It's funny to watch fans live in fantasy land while AD's have to operate in the real world of budgets and contracts.
I don't have a big issue with extending his contract one year after season 1. He came into a situation where he was expected to win fewer than 10 games and won 21 and made it to the NIT Championship. I've been following GT basketball for over 25 years and that was one of the 5 bets coaching jobs i've seen at GT. To not give him a raise and do nothing would have not looked great. Extending 1 year wasn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.
The idea that you are going to hire a lawyer and fire him and have a better situation has all sort of fallacies and irrational thought attach to it.
Contacts are pretty easy to read and know for coaches, most of them are available online.
Here is what would happen if you actually went down that course.
First, you'd probably spend 6 figures if not over $1MM on the case.
Second, you would lose the case. Pastner's lawyer would have all the ammunition he needed to win the case with the NCAA clearing Pastner. Having someone associated with the program who is scummy is hardly unique. Pretty much every school has that. World Wide Wes has an office down the hall from Calipari. One of the guys associated with the college scam was sitting behind the VT bench last week. We were just unlucky that it blew up in our face. The contract is quite specific in what can be cause to fire the HC and nothing that has happened so far meet the criteria.
After losing the case you would likely have to pay the buyout
Fourth, you would have no money to hire a new coach because you just layed out millions for a new FB staff and will probably be replacing the WBB coach and paying a large buyout to the BB coach.
Fifth, you would have a difficult time getting any coach to take the job after watching you go through a legal process to try to get rid of the other one and poisoning the well.
Like him or not, and people know where I stood on that when he was hired, he was always going to be here for 5 years unless something truly unexpected happened.
Firing him right now would be literally the worst decision GT could make and would likely set the program back another 5-7 years, letting it run for 2 more years likely puts you in a much better place. Much smaller buyout. Hopefully some solid upperclass talent. More money to truly play with. If we want to hire an new HC we need to be thinking $3MM yr. If we are not willing to lay that out then making a change makes little sense.
Maybe we get lucky and he actually works out the next 2 seasons. I'm not counting on it, but i'm not completely ruling it out either.
Keep in mind Hewitt was 15-16 in yr 3, lost Bosh to the NBA, lost Nelson to his GF at UConn and had no FR coming in, just a mid-year transfer from AZ named Will Bynum.
Do I think next years team is going to replicate that, no, but i'm not convinced it is going to be a bad season either. We just need to let it play out.