http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/13657315p-14500111c.html
Mark Kreidler: Adelman is here, and he'll make best of it
They might love him from a distance someday. That could happen. It could happen that, someday, they look back on the Rick Adelman tenure in Sacramento with something approaching genuine appreciation. Heck, nostalgia in sports is never more than a few years away.
But that's someday. In the here and now, there's no getting around the truth, which is that Adelman enters his eighth training camp with the Kings as a lame-duck head coach. Anybody like the sound of that?
It is a ludicrous position, given emphasis by the Maloof family's quixotic attempt to lure Phil Jackson to Sacramento over the summer. Jackson and his $10 million-per-season contract demands were never, ever coming, though he and his agent were happy to play the Kings as surrogate pawns in his chessboard negotiations with the Lakers.
In the end, Phil did exactly as everyone figured he'd do. He took the money, pretended his rip job on Kobe Bryant in Jackson's book never happened and got ready to go again in Los Angeles, the only kind of market he could ever accept for himself.
Rick Adelman?
Still here.
And no longer in the mood to apologize for it.
"I'm going to do what I can to win, and if it's not good enough, they'll tell me," Adelman said Friday during an extended interview in his office at the Kings' training complex.
"But there's a big difference: This year, if we do well and I can get this team to win, it's my choice what I want to do at the end of the year. It's nobody else's. This isn't just a one-way street here."
It is such an obvious truth that it's a wonder no one ever discusses it. The conversation about Adelman - his coaching style, his substitution patterns, the moustache-vs.-no-moustache debate - all occurs in a vacuum in Sacramento, as though the only question were whether Adelman could somehow hang on for another year, another contract, another whatever.
In reality, Adelman can have another NBA job anytime he wants. His lifetime winning percentage is .619. His regular-season record in Sacramento, 351-191, works out to .648 for a franchise that before his arrival was considered the Australian outback of the league. Short of an NBA title, there is absolutely nothing lacking on the man's résumé.
Did he do it alone? Of course not. Geoff Petrie began assembling dynamic rosters, gambling for talent over good-citizenship reputations, a situation that Petrie reprised this summer with the trade for Memphis problem child Bonzi Wells. Joe and Gavin Maloof, taking full rein as owners, moved hard and fast to dramatically upgrade the product. It all happened together.
It was a coordinated effort, which sometimes makes it all the more surprising that it is Adelman alone who gets hung out to dry when things go "bad," as they did last year, the team dropping off to 50 victories and getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs by Seattle. (Trust me: That's the most relative sort of "bad" in the world.)
Now he faces the greatest challenge of his career, trying to fashion a big winner out of a ballyhooed roster that has been almost completely overhauled in a year - to the point, Adelman says, that only three players who were in camp last October will be there this week: Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic and Brad Miller.
"I've got a totally different team," Adelman said, "so we'll find out how much harder it is with this group: Can I reach them the same way? Can I get them to play the same way?"
Can Wells thrive with the starter's minutes he was denied in Memphis, a situation that led to a toxic relationship with coach Mike Fratello? Adelman supports the gamble. He spoke with Wells "three or four times" before Petrie even commenced the trade that sent Bobby Jackson to Memphis and Greg Ostertag to Utah, taking his measure of a player who could help rebuild the Kings as a conference contender or blow them apart but good.
"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," Adelman said. "The opportunity is there for him ... I think the people who had him before (in Portland and Memphis) would love to see him just explode on us, too, to verify what happened there. But I've seen guys turn things around."
For that matter, Adelman, with whom Petrie consults on every personnel move, has approved this entire turnover. He sought it. Once Vlade Divac left in the summer of 2004 for the Lakers, the coach knew that a personnel churn was going to happen sooner or later - and there was never any question that the roster that lost to Seattle in the playoffs had to be scuttled.
Now Divac is gone, Chris Webber is gone, Doug Christie is gone. Jackson's inclusion in the Wells trade, Adelman says, was easily his biggest personnel loss over the summer. He's looking at Wells and Shareef Abdur-Rahim and wondering how they'll play with Bibby and Miller and Stojakovic, among others.
Adelman said his camp is going to stress strength and conditioning to an extent never before practiced during his Kings tenure, and the bookwork will be significant: Most of his roster, for the first time in years, just doesn't know the system.
First, though, beginning with Monday's media day, Adelman must deal with the Jackson/contract phenomenon, a thing that surfaced one day after the Kings' elimination and one about which he was not told despite a Bee report that clearly indicated it was occurring. Weeks after the fact, Joe and Gavin Maloof, with whom Adelman has remained friendly, sat down to talk with the coach to whom they did not offer an extension beyond this coming season.
"It's just not the way things should have been done," Adelman said. "You can say, 'Well, Phil Jackson was available.' Well, so was Red Auerbach. I thought I did a pretty damn good job last year with what went on. ... But I can't worry about it. I'm not running the team. I don't own the team. I have a contract right now, and I'm coaching the team."
It is a team, or at least a roster, that appears capable of another 50-win season, which would only be Adelman's sixth straight in Sacramento. And they might love that from a distance, someday. In the here and now, it is what it is. "If I'm in my last year and things don't work out, I'll move on," Adelman said. "I know the circumstances. I'm not afraid of that or worried about it. I love it here. I love the city, the fans - for the most part, everything's been great. So why should I not try to make sure, if I was to be coaching my last year here, that I do a great job and go out on a good note?"
