Kings first round of coaching candidate interviews comes out

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It’s hilarious to me some are telling ourselves “ITS OKAY REALLY WE’RE GETTING THE GUY WHO LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE WARRIORS DYNASTY!”

… who hasn’t been hired in the following 8/9 years for reasons. If such an instrumental part of a future dynasty was just hanging out ready for the taking you’d think teams would be tripping over themselves to hire the guy. But naaaaaa, just Sacramento a decade later because we’re the Sacramento Kings.
Guys get blackballed for whatever reason when they aren't as powerful or influential. Maybe he did some stupid stuff in the past but i haven't seen anyone say he can't coach and i doubt he's the same person he was 10 years ago. I don't think we're hiring him anyway but people are so dramatic when it comes to the Kings, i'm sure they'll make this a bigger deal than it is. When some other team hires him they'll be geniuses all of a sudden, kinda like Haliburton suddenly being the next Luka cuz he had 17 assists that one time.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
The Hornets will almost certainly make a better coaching hire than the Kings.

I'll give whoever McNair and Vivek hire one season, but if it turns out how I think it will (same ol, same ol) this is my last spin on this merry-go-round.

Ham could be a good head coach but Mike D'Antoni would have the same issues coaching the Hornets as he would coaching the Kings. They could dethrone the 2020-2021 Kings as the worst defense in NBA history.
 
Tell me why Brown is a bad HC option.
I think everyone sees the defense first thing and they think omg it's Mike Malone (36% with the Kings) 2.0, Mike Brown offensively is horrific and the team with Fox/Sabonis as the main guys is impossible to build a good defense around. The guy lucked into LeBron James and made a living off him.
 
I think everyone sees the defense first thing and they think omg it's Mike Malone (36% with the Kings) 2.0, Mike Brown offensively is horrific and the team with Fox/Sabonis as the main guys is impossible to build a good defense around. The guy lucked into LeBron James and made a living off him.
He took over the dubs defense this season and they’re top 3 all of a sudden with a ton of nobodies and no real big man. He also learned a ton about offense being Kerrs right hand man for the past several seasons
 
It's exceedingly unlikely. Even Donald Sterling's ouster was a controversial decision (particularly amongst the NBA's Board of Governors). Vivek Ranadive's mismanagement of the Sacramento Kings is no worse than a dozen other examples of poor franchise stewardship that likewise would never have resulted in a forced sale by the league.

Vivek's been a pretty crummy owner since he bought the team, but it would take an enormous infraction, indeed, for the league office to step in and strip him of his governorship.
On the court? Yes. Off the court? Excluding a failure to plan for a global pandemic, no.

Hitting at a B average. Certainly better than the execs he’s picked on the hoops side.
 
I think everyone sees the defense first thing and they think omg it's Mike Malone (36% with the Kings) 2.0, Mike Brown offensively is horrific and the team with Fox/Sabonis as the main guys is impossible to build a good defense around. The guy lucked into LeBron James and made a living off him.
Ever notice how most of the guys we consider great coaches have a bunch of all star players on the court playing for them?
 
Ever notice how most of the guys we consider great coaches have a bunch of all star players on the court playing for them?
Well there are Allstars and then there’s lebron/Kobe level superstars. If they can coach a team to at least a .500 record, get to the playoffs or at least get the crap team to develop and get better every year, I’d consider them a good to great coach.
 
Well there are Allstars and then there’s lebron/Kobe level superstars. If they can coach a team to at least a .500 record, get to the playoffs or at least get the crap team to develop and get better every year, I’d consider them a good to great coach.
Then Mark Jackson is a great coach and Phil Jackson is bad with this logic.

I'm sure you don't believe that. Every coach needs good players to win games.
 
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pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
On the court? Yes. Off the court? Excluding a failure to plan for a global pandemic, no.

Hitting at a B average. Certainly better than the execs he’s picked on the hoops side.
I'm not a fan of him butting into basketball ops where he doesn't belong (though let's be honest - most owners do this in some form or other to varying success) but yeah, his biggest failure off the court was probably agreeing not to take the Kings share of the luxury tax split apparently ever. Seems like 5-10 years would have been enough to prove his point. But it also helped him keep the team in Sac, and arguably it gives the team a reason to remain competitive and not just throw out a G league roster. Arguably that may also be part of the reason he refuses to throw out a G league roster for draft advantage.
 
