoff berth. Carlisle was named NBA Coach of the Year that year, and the future looked bright for Detroit.

This past season, Carlisle’s Pistons amassed another 50-win season, and Detroit had the best defense in the NBA, earning them the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. The team played well in the playoffs, but fell four games short of making the Finals by going down to the New Jersey Nets in the Eastern Conference Finals.

With two great seasons under his belt and his team constantly improving, Carlisle could just sit back this off-season and figure out what his team needed to work on to get better for next season, right?

Wrong. Only one year removed from a Coach of the Year award, Carlisle was fired after winning 100 games in his first two seasons. Even more of a slap in the face for Carlisle, he was replaced by former Philadelphia 76ers head coach Larry Brown, whom Carlisle had beaten to advance to the Conference Finals only days before he was fired. I don’t mean to discredit Brown, who is a great coach, but why not stick with what had been working?

And what about the New Orleans Hornets? After fighting player injuries all season, head coach Paul Silas took the mediocre Hornets to the playoffs yet again, only to get the boot after they were eliminated from the playoffs. Apparently, it was Silas’ fault his team didn’t win the championship this year, and not the fact that his players just aren’t all that good. Please, give me a break.

Now, former ISU coach Tim Floyd is rumored to be a candidate for New Orleans. Floyd has already experienced being the fall guy for a team with terrible players after three-plus painfully bad seasons with the hapless Chicago Bulls.

It seems to me that NBA general managers are being more fickle than ever, and it will probably only get worse. These days, if you don’t win a championship as a coach, your job will be in jeopardy for the next season.

If you want to look at a winning team that maybe should make a coaching change, look at the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers went into this year’s All-Star break with the best record in the East, but fizzled out after the break and limped into the playoffs, quickly exiting in the first round. It looked as though head coach Isaiah Thomas had lost complete control of his team at the end of the season. So why not fire Thomas? Although I wouldn’t wish the task of coaching Ron Artest on my worst enemy, at least Silas and Carlisle were in control of their teams.

Even though coaches like Carlisle and Silas will get or already have new coaching jobs (Silas will get to coach high school phenom LeBron James next year for the Cavaliers), they should never have been fired in the first place. The NBA needs to make some changes, but not of the coaching kind.

For now, enough about all the coaching problems in the NBA. It’s time to sit back and watch what the season is all about — the NBA Finals, and this promises to be a great one. But you had better not lose, Coach Scott.