Kupchak, Hornets will have new coach

First the general manager, now the coach.

In another move aimed at getting the Charlotte Hornets on track, majority owner Michael Jordan fired coach Steve Clifford on Friday after the team went 3646 and failed to reach the playoffs for the third time in four seasons.

Clifford had a year left on his contract. The move to dismiss him came after his face-to-face meeting Friday with new general manager Mitch Kupchak. Jordan hired Kupchak on Sunday to replace Rich Cho, who was fired earlier in the season after the Hornets failed to climb out of an early slump.

The Hornets were 196-214 in five seasons under Clifford. They reached the playoffs twice but failed to make it out of the first round in 2014 and 2016.

Clifford on Wednesday called this a “disappointing” season because he felt this was his most talented Hornets team. It was a rough season for him in other ways; he missed 21 games because of headaches stemming from sleep deprivation.

He acknowledged the Hornets “didn’t make good progress” this year.

Clifford is the third NBA coach to be dismissed since the end of the regular season, following Jeff Hornacek of New York and Frank Vogel of Orlando.

Clifford was an assistant with the Lakers for one season while Kupchak was the team’s general manager. Kupchak said this week he knew then that Clifford had head coaching potential. But that didn’t save him.

“The NBA isn’t about winning, the NBA is about winning in the playoffs,” Clifford said Wednesday when asked about his job security. “So if you want to look back at our five years, and I told our staff this last night, I do feel very good about where we are and how we are perceived versus where it was five years ago.”

Etc.

The NBA suspended Washington backup guard Jodie Meeks 25 games without pay for using a banned substance. Meeks averaged 6.3 points in his first season in Washington . ... Oklahoma City Thunder television play-by-play man Brian Davis was suspended for Game 1 of the team’s playoff series against Utah for exclaiming that Russell Westbrook was “out of his cottonpickin’ mind” during the regular-season finale. Davis apologized and said his use of the phrase was an unintentional lapse of judgment.