I'm not a fan of him butting into basketball ops where he doesn't belong (though let's be honest - most owners do this in some form or other to varying success) but yeah, his biggest failure off the court was probably agreeing not to take the Kings share of the luxury tax split apparently ever. Seems like 5-10 years would have been enough to prove his point. But it also helped him keep the team in Sac, and arguably it gives the team a reason to remain competitive and not just throw out a G league roster. Arguably that may also be part of the reason he refuses to throw out a G league roster for draft advantage.
Thought it was only till they moved to g1c?
 
Then Mark Jackson is a great coach and Phil Jackson is bad with this logic.

I'm sure you don't believe that. Every coach needs good players to win games.
I read the rumors that Mike Malone did most of the “coaching” under Jackson and think he is a good coach. Most of the people who don’t want mark jackson are quoting a lot of the off the court issues, I’m not really for him either but don’t believe he’s a bad coach, just a bad choice for the kings. He also had steph, klay and green. I’m also one of the haters who doesn’t think Phil jackson is great. Might be my blind hate for the lakers but don’t recall him being so great without mj/pippen or Kobe/Shaq or Kobe/gasol. I wouldn’t go as far as saying he’s a bad coach cuz even I can admit he’s not. Just a bad gm. You quoted someone mentioning lebron. I quoted you because I wanted to point out that lebron is one of the greatest players of all time. There’s a difference between winning with him on your team vs 1 or 2 all stars. I never said you don’t need good players to win games. My logic is if a coach can get a team to play high level and get to the playoffs, finals etc (without needing arguably top 3-5 nba players of all time + top 75 nba players all time) then yea I’d consider them good or even great. If he can take a team with borderline allstars or young players and have them improve every year and reach their potential, than I’d consider them good to great.
 
I'm not a fan of him butting into basketball ops where he doesn't belong (though let's be honest - most owners do this in some form or other to varying success) but yeah, his biggest failure off the court was probably agreeing not to take the Kings share of the luxury tax split apparently ever. Seems like 5-10 years would have been enough to prove his point. But it also helped him keep the team in Sac, and arguably it gives the team a reason to remain competitive and not just throw out a G league roster. Arguably that may also be part of the reason he refuses to throw out a G league roster for draft advantage.
I don’t have time track it down, but I believe forgoing the rev sharing was only until G1C was built. Once built, the Kings started receiving rev share. You can backtrack this by looking at how Forbes values the Kings where the majority of its value is from (future) NBA rev share. See note #9.

https://www.forbes.com/teams/sacramento-kings/?sh=3768bd3662e6
 

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
I read the rumors that Mike Malone did most of the “coaching” under Jackson and think he is a good coach. Most of the people who don’t want mark jackson are quoting a lot of the off the court issues, I’m not really for him either but don’t believe he’s a bad coach, just a bad choice for the kings. He also had steph, klay and green. I’m also one of the haters who doesn’t think Phil jackson is great. Might be my blind hate for the lakers but don’t recall him being so great without mj/pippen or Kobe/Shaq or Kobe/gasol. I wouldn’t go as far as saying he’s a bad coach cuz even I can admit he’s not. Just a bad gm. You quoted someone mentioning lebron. I quoted you because I wanted to point out that lebron is one of the greatest players of all time. There’s a difference between winning with him on your team vs 1 or 2 all stars. I never said you don’t need good players to win games. My logic is if a coach can get a team to play high level and get to the playoffs, finals etc (without needing arguably top 3-5 nba players of all time + top 75 nba players all time) then yea I’d consider them good or even great. If he can take a team with borderline allstars or young players and have them improve every year and reach their potential, than I’d consider them good to great.
Phil's greatest strength was managing the egos of the Jordans and Kobes he worked with and getting them to buy into a team game. Look at how Jordan ran all over Collins (and installed him as his yes man in his forgettable DC run) or young Kobe with Harris/Rambis. That's Phil's magical skill. I'm guessing he could have run whatever offense he wanted with the players he had and had good luck, and it's also why the triangle wasn't dominant outside of the most stacked team in the league.

I'll admit to having a huge blindspot to Brown because of LeBron. Success with the Warriors is a mixed blessing as we've seen. But it does appear he's the defensive architect there currently. So my concern is that he may need an offensive version of him as second in command. Who will that be? It also seems like one of his demands will be that he gets to pick his staff. I hope we agree to this even if it means cutting loose some beloved golden era staff. I don't think Walton earned the right to pick all his buddies to run the team, it was a problem in LA for him to the point it became a distraction. But Brown I think has.
 

