Exactly, I remember when Karl was hired, this board hopping with excitement.....I think that we ALL admit that Karl was a great coach(nobody is that stupid not to agree), but two things are going on here, either #1, he's just not a good fit for Sacramento, or #2, his old age is catching up and he just doesn't have the coaching smarts he use to. Because nobody can deny that he WAS a great coach.
For me personally, a big part of the reason why I initially supported the move to hire George Karl last December is that I envisioned a scenario very much like what has actually happened here. Honestly. And maybe failing was the only way to get back on track from where we were post-Malone.*
Let me explain. Vivek/PDA made the decision to fire Malone because they wanted "pace" -- remember PDA's twitter feed pounding that buzzword into the ground -- and the absolute
best coach you could hire at that point to spearhead your pace agenda was George Karl. D'Antoni had already been disgraced in both LA and New York. George Karl, on the other hand, was sitting there on the market with a recent COY award on his resume and zero losses since then to tarnish the luster. He's a cancer survivor. He's in the 1000 win club. He's universally respected. He's already earned his spot in the hall of fame. And most importantly, he's been
the guru of running offense in the NBA longer than anybody. So fine, you want pace, go hire George Karl. Get the best guy possible to push your agenda and see what happens. Either it works like gangbusters and everyone is happy or you fall flat on your face and knock that idotic "pace" delusion out of here for good. These guys were so damn smug and condescending about there being one right way to win in the NBA that they sytematically eliminated everyone from the organization who saw things differently. There's no other way they were going to learn some humility except total failure.
Sure, in an alternate reality, instant success would have been fun for all of us, but in a lot of ways we're better off that this went the way that it did. We got one year of frustration under George Karl but PDA and Mullin are gone for good, Vivek has stopped publicly embarrassing us at every opportunity, Vlade has returned to claim the job he was destined to have (contrary to what some Yahoos seem to think, most of the best GMs in the league were former players who got their start somewhere without prior front office experience -- and really, who else from our past would you trust more than Vlade to manage this job?). Somehow, improbably, this season isn't even lost yet. Five games back at the All-Star break is tough but doable if we play like we're capable of. If the next step here is a big step back toward fundamentals and an ethic of hard work and earning everything on the defensive end than maybe it was all worth it.
As fans we already knew better -- we already knew that pace was an illusion -- but Vivek didn't live through all the heartbreak of playoff glory and defeat in Sacramento that we did. He didn't have front row tickets to the greatest show on court, the spiritual predecessors of last year's Warriors long before they became the league's newest Golden boys. He didn't see the Lakers tear out our guts repeatedly with ugly but effective half-court offense and the biggest bully in the game. Unfortunately, some lessons can only be learned the hard way. Hopefully Vivek has been paying attention because I'm not really in the mood to sit through this particular lesson a third time.
*
(Of course once it became clear that Thibodeau would be fired at the end of the season and we had no chance of making the playoffs after the All-Star break, I would have preferred we waited out the season with Corbin, took our draft pick, and just hired the right man for the job to begin with. Somehow Thibodeau doesn't have a job yet though so we actually get a third chance now to do the right thing and offer him one in Sacramento.)
