Vinny Del Negro To Reporters: 'I'm A Head Coach, You Guys Are Just Writers'

What's the surest sign that an NBA coach's time with a team is numbered?  There are obvious answers to this: the team is struggling, the players are tuning the coach out, etc.  But when a coach fails at something as simple as media relations, then you know something's gotta give.

That's exactly what happened to Vinny Del Negro yesterday.  Sure, the Bulls are playing terribly, and the players play with no cohesion on either end of the court, but that's no reason to crush sportswriters' dreams.

"It's easy to sit back on the sidelines, and everyone has all these great ideas and all these things that people think they know what they're talking about," Del Negro said. "But until you live it and do it, no one has an idea.

"All you guys have to write and do your job and come up with stories and things, and that's all great, and you have to do that, but you guys really don't know what it's like, because you've never done it."

Ah, the "you don't know what it's like" defense.  Absurd normally (that's why reporters ask you the questions, dude), but as SB Nation's Blogabull points out, it's particularly absurd in this case because Del Negro didn't know what being a head coach was like either, since he had no prior coaching experience.  Pink slip, meet Vinny Del Negro.  Vinny Del Negro, pink slip.

And shame on the reporters too.  Just once, I'd like to see some reporter shout back, "It's easy to coach a sports team, but you really don't know what it's like to have file a story, a blog post and a notebook column on deadline because you've never done it!"