The damning losses started piling up for Avery Johnson long before Alabama’s dreadful end to the season on Wednesday.

One of them was off the court.

Five-star recruit Trendon Watford of Mountain Brook stopped seriously considering Alabama during the middle of the season because, I have been told, of Johnson’s inability to establish a winning culture inside Alabama’s locker room. In the end, Johnson’s players stopped believing in their coach, and that toxic poison permeated through every aspect of the program.

It didn’t take a loss to Norfolk State to know it was over for Johnson at Alabama. His buyout has made things a little tricky for athletics director Greg Byrne here in the end, though. When Johnson signed his extension last year, a cutoff date for his buyout was inserted into the contract. His buyout drops from $8 million to $6 million after April 15, according to a source with direct knowledge of the contract, and Johnson is now negotiating with the university to receive $6 million up front to walk away.

The contract calls for a buyout of $1.5 million per year for four years after April 15. Waiting until after April 15 isn’t an option for Alabama, so Johnson has some leverage.

After Alabama pays Johnson a lump sum of $6 million, Bryne can then begin in earnest the process of searching for a new basketball coach. There are some excellent basketball coaches out there who could, maybe, if given a few years, solve this riddle of basketball mediocrity in Tuscaloosa. Steve Prohm, who is currently at Iowa State, is the most popular name out of the gate to succeed Johnson. Fred Hoiberg is being mentioned. Kelvin Sampson at Houston is, too.

Prohm is an Alabama graduate with roots to Alabama basketball. Hoiberg had success at Iowa State and then coached the Chicago Bulls for two seasons before being fired after a poor start to this season. Sampson, now at Houston, has won everywhere he has been.

Want another name? Former Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy has emerged as a possible fall-back option. It is indeed a brave new world for Alabama if one of Gene Bartow’s former star players at UAB is even being considered.

These coaches would all be acceptable hires, sure, but they wouldn’t make much of a national splash. Instead of a safe hire, maybe a coach deemed unacceptable at the moment should be given some consideration by Byrne and his search committee.

Byrne should reach out to Rick Pitino when he starts contacting potential candidates. It’s at least worth a phone call or lunch at the Final Four.

People will overreact to that idea, of course, and fake outrage on Twitter because that’s what we do now, but Pitino is, arguably, one of the three greatest college basketball coaches alive, and he’s currently not coaching college basketball.

Is Pitino unhirable for Alabama? Probably so, and for more reasons than one, but he wasn’t arrested by the FBI after its investigation into college basketball corruption, and there currently isn’t a show cause against Pitino by the NCAA. Maybe one is coming, but Pitino has vehemently maintained his innocence.

Pitino was fired by Louisville in the wake of the bombshell case that linked bribes by Adidas to Louisville basketball recruits, but a member of the Alabama basketball team was linked to that investigation and Avery Johnson wasn’t fired. Auburn assistant coach Chuck Person just pled guilty in federal court, but Bruce Pearl wasn’t fired.

It’s a low bar in college basketball, is all I’m saying, and if you can win a national championship the bar doesn’t really exist at all.

Auburn hired Pearl while Pearl was still under a show cause. The gamble paid off for Auburn, and the Tigers are now selling out Auburn Arena and winning championships. Sampson, a rumored early candidate for Alabama, was out of the game for five years under a show cause.

Byrne and his search committee should ask themselves this simple question when they begin interviewing candidates: can this coach win a national championship at Alabama? That’s a short list, but Pitino is on it.

Would SEC commissioner Greg Sankey prevent Alabama from hiring Pitino? Not likely. Pitino would be an enormous draw for the conference. Would the NCAA slap a show cause on Pitino if he tried to return to college coaching? For Bryne, it might be worth finding out.

With Pitino, Alabama would instantly, overnight, go from a backwater basketball outpost to a marquee program and destination for big-time recruits. Maybe Prohm or Hoiberg or Sampson could establish teams that could make a few runs to the Sweet 16. Pitino would give Alabama its first legitimate chance in program history to win a national championship.

With Nick Saban coaching football and Pitino in Coleman Coliseum, Alabama would be the center of the universe for collegiate athletics. And Byrne would have no problem raising money for that new basketball arena he wants.

He also wouldn’t have any problem getting blue-chip players like Watford to Alabama. Right now, it’s hard to imagine any current college coach who would consider Alabama being able to do that.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.