Phoenix’s collapsing sun has consumed Earl Watson’s job

The Phoenix Suns have fired Earl Watson after a less than desirable start to the season.

When your team is getting blown out of the water night after night, it takes a toll on you. When you’re Earl Watson, such a situation ends with a firing less than a full week into the season.

Just hours after Eric Bledsoe made it publically known that he wants no part of the Suns current supernova tank job, the team fired Watson. Of course, we learned of the firing in the middle of an NFL Sunday via #WojBomb.

This is super weird.

Watson wasn’t totally a sexy choice for head coach in the first place, as many believed Jeff Hornacek was wrongly pushed out. Watson was a decent candidate, though, and looked like a guy that might be able to right the ship.

What makes this weird is that the firing took no time at all to occur, even if it makes total sense. Phoenix is what happens when you’re a little too committed to the tank job, as the team hasn’t allowed fewer than 120 points all season long.

That’s right, through three games the Suns have allowed 386 total points.

Pheonix almost beat the Lakers, but it was in a 132-130 old west saloon shootout. Nothing about the Suns season has been desirable and nothing that Watson was doing looked like it was going to help. After Bledsoe’s tweet, and knowing that the team’s best defensive attribute was gravity, something had to give.

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Maybe Watson was a scapegoat, which seems the likely case. If the Suns are indeed tanking, then this is the most aggressive way to try and protect a hand that they’ve already shown by getting blown out on a nightly basis. If the tank is on, however, it was a matter of when Watson was going to be pushed out. At least now the Suns have a viable excuse for tanking (interim head coach of a lost team) and as much time as possible to try and find a replacement to lead the team into the future.