I guess he doesn’t get a home stand to work this out.

The Lakers have fired Mike Brown, as first reported by Sam Amick of USA Today (who got it from Brown’s agent) and now the Lakers have confirmed this. Brown had three years left on a guaranteed $18 million deal. To eat all that cash shows you how badly the Lakers wanted a change.

“This was a difficult and painful decision to make,” Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak said in a released statement. “Mike was very hard-working and dedicated, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team to make a change at this time. We appreciate Mike’s efforts and contributions and wish him and his family the best of luck.”

The Lakers started the season 1-4 but that doesn’t really do justice to how ugly it has been. They were struggling on defense (Brown’s strong suit) and they were turning the ball over one in every five times down the court as they were dealing with the complexity of the new hybrid-Princeton offense Brown installed. There were questions about Brown’s ability to turn this around but it was thought he would get a chance. Even Jim Buss — the guy running the team — talked patience in the last 48 hours. But that vote of confidence was a kiss of death.

Laker management, after watching Brown last season and the start of this, decided he is not the man for the job.

This kind of change doesn’t happen without Kobe Bryant and other Lakers stars requesting if not signing off on it. Not this early in the season.

To be fair, Brown hasn’t had a full team to work with. Dwight Howard missed much of training camp returning from back issues, Kobe Bryant is battling a sore foot and Steve Nash has only played one-and-a-half of the Lakers five games this season. It’s hard to ask any coach to win a lot in that circumstance.

But there were questions around this team and Brown coming into the season and clearly Lakers management reached its decision and acted quickly.

As for potential replacements, Bernie Bickerstaff will coach the team in the interim but a “national search” for a new coach will be conducted, the team says.

There also are some name free agent coaches out there — Mike D’Antoni (who has a great relationship with Steve Nash and Kobe, but also had knee replacement surgery in the last few weeks and is not moving around much for more than a month), Nate McMillan and Jerry Sloan. Don’t bet on a Phil Jackson return, not after Jim Buss purged a lot of Jackson from the organization after he left before the lockout. Same with Brian Shaw, bad blood there. Also, Stan Van Gundy would be a no go, but it would be fun to ask Dwight Howard about it.

It’s hard to imagine the Lakers made this move without thinking about who would be the next coach and having him ready to go. But apparently they did.