http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/13657309p-14500110c.html
By Mark Kreidler
Entering his eighth and possibly final season as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, Rick Adelman finds himself with a roster full of unfamiliar faces, a franchise coming off a first-round playoff defeat and a little heat under the seat upon which Adelman sits.
After a turbulent summer marked by the organization's vain pursuit of coach Phil Jackson and the continued turnover of player personnel, Adelman prepared for a season in which he will coach while in the final year of his contract with the Maloof family that owns the team. On the eve of training camp, Adelman sat with Bee sports columnist Mark Kreidler to discuss the changes to the organization - and his future in it.
Q: I'm thinking back past Sacramento to your Portland teams, and it seems like the one thing running through most of those teams in both cities was a roster stability - you had a returning core that you built around each year. Am I thinking about that correctly?
A: That's true. I guess in Portland we always had (Terry) Porter, (Clyde) Drexler, (Kevin) Duckworth, (Jerome) Kersey, Buck Williams and Cliff Robinson.
Q: To me, this offseason marks the first really huge churn since you came to Sacramento, although there have been departures all along the way.
A: Well, I think it all started last summer (2004) with Vlade (Divac) leaving, and it just kind of continued through the whole year. But, yeah, when you look at it - from the time we finished camp last year, we have three guys from that team.
Q: Wait. Is that right? A: When we finished camp, yeah, because it's just Peja (Stojakovic), Mike (Bibby) and Brad (Miller). Can't think of anybody else. And then from last year's playoff roster, there's six guys gone. So there has been a huge, huge turnover, and that's going to be the biggest challenge.
Q: I'm curious about that, because, just looking in from the outside, one might say that although they lost in the first round of the playoffs, with a 50-win team, you don't normally slice off half the roster. But that is what has basically happened.
A: Looking at losing in the first round last season, everybody's going to have his own opinion, but from my standpoint and my staff's standpoint, I don't know what else we were supposed to have done with that team with the changes we made during the year. And then you have your center (Miller) playing with a broken leg and never practicing, and then Bobby (Jackson) trying to come back. You know, when it's all said and done we lost to a better team. We weren't better than they were. But that being said, yeah, we still had a chance to win. We started last season knowing what we had. We still knew what we had to do to win, because we still had Chris (Webber), we still had Doug (Christie). The only one we didn't have was Vlade. And so that was still a known. In the last five years, we've been awfully good, averaging 56 wins and whatever, and every year I knew what we had and how we were going to win. And the team understood what we had to do to win. That's not the case anymore.
Q: And that stopped being the case partway through last season.
A: Oh, without a doubt. And I think the biggest problem we had in not coming together last year and really giving ourselves a chance in the playoffs was, two games after we made the (Webber) trade, Brad broke his leg. I still think we would have won more games than 50 if that hadn't happened, and we would have been much more consistent if he had been out there. But that wasn't the case. It was a bad break, literally.
Q: When you looked at the team that walked off the court in Seattle at the end of the playoffs, was that a 50-win team?
A: I don't think it was, and I knew that that team that walked off there was going to change. It wasn't a team that we were going to take into camp this year. We had to make changes. Geoff and I both knew that. We were very inconsistent as a team. We just didn't have trust as a team. We were just trying to win enough games and see where we ended up in the seedings. I still felt we had a chance to beat Seattle, but when we got to the playoffs, it was pretty obvious that they played their game a lot better than we played our game.
Q: The possibility of acquiring Bonzi Wells comes up. As a coach, knowing his history as a player, what are your concerns, and what concerns do you express? What's your mind process there? Because you're talking about a team needing to come together and jell and trust itself.
