Joe Dumars, the Detroit Pistons' President of Basketball Operations fired coach Flip Saunders this week, after his team lost to the Celtics in the NBA's Eastern Conference Finals. Saunders guided the team to professional basketball's Final Four in all three of his years with the team. Over that span, the team posted a regular season record of 176-70. If his years with Detroit were his only record as an NBA coach, Saunders would have the highest career winning percentage (.715) of any coach in NBA history, 15 points ahead of Phil Jackson.

It's not just the NBA where standards for some coaches have become impossibly high. In the English Premier League (that's soccer, for those who choose to remain ignorant of "the beautiful game"), Chelsea recently fired—or as they say in Europe, sacked—their manager Avram Grant, after he led the club to spectacular second-place finishes in the Premier League and UEFA Champions League, losing both titles to Manchester United. Grant took over an overpaid and underperforming Chelsea team that got off to a very slow start in 2007-2008. But once he replaced Jose Mourinho as manager, Chelsea posted a 26-2-8 record the rest of the way. Grant came in as unlikely, and mostly unwanted replacement, and won over players and fans to his side. Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck said of Grant's dismissal, "We have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second place finishes is just not good enough for us… So although we never would have thought in September when Jose Mourinho left that we would be able to make it into a Champions League final as we did—and that is fantastic—Chelsea are here to win trophies."

While Grant's dismissal may seem unfair, it did not come as a complete shock. Chelsea's owner (and friend of Grant), Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is known for his high expectations, having fired Grant's predecessor, Mourinho aka "the Special One" after a three year stint that was unmatched in the club's history. And manager shuffling is as much a part of European football as free kicks and flopping. Frank Rijkaard, the Dutch manager who led FC Barcelona to the Champions League semifinals (where they too lost to Man U) was also sacked after the season, and is considered by many the favorite for the Chelsea vacancy.

While the coaching carousel of ridiculous expectations is a part of the game in European soccer, basketball coaches in the NBA are usually fired for, you know, poor performance. But apparently that's not the case in Detroit. "There are no sacred cows here," Dumars said of Saunders departure. "You lose that sacred-cow status when you lose three straight years." Before Saunders, Rick Carlisle was the Pistons' coach. In two seasons with Detroit he posted consecutive season records of 50-32 (.610) and was named 2002's Coach of the Year. After that, he was fired. So what can we take from all of this? How about the fact that the former NBA player whose name is literally synonymous with sportsmanship is pretty much the boss from hell.

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