Mike Brown, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers has been fire after a demoralizing 1-4 start to the season, the team declared Friday. "I have great respect for the Buss family and the Lakers' storied tradition and I thank them for the opportunity they afforded me," Brown said in a statement. "I have a deep appreciation for the coaches and players that I worked with this past year and I wish the organization nothing but success as they move forward."

Assistant coach Bernie Bickerstaff will take his place as interim coach for Friday night's home game against the Warriors. "Today we relieved Mike Brown of his head coaching duties with the Los Angeles Lakers. Mike is a good man. Very hard working, maybe one of the hardest-working coaches that I've ever been around," general manager Mitch Kupchak said. "The bottom line is that the team is not winning at the pace that we expected this team to win and we didn't see improvement. We wish Mike well and we're sorry it ended this way. So, we've decided to move in another direction and make a change."

The search for a new coach will begin immediately. The source confirmed that the following persons will be considered: Lakers and Bulls coach Phil Jackson, former Knicks and Suns coach Mike D'Antoni, longtime Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, former Blazers coach Nate McMillan and ex-Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy.

"Clearly, great coaches or good coaches in this league that have jobs would not be let out of their contracts with their team," said Kupchak. "So that's not really a realistic possibility. I think there is a remote possibility that you look at assistants in the league and of course teams at that point would not stand in the way of a coach advancing his career. I think it's more likely that we would look to coaches that aren't presently employed."

"The sooner the better," he added. "We don't have a timetable, quite frankly, because this happened so quickly."

"It's not going to be a long process; that's for damn sure," a source told ESPNLosAngeles.com's Dave McMenamin. "But they're going to do their due diligence."