A: Well, we didn't go into the thing blind, Geoff and I. It's one thing we've always done, and I think it's why we've been successful - we talk things through. We've never made a personnel decision that we weren't both on the same page with, and Coop (Kings executive Wayne Cooper) is often involved, too. So we knew who he was, and I knew his past history. I knew he was a good player. The reality is, he did come off the bench for Memphis. He also is a guy who depends on the situation. Portland, everything sort of exploded on him there, and then he went to Memphis and had a pretty good first year and then last year had problems again. I talked to him three or four times, lengthy conversations, before that deal was made. It's no different than when you talk to any player who has had a little bit of a checkered past. Now maybe his is moreso, but Chris came here, and everybody talked about how he was, and we picked up Rod Strickland, and he'd had a lot of problems in San Antonio before we got him. I don't know what went on with Bonzi Wells and Mike Fratello, or Bonzi Wells and other coaches. I know that what I'm going to judge him on is what he does from the first day of camp on, and I think we're gonna find out real quick about him. The opportunity is there for him. Starting minutes are there for him. There's the ability to get on the floor and show the league that he can be a solid player on a good team, and that's out there. And if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. He has the talent, and Elston (assistant coach Elston Turner) had been around him in Portland and knew him. I talked to him and Geoff talked to him, and I just think, let's see what happens. I think the people who had him before would love to see him just explode on us, too, to verify what happened there. But I've seen guys turn things around. The thing that I have to ask Bonzi - and anybody else, too - is, you're not going to be a distraction. You're gonna be a part of the team. We've been known to help a guy become a better player, and as long as you fit in with the team and you make your teammates better and you're a positive part of it, then things are gonna be fine. But if that doesn't happen, we're gonna know pretty quick and he's gonna know, and we'll have to do something. But I'm not thinking along that route. I'm thinking that he can help us and we can help him. I've always told our players, if we win, if we succeed, you're all going to get noticed for it. Every one of you.
Q: Was there something Bonzi said that you needed to hear, or did you need to just talk straight-up about his past?
A: Oh, yeah, we talked about it. And we talked about the fact that he's going to be challenged here by everybody, and those who write stories about him, and all that. And the one thing - and he said he knew it - was that the fans here in Sacramento want to see a guy who's a good guy who plays hard and tries to do the right thing for his team. And they'll accept you if you do that. But you've got to understand, it's a wait-and-see by everybody to start with. And he understands that. At least, he says he does. But, like I said, it's from the first day. I haven't had the first day yet. But I believe it can work.
By Mark Kreidler
Entering his eighth and possibly final season as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, Rick Adelman finds himself with a roster full of unfamiliar faces, a franchise coming off a first-round playoff defeat and a little heat under the seat upon which Adelman sits.
After a turbulent summer marked by the organization's vain pursuit of coach Phil Jackson and the continued turnover of player personnel, Adelman prepared for a season in which he will coach while in the final year of his contract with the Maloof family that owns the team. On the eve of training camp, Adelman sat with Bee sports columnist Mark Kreidler to discuss the changes to the organization - and his future in it.
Q: I'm thinking back past Sacramento to your Portland teams, and it seems like the one thing running through most of those teams in both cities was a roster stability - you had a returning core that you built around each year. Am I thinking about that correctly?
A: That's true. I guess in Portland we always had (Terry) Porter, (Clyde) Drexler, (Kevin) Duckworth, (Jerome) Kersey, Buck Williams and Cliff Robinson.
Q: To me, this offseason marks the first really huge churn since you came to Sacramento, although there have been departures all along the way.
A: Well, I think it all started last summer (2004) with Vlade (Divac) leaving, and it just kind of continued through the whole year. But, yeah, when you look at it - from the time we finished camp last year, we have three guys from that team.
Q: Wait. Is that right? A: When we finished camp, yeah, because it's just Peja (Stojakovic), Mike (Bibby) and Brad (Miller). Can't think of anybody else. And then from last year's playoff roster, there's six guys gone. So there has been a huge, huge turnover, and that's going to be the biggest challenge.
Q: I'm curious about that, because, just looking in from the outside, one might say that although they lost in the first round of the playoffs, with a 50-win team, you don't normally slice off half the roster. But that is what has basically happened.
