They're running out of scapegoats fast. He's gotta be next in line, which might be partly why he made this move now. Fire Cheeks, hope things turn around enough in the second half of the season to convince Gores to keep him in place. Seriously, they've gotta be paying, what, 3 head coaches right now.
Regarding the roster, I said "perhaps" earlier only because I don't think it's near a finished product. I don't know if there will be any big deadline moves or if it will be in the offseason, but my point there was only that this isn't the roster with which they'll be trying to make a title run. What Dumars did was collect some athleticism that the roster has been sorely lacking for a while. He took a shot that Cheeks could figure out a way to mold them into a middling-type playoff team this year. Going into the season it was widely speculated that Dumars needed at least that to keep his job. I'm guessing he hoped a talent infusion would get that done and set him up for other moves going forward. Instead, Cheeks has been questioned by the police for some kind of domestic incident right after being hired, has had sort of strange run-ins with a good portion of the roster, and has looked to be, frankly, in over his head.
With those stakes, I thought it was odd he would hitch his wagon to a journeyman coach like Cheeks.
Gores and Phil Jackson are pretty tight. Maybe Gores sweeps everybody out and gives control to Jackson.