Sidney Lowe thought he was safe. True, he'd coached some of the worst NBA teams you'd ever seen, both in Vancouver and Minnesota, but he knew he wouldn't be thought of as the worst coach in NBA history, because (A.) he didn't really earn it, and (B.) there was always Tim Floyd.

	Sidney Lowe couldn't have liked hearing that Tim Floyd was back on the bench, which may mean Lowe could become sports' all-time losingest coach.

But that was before Floyd, famous for being the man who guided the Chicago Bulls from the Michael Jordan era to the Marcus Fizer era, was hired by the New Orleans Hornets. Floyd, and his monumentally bad record of 49-190, had the lowest winning percentage of any coach given 200 games to work his magic, and nobody could imagine he'd ever have a chance to save himself from his résumé.

Now Sidney Lowe must live with the very real fear that when he gets hired again (and he will, now that the bar has been lowered to include guys who never had a legitimate chance to win), he will have The Worst Coaching Record There Is.

Worse yet, Floyd can do this even if the Hornets go down the gurgler in a post-Paul Silasian funkathon.

The Hornets can inverse their 2003 record of 47-35, effectively swapping places with Atlanta, and Floyd's winning percentage of .205 will rise to .261. Lowe's, on the other hand, will remain .259, and he will become the answer to a trivia question nobody asked until Floyd's name was returned to the Rumor Wheel.

In fact, by going 44-38, Floyd can move from first to fourth, slipping below ex-Atlanta Thrashers coach Curt Fraser and Rhoderick J. (Bobby) Wallace, the former manager of the dead-ball era Browns and Reds, and even below former Heat and Pistons coach Ron Rothstein by matching Silas' last record.

	By the numbers
	Coach	Teams	Record	Pct.
	Tim Floyd	Bulls	49-190	.205
	Sidney Lowe	T'wolves, Grizzlies	56-160	.257
	Curt Fraser	Thrashers	64-173-31	.285
	Bobby Wallace	Browns, Reds	62-154	.287
	Ron Rothstein	Heat, Pistons	97-231	.296
	Min. 200 Games Coached

First to fifth in one season ... now if that isn't Coach of the Year stuff, I don't know what is.

Now, we know that there is nothing more important in modern sport than an easy-to-digest chart, from which all wisdom naturally flows. Floyd won barely one of every five NBA games he has coached, which by any standard is pretty wretched, but the percentage doesn't tell you that he was replacing one of the most popular athletes in Chicago history, arguably the best basketball player ever, the most successful coach in the NBA, and it also doesn't tell you that he was hired by a man whose popularity could be matched by a monkey pox outbreak at your kid's middle school.

In short, Tim Floyd never had a chance to compete fairly.

On the other hand, he had 239 chances to do better than .205, and he didn't.

Thus, George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge are giving America a chance to more fairly evaluate Tim Floyd ... even though America, in all frankness, really hadn't given Tim Floyd much thought since he was fired more than a season ago for not making Jerry Krause look better.

If the Hornets do what they did last season, he'll be just another coach. If they get to 55 wins for the first time in franchise history, he'll be a hero.

And if he begins his second chance with a 141-game winning streak, he'll be at .500 before you know it.

	Bulls GM Jerry Krause, left, stood by Tim Floyd's side for three-plus seasons while he was the Bulls' coach.

But this is not to belittle Tim Floyd. He obviously interviews well, because he had to get the job while hiding the NBA Guide from his prospective employers.

There is, though, hope for Sidney Lowe, because even if Floyd does go 55-27 next year, Lowe can get one of the remaining coaching jobs (three real, two interim), all he needs to do to get out of last is go 34-48 with his next team.

If he gets the Clippers job currently held by Dennis Johnson, that would represent a seven-game improvement. If he gets the Atlanta job currently held by Terry Stotts, he can lose one more game and still beat Floyd.

Lord a'mighty, this is fabulous stuff. Sorta. Kinda. Maybe.

The point is, Floyd has made it possible for Lowe to dream about his next NBA gig, and maybe even Rothstein, too. Fraser knows he'll get another job because hockey coaches are fired every 3½ weeks; in fact, Pat Burns is day to day.

Wallace, on the other hand, is probably beyond caring, since he managed the Browns in 1912, the Reds in 1937, and drawing purposeful breaths in 1960. His career plans, in short, are effectively stalled.

But there is hope for everyone else, because Tim Floyd gets a chance he likely wouldn't have gotten under any other circumstance. You don't get that many NBA coaching gluts this large, or people so willing to extend a helping hand to someone who didn't deserve a .205 winning percentage.

Although we can't vouch for, say, .305.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com