A: Looking at losing in the first round last season, everybody's going to have his own opinion, but from my standpoint and my staff's standpoint, I don't know what else we were supposed to have done with that team with the changes we made during the year. And then you have your center (Miller) playing with a broken leg and never practicing, and then Bobby (Jackson) trying to come back. You know, when it's all said and done we lost to a better team. We weren't better than they were. But that being said, yeah, we still had a chance to win. We started last season knowing what we had. We still knew what we had to do to win, because we still had Chris (Webber), we still had Doug (Christie). The only one we didn't have was Vlade. And so that was still a known. In the last five years, we've been awfully good, averaging 56 wins and whatever, and every year I knew what we had and how we were going to win. And the team understood what we had to do to win. That's not the case anymore.
Q: And that stopped being the case partway through last season.
A: Oh, without a doubt. And I think the biggest problem we had in not coming together last year and really giving ourselves a chance in the playoffs was, two games after we made the (Webber) trade, Brad broke his leg. I still think we would have won more games than 50 if that hadn't happened, and we would have been much more consistent if he had been out there. But that wasn't the case. It was a bad break, literally.
Q: When you looked at the team that walked off the court in Seattle at the end of the playoffs, was that a 50-win team?
A: I don't think it was, and I knew that that team that walked off there was going to change. It wasn't a team that we were going to take into camp this year. We had to make changes. Geoff and I both knew that. We were very inconsistent as a team. We just didn't have trust as a team. We were just trying to win enough games and see where we ended up in the seedings. I still felt we had a chance to beat Seattle, but when we got to the playoffs, it was pretty obvious that they played their game a lot better than we played our game.
Q: The possibility of acquiring Bonzi Wells comes up. As a coach, knowing his history as a player, what are your concerns, and what concerns do you express? What's your mind process there? Because you're talking about a team needing to come together and jell and trust itself.
A: Well, we didn't go into the thing blind, Geoff and I. It's one thing we've always done, and I think it's why we've been successful - we talk things through. We've never made a personnel decision that we weren't both on the same page with, and Coop (Kings executive Wayne Cooper) is often involved, too. So we knew who he was, and I knew his past history. I knew he was a good player. The reality is, he did come off the bench for Memphis. He also is a guy who depends on the situation. Portland, everything sort of exploded on him there, and then he went to Memphis and had a pretty good first year and then last year had problems again. I talked to him three or four times, lengthy conversations, before that deal was made. It's no different than when you talk to any player who has had a little bit of a checkered past. Now maybe his is moreso, but Chris came here, and everybody talked about how he was, and we picked up Rod Strickland, and he'd had a lot of problems in San Antonio before we got him. I don't know what went on with Bonzi Wells and Mike Fratello, or Bonzi Wells and other coaches. I know that what I'm going to judge him on is what he does from the first day of camp on, and I think we're gonna find out real quick about him. The opportunity is there for him. Starting minutes are there for him. There's the ability to get on the floor and show the league that he can be a solid player on a good team, and that's out there. And if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. He has the talent, and Elston (assistant coach Elston Turner) had been around him in Portland and knew him. I talked to him and Geoff talked to him, and I just think, let's see what happens. I think the people who had him before would love to see him just explode on us, too, to verify what happened there. But I've seen guys turn things around. The thing that I have to ask Bonzi - and anybody else, too - is, you're not going to be a distraction. You're gonna be a part of the team. We've been known to help a guy become a better player, and as long as you fit in with the team and you make your teammates better and you're a positive part of it, then things are gonna be fine. But if that doesn't happen, we're gonna know pretty quick and he's gonna know, and we'll have to do something. But I'm not thinking along that route. I'm thinking that he can help us and we can help him. I've always told our players, if we win, if we succeed, you're all going to get noticed for it. Every one of you.
Q: Was there something Bonzi said that you needed to hear, or did you need to just talk straight-up about his past?
A: Oh, yeah, we talked about it. And we talked about the fact that he's going to be challenged here by everybody, and those who write stories about him, and all that. And the one thing - and he said he knew it - was that the fans here in Sacramento want to see a guy who's a good guy who plays hard and tries to do the right thing for his team. And they'll accept you if you do that. But you've got to understand, it's a wait-and-see by everybody to start with. And he understands that. At least, he says he does. But, like I said, it's from the first day. I haven't had the first day yet. But I believe it can work.