Mark Kreidler: Adelman is here, and he'll make best of it
They might love him from a distance someday. That could happen. It could happen that, someday, they look back on the Rick Adelman tenure in Sacramento with something approaching genuine appreciation. Heck, nostalgia in sports is never more than a few years away.
But that's someday. In the here and now, there's no getting around the truth, which is that Adelman enters his eighth training camp with the Kings as a lame-duck head coach. Anybody like the sound of that?
It is a ludicrous position, given emphasis by the Maloof family's quixotic attempt to lure Phil Jackson to Sacramento over the summer. Jackson and his $10 million-per-season contract demands were never, ever coming, though he and his agent were happy to play the Kings as surrogate pawns in his chessboard negotiations with the Lakers.
In the end, Phil did exactly as everyone figured he'd do. He took the money, pretended his rip job on Kobe Bryant in Jackson's book never happened and got ready to go again in Los Angeles, the only kind of market he could ever accept for himself.
Rick Adelman?
Still here.
And no longer in the mood to apologize for it.
"I'm going to do what I can to win, and if it's not good enough, they'll tell me," Adelman said Friday during an extended interview in his office at the Kings' training complex.
"But there's a big difference: This year, if we do well and I can get this team to win, it's my choice what I want to do at the end of the year. It's nobody else's. This isn't just a one-way street here."
It is such an obvious truth that it's a wonder no one ever discusses it. The conversation about Adelman - his coaching style, his substitution patterns, the moustache-vs.-no-moustache debate - all occurs in a vacuum in Sacramento, as though the only question were whether Adelman could somehow hang on for another year, another contract, another whatever.
In reality, Adelman can have another NBA job anytime he wants. His lifetime winning percentage is .619. His regular-season record in Sacramento, 351-191, works out to .648 for a franchise that before his arrival was considered the Australian outback of the league. Short of an NBA title, there is absolutely nothing lacking on the man's résumé.
Did he do it alone? Of course not. Geoff Petrie began assembling dynamic rosters, gambling for talent over good-citizenship reputations, a situation that Petrie reprised this summer with the trade for Memphis problem child Bonzi Wells. Joe and Gavin Maloof, taking full rein as owners, moved hard and fast to dramatically upgrade the product. It all happened together.
It was a coordinated effort, which sometimes makes it all the more surprising that it is Adelman alone who gets hung out to dry when things go "bad," as they did last year, the team dropping off to 50 victories and getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs by Seattle. (Trust me: That's the most relative sort of "bad" in the world.)
Now he faces the greatest challenge of his career, trying to fashion a big winner out of a ballyhooed roster that has been almost completely overhauled in a year - to the point, Adelman says, that only three players who were in camp last October will be there this week: Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic and Brad Miller.
"I've got a totally different team," Adelman said, "so we'll find out how much harder it is with this group: Can I reach them the same way? Can I get them to play the same way?"
Can Wells thrive with the starter's minutes he was denied in Memphis, a situation that led to a toxic relationship with coach Mike Fratello? Adelman supports the gamble. He spoke with Wells "three or four times" before Petrie even commenced the trade that sent Bobby Jackson to Memphis and Greg Ostertag to Utah, taking his measure of a player who could help rebuild the Kings as a conference contender or blow them apart but good.
"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," Adelman said. "The opportunity is there for him ... I think the people who had him before (in Portland and Memphis) would love to see him just explode on us, too, to verify what happened there. But I've seen guys turn things around."
For that matter, Adelman, with whom Petrie consults on every personnel move, has approved this entire turnover. He sought it. Once Vlade Divac left in the summer of 2004 for the Lakers, the coach knew that a personnel churn was going to happen sooner or later - and there was never any question that the roster that lost to Seattle in the playoffs had to be scuttled.
Now Divac is gone, Chris Webber is gone, Doug Christie is gone. Jackson's inclusion in the Wells trade, Adelman says, was easily his biggest personnel loss over the summer. He's looking at Wells and Shareef Abdur-Rahim and wondering how they'll play with Bibby and Miller and Stojakovic, among others.
Adelman said his camp is going to stress strength and conditioning to an extent never before practiced during his Kings tenure, and the bookwork will be significant: Most of his roster, for the first time in years, just doesn't know the system.
First, though, beginning with Monday's media day, Adelman must deal with the Jackson/contract phenomenon, a thing that surfaced one day after the Kings' elimination and one about which he was not told despite a Bee report that clearly indicated it was occurring. Weeks after the fact, Joe and Gavin Maloof, with whom Adelman has remained friendly, sat down to talk with the coach to whom they did not offer an extension beyond this coming season.
"It's just not the way things should have been done," Adelman said. "You can say, 'Well, Phil Jackson was available.' Well, so was Red Auerbach. I thought I did a pretty damn good job last year with what went on. ... But I can't worry about it. I'm not running the team. I don't own the team. I have a contract right now, and I'm coaching the team."
It is a team, or at least a roster, that appears capable of another 50-win season, which would only be Adelman's sixth straight in Sacramento. And they might love that from a distance, someday. In the here and now, it is what it is. "If I'm in my last year and things don't work out, I'll move on," Adelman said. "I know the circumstances. I'm not afraid of that or worried about it. I love it here. I love the city, the fans - for the most part, everything's been great. So why should I not try to make sure, if I was to be coaching my last year here, that I do a great job and go out on a good note?"