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
I don’t have time track it down, but I believe forgoing the rev sharing was only until G1C was built. Once built, the Kings started receiving rev share. You can backtrack this by looking at how Forbes values the Kings where the majority of its value is from (future) NBA rev share. See note #9.

https://www.forbes.com/teams/sacramento-kings/?sh=3768bd3662e6
Conversely there is this report - which is just the opposite - the new arena is when the stopped the sharing:
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/... questions,revenue-sharing recipient or payer.
As part of a negotiation with NBA owners, the proposed ownership group that would keep the Kings in Sacramento agreed to phase out its receipt of revenue-sharing funds once the team moves into a new publicly funded downtown arena, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CBSSports.com.
 
Phil's greatest strength was managing the egos of the Jordans and Kobes he worked with and getting them to buy into a team game. Look at how Jordan ran all over Collins (and installed him as his yes man in his forgettable DC run) or young Kobe with Harris/Rambis. That's Phil's magical skill. I'm guessing he could have run whatever offense he wanted with the players he had and had good luck, and it's also why the triangle wasn't dominant outside of the most stacked team in the league.

I'll admit to having a huge blindspot to Brown because of LeBron. Success with the Warriors is a mixed blessing as we've seen. But it does appear he's the defensive architect there currently. So my concern is that he may need an offensive version of him as second in command. Who will that be? It also seems like one of his demands will be that he gets to pick his staff. I hope we agree to this even if it means cutting loose some beloved golden era staff. I don't think Walton earned the right to pick all his buddies to run the team, it was a problem in LA for him to the point it became a distraction. But Brown I think has.
out of the 3 finalists, I’d easily say Brown can get the best staff around him. Jackson ain’t gonna get anybody and we’ll end up with the same BS we’ve always had. Clifford with an easy 2nd place out of the 3
 

Kingster

Hall of Famer
I have no concerns about Brown on the defensive side of the ball. I just want to know that on the offensive side he has more imagination than trying to fit the Warriors system onto Kings' personnel. Sabonis and Fox are not Green and Curry. I'd sure feel more comfortable with him if I could get assurances that he has the brains to create an offensive system that maximizes the talents of the Kings' best players.
 

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
out of the 3 finalists, I’d easily say Brown can get the best staff around him. Jackson ain’t gonna get anybody and we’ll end up with the same BS we’ve always had. Clifford with an easy 2nd place out of the 3
It's interesting as Brown has been rumored to be Monte/Wilcox choice and Jackson rumored to be pushed by Dumars and Vivek's choice. So wonder where Clifford falls in all of this and if for some reason he is 2nd choice of both groups. Or if he's just a backup plan if someone turns them down?
 
This was leading up to the vote. There's a later article that said the arrangement was no rev sharing until the arena. From a pure business perspective, there is no way any new investor would buy into the Kings without rev sharing. And there is absolutely no world where they get a $2B valuation if the economics of it were limited to only Sacramento. Area under the curve, the TAM would just be too small.
 

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
This was leading up to the vote. There's a later article that said the arrangement was no rev sharing until the arena. From a pure business perspective, there is no way any new investor would buy into the Kings without rev sharing. And there is absolutely no world where they get a $2B valuation if the economics of it were limited to only Sacramento. Area under the curve, the TAM would just be too small.
I agree I just had this thrown back at me or something similar when I disputed it by folks I assume know better than I do. On the other side of the coin it makes some degree of sense that once you get a shiny new arena the public has paid for (all or partially) you need the help less than you do running in old Arco. so I dunno. don't really care either since the value in ownership is selling it at some later date.
 
I agree I just had this thrown back at me or something similar when I disputed it by folks I assume know better than I do. On the other side of the coin it makes some degree of sense that once you get a shiny new arena the public has paid for (all or partially) you need the help less than you do running in old Arco. so I dunno. don't really care either since the value in ownership is selling it at some later date.
Yea, the carrot of getting the arena built sooner than later lines up better with no revs until it gets built. The top line (compressed) and the bottom line (red; especially in the last few years) would likely have the team valued closer to $200M than $2B without Rev Sharing (remember, the Kings don't own the arena, so that is omitted from the Kings valuation).
 
