The first one to bite the dust was not George Karl or Byron Scott.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter) the former Boston Celtics big man is the first head coach to vacate his seat.
"The Houston Rockets fired coach Kevin McHale, league sources tell Yahoo Sports."
The news came after the Rockets had a "players only meeting" at the Toyota Center in Houston on Tuesday morning, according to ESPN.
Dwight Howard had an ominous tone on what transpired.
"What happens in the room, stays in the room. It was good for us to sit down and talk, but it's a long season and you can't get caught up in losing a couple of games and getting upset and so frustrated and feel like it's the end of the world."
That may be true for the players, as Ball Don't Lie points out, "you can't fire the players."
It would seem unfair to blame McHale for James Harden's atrocious field goal percentage, Ty Lawson looking like a shell of his former shelf and injuries to Dwight Howard (sideline for four games) and Donatas Montiejunas (has not played this season), but McHale seems to have lost faith in his players and vice versa.
The Houston Chronicle had McHale's scathing comments (h/t Ball Don't Lie) that seemed to foreshadow his fate.
"You're either making excuses or you're making plays," McHale said. "If you're making excuses, you're not thinking about what you're doing. I got to think about countering everything you're saying so I can make some BS excuse. When you're making plays, you're not making excuses. You are moving on. That's what we got to get to."
He added: "Dysfunctional teams get over and they start blaming each other. We can't get into the blame game. We have to get into the fix game."
Unfortunately for Kevin McHale, the blame on him. Despite bringing the Rockets to the Western Conference Finals a few months ago, he still gets the axe.