Fire Walton

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I think that you and I, and I'm fairly sure both McNair and Vivek know this team is very unlikely to make the playoff's. You know your going to be in the lottery. So the question is, how do you approach the season with that knowledge? With a good group of players coming in the next draft, you want to get the best player you can, hopefully a future star. So you need to lose a lot of games. At the same time, you want to see improvement and growth out of your future core players. You want to start building a winning mentality. That's a very fine line to walk.

And, your trying to do all this with a head coach that's desperate to reverse his fortune. Desperate men make bad decisions. I think I can safely say that Walton cares more about his own future than the future of Whiteside, or any other player on the team and I would be shocked if otherwise. Personally, I would have fired Walton along with Vlade, but that was a Vivek decision, and probably a financial one. Needless to say, McNair has his work cut out for him.

We as fans have little to go on when it comes to the inner workings of McNair's mind. So it should be an interesting ride. So far, like Petrie, he appears to keep everything close to the vest.
I agree with paragraph 1: I play Bagley and Buddy to see what I have and make it clear what if any their role will be. If they play as expected, they drive your tank. If the positively surprise that’s good....

For your last two paragraphs I find it interesting you can write:
1) your trying to do all this with a head coach that's desperate to reverse his fortune.
2) fans have little to go on when it comes to the inner workings of McNair's mind.

so apparently we have no idea of McNairs mind and perfect clarity of Walton’s. Yet you don’t know if Walton is being directed by McNair to play Bagley and Buddy over Nemanja and Haliburton.

Seems rather inconsistent.
 
Walton is getting desperate. 9 man rotation for the past few games and in the last game only 6 guys played over 10 minutes while Holmes and Barnes played 40+min. We are a rebuilding team, our playoff chances are very close to zero, losses are good for this team because it ensures us better odds at the draft. Just play the goddamn young guys and develope them. Let Woodard play and make his rookie mistakes and learn from them, same with Ramsey. Let Guy and JJ play to see wether you have NBA level players in them. Its not a win now situation with this team. Not even close to it but these rotations is of a win now team.
 
Let Woodard play and make his rookie mistakes and learn from them, same with Ramsey. Let Guy and JJ play to see wether you have NBA level players in them. Its not a win now situation with this team.
I could only listen to the game, not watch. But I felt Woodard's size could have offered at least some form of resistance to Zion. Beyond this game, what would the harm be in playing Woodard around 10-15 minutes a game for a five game stretch? We can see what he can do and how quickly he learns.

On Guy, CoJo today was something like -23 in nine minutes. Aside from age, what does CoJo offer that Guy could not? I don't know that he is that great on D, but at least you need to close him out.
 
Walton is getting desperate. 9 man rotation for the past few games and in the last game only 6 guys played over 10 minutes while Holmes and Barnes played 40+min. We are a rebuilding team, our playoff chances are very close to zero, losses are good for this team because it ensures us better odds at the draft. Just play the goddamn young guys and develope them. Let Woodard play and make his rookie mistakes and learn from them, same with Ramsey. Let Guy and JJ play to see wether you have NBA level players in them. Its not a win now situation with this team. Not even close to it but these rotations is of a win now team.
I am not sure this team is as bad as you think. We played our best basketball when we had defensive presence:

1. Shump 2 seasons ago
2. Bazemore/Len last season

I think McNair saw that and went out to grab Whiteside. However, Walton simply refused to play him for whatever reason.
 
I'm trying not to post. It is useless anyway. There are a lot of people getting paid a lot of money to make decisions. This season went from promising to dumpster fire in a 6 game stretch. I watched about 10 minutes of the game and knew it was a loss.
 
I am not sure this team is as bad as you think. We played our best basketball when we had defensive presence:

1. Shump 2 seasons ago
2. Bazemore/Len last season

I think McNair saw that and went out to grab Whiteside. However, Walton simply refused to play him for whatever reason.
We are 5-9 while playing 9 man rotations, mostly vets. We arent a Shump/Baze/Whiteside away from being a credible playoff level team. If playing Whiteside would be the difference, he would be a star level player but hes far from it and him alone wont change our current situation. With great coaching and playing vets a lot we could be able to fight for that 8th-10th seed but IMO putting yourself in a position to draft a star is way more important than that
 
walton is in an interesting position.

i seem to remember him signing a five year contract and i guess this is year two.

he certainly needs to project "interest", so as not to be fired for cause.

and he would like not to be fired right away, to to improve his market value.

plus, he "settled" out of court on the assault charge, so, he likely is paying an annual sum for awhile

(chris mullin had an incident with a pedestrian while driving in nyc, in the offseason, early in his warrior career, settled and owed money for years)

but i am coming to believe that ownership has admitted failure on the "vlade rebuild" and will eventually have to order walton to tank - in which case, since they are paying him, they might as well let him coach (observed by gentry - to make sure he doesn't completely throw in the towel).

walton's next move (like hoiberg) is probably college coaching.

so, the good news is that walton is obviously not the future coach for the NEXT "rebuild" (once they get there).
\
hey - at least nobody is having to pay for seats at these blowouts or we would look more morose than luke. go covid.
 