Yea, the carrot of getting the arena built sooner than later lines up better with no revs until it gets built. The top line (compressed) and the bottom line (red; especially in the last few years) would likely have the team valued closer to $200M than $2B without Rev Sharing (remember, the Kings don't own the arena, so that is omitted from the Kings valuation).
You are forgetting the fact that historically BBall teams are about status and fancy toys, not business. Vivek would easily get whatever valuation would be for a pro team in California and the billionaires would be lined up one by one. As such he would probably also be able to leverage it by quite a margin as I'm sure most teams do at some point. It also depends on what actual revenues would be for a team like the Kings. I think average revenue a few years ago for the NBA teams was like 200 million but that's certainly not being drawn from more than a few teams that were of a you know who variety.
 
With the exception of Afflalo, I don't think these guys qualify as wasted cap space.

Rondo was good while he was here. He had instant chemistry with DeMarcus, steadied the offense, and helped to coordinate defensive switches (even if his individual defense was not what it was before the injuries).

Belinelli was mostly terrible for his one season in Sacramento but the move made sense on paper. He'd been a reliable outside shooting threat up to that point in his career (and was again after he left).

ZBo was obviously brought in to give Dave Joerger a veteran supporting voice in the locker room. He signed a 2-year deal and mostly moved to a cheerleading role in that second year, so he was hardly franchise crippling.

George Hill was a career role-player just entering his 30s. But he was groomed by Popovich, was a knockdown shooter, and the only other PGs on the roster that year were both rookies. Let me say that again -- we had a PG rotation of DeAaron Fox (rookie), Frank Mason III (rookie, 2nd round pick) and George Hill. Most importantly he had played in the playoffs in 8 out of his 9 years in the league so he seemed like an ideal veteran to show Fox and Mason what it means to be a professional. We needed him way more than he needed us. The only mistake there was paying him like he was a star although, even at 3yr/$57 million he was traded after only half a season to a playoff team. The idea was sound but he just wasn't a guy who wanted the leadership role as much as he wanted the big paycheck (and really, who can blame him for taking it?). Shumpert came in the following season to fill that leadership void and while his pedigree is less impressive, he was surprisingly good at it because he was vocal.

Vince Carter is a living legend, was well-liked by everyone, and signed a 1 year contract on a team which had 12 players who were on rookie contracts. It seems remarkably petty to even mention his name on this list. He did us a favor by agreeing to come here.

You also left out Caron Butler (whose Sacramento tenure is easy to forget since he apparently never got out of George Karl's dog house). He played for Pat Riley in Miami then alongside D Wade, he played next to Kobe on the Lakers, he was an All-Star in Washington, he was part of Dirk's championship winning squad in Dallas under Rick Carlisle, he was a starter on that lob city Clippers team with Blake and CP3, and he was a supporting player on the OKC team that made it to the Finals before Harden was traded. And he's been heavily involved in the player's association. In terms of veteran credibility, I don't think you could draw up a more impressive resume.

It's funny that I'm somehow the Vlade apologist now, but something else he did well was convince veterans to come here who never would have looked twice at Sacramento in the past. None of these veterans was the reason the team couldn't get out of the western conference basement. They all signed short deals and they all were brought in to play alongside top draft picks because Vlade understood the lifecycle of the NBA is predicated on players learning from other players not just their coaches. Obviously by the time all of these guys signed here they were past their prime but they weren't here to lead championship squads, they were here to groom the young players whom Vlade thought would eventually do that.

The next time a hall of fame player in their prime leaves their team to sign a max contract to play for Sacramento will be the first. It may never happen. Cap space isn't the instant "get out of jail free" card for us that it is for large market teams. And we've seen what happens when a GM stockpiles so many first and second round picks that they can't fit them all on the roster. Vlade did that in the 2017-2020 seasons (the infamous "super team, just young" phase). Bogdan and Buddy Hield fought each other for playing time and both earned themselves huge contracts. Most of the wings and big guys didn't pan out. Fox was the only rookie to emerge from that morass and he's been painted with the "empty stats" stigma.

Seriously, look at these rosters: (2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020) and tell me Vlade didn't invest enough in young players. The guy threw as many darts at the board as the CBA would allow him and most of them missed the board completely. So I stand by my assertion that the big problem with Vlade was who he drafted not how many players he drafted. He sadly doesn't know the difference between a franchise talent and a guy who has no business even playing in the NBA. Vlade has many virtues as a leader and manager but he was out of his depth as a judge of talent and unfortunately for him that's really the principle requirement of the job.
THIS. Thanks for an outstanding synopsis… it’s so easy to look back with our filters and only remember the pieces that fit our narratives, misrepresenting and oversimplifying the rest. This is a great reminder that a lot of good ideas were in in play back then, some working out and some not. With a vastly better ability to identify talent in the draft, Vlade might still be here today.
 
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