Walton is getting desperate. 9 man rotation for the past few games and in the last game only 6 guys played over 10 minutes while Holmes and Barnes played 40+min. We are a rebuilding team, our playoff chances are very close to zero, losses are good for this team because it ensures us better odds at the draft. Just play the goddamn young guys and develope them. Let Woodard play and make his rookie mistakes and learn from them, same with Ramsey. Let Guy and JJ play to see wether you have NBA level players in them. Its not a win now situation with this team. Not even close to it but these rotations is of a win now team.
Spot on with what I was going to say.

The playoff-style rotations will either get players burnt out, hurt, or both in the long run.

Woodard should have got some burn in the last game. Zion was 98/99 from the floor, so why not try something different? Walton is almost incapable of good decsions mid-game. It's like he has his mind made up on lineups before the game and the actual game doesn't change them AT ALL.

JJ is not NBA material, so he needs to be replaced with a lockdown defender (that Walton will actually play) ASAP.

I agree we are in a situation where we should play the kids, but look what Walton did to Tyrese's confidence. Walton should play the youngsters more IF he is capable of letting them make mistakes without snapping at them, yelling at them in front of the team (mid-game). Sadly, I don't think he's capable of being a fair, honest, respectful human being.
 
Just to drive this home, this is the DRtg relative to league average DRtg for all 1525 teams in NBA history for which DRtg can be calculated (back to 1950-51):

That's what it looks like when the gameplan is faulty and the team doesn't even bother to buy into that to possibly the greatest extent in history. Gee, I really thought this team was going to give their all for coach Walton this year. Not.
 
Walton is getting desperate. 9 man rotation for the past few games and in the last game only 6 guys played over 10 minutes while Holmes and Barnes played 40+min. We are a rebuilding team, our playoff chances are very close to zero, losses are good for this team because it ensures us better odds at the draft. Just play the goddamn young guys and develope them. Let Woodard play and make his rookie mistakes and learn from them, same with Ramsey. Let Guy and JJ play to see wether you have NBA level players in them. Its not a win now situation with this team. Not even close to it but these rotations is of a win now team.
Exactly. CoJo is not part of the future. While Guy might not be either, he is really good at one highly valued skill in the league. We have to see if he can do it in regular games on a consistent basis, and if his other skills (or lack of the same) allow him to play decent minutes off the bench. He should see more minutes at CoJo's expense.

Part of the onus lies with Monte. I don't know if CoJo is providing any locker room leadership, but other than that, Monte should try and trade him. I understand it's easier said than done, but this might be the only way of opening up back up minutes for some of the kids.

One caveat of course is how Fox feels about it. We are carrying a relatively thin guard rotation in an accelerated season. If Fox prefers CoJo to back him up, in that the kids are not ready (pure speculation on my part), trading away CoJo (or even giving away his minutes to others) is not easy. Like it or not, stars have power in the league, and we have handed over the keys to Fox for the next few years.
 
That's what it looks like when the gameplan is faulty and the team doesn't even bother to buy into that to possibly the greatest extent in history. Gee, I really thought this team was going to give their all for coach Walton this year. Not.
The gameplan or when you are forced to start Hield and Bagley even though they are likely the two worst defenders in the league.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
I'm pretty sure if Walton was going to be fired, it would have happened by now. What is there left to see that we haven't already seen? Either the Kings can't afford to fire him, or he's got some glorious blackmail on somebody.
 
The only thing I can see as different is if Monte has any sense he's watching his coach starting to risk injuries to franchise talent in garbage time. That's a major no no. You can't let that happen.
 
So here's a question, do you NEED to pay Gentry more if you promote him to interim head coach? I mean, in most corporate settings these interim "promotions" don't come with a pay raise.
 
Are there any Kings podcasts/talkshows that will actually discuss how bad of a job Walton is doing rather than just blaming effort/energy/players game after game?
I gave up on Dave's radio show, I'm headed to work at 7 am, they never get critical by then. Damien's show on 1320 after 12 may cover it.
 
Are there any Kings podcasts/talkshows that will actually discuss how bad of a job Walton is doing rather than just blaming effort/energy/players game after game?
Good luck. Most shows are just "Haliburton is the best ever!" "Marvin is the worst ever!" In their defense, there isn't much to discuss about this team right now.
 
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