The Hammer
All-Star
It's no coincidence. It shores up the defense is such an impactful way.
[Game] Kings @ Clippers - 1/16/16 - 7:30 PT, 10:30 ET
- Thread starter VF21
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It's no coincidence. It shores up the defense is such an impactful way.
In his post-game interview, Karl said something about the Clippers missing their bigs and going small so he "mumble, um, err, mumble Willie" ... GK's post-game comments seem to have more and more ums and ers and fewer real words as time goes by.
Glenn
Hall of Famer
I've noticed. Not sure what it means as I think over the last couple weeks we have noticed a new Cuz. Early in the game I had the impression he was trying to keep his team mates involved. Who knows? We won, Ben was better, Casspi was on fire, etc. Not saying this is all cause and effect but it could be.. Last game he took an inefficient 30 shots and in my view that's not good.
S
sactownfan
Guest
I stood up and cheered every big basket! I'm gonna take a lil credit for the win tonight ur welcome guys! Casspi hitting daggers was fun!
K
KingMilz
Guest
For a combined nearly 14million in salary neither has done jack crap this year both have been horrible signings so far, to me 2k mins should be going to WCS and Q.
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Making that Philly trade look pretty foolish right now. They have plenty of time to turn it around as they're just 40 games into their contracts, but they haven't been the "steady" vets they've been their whole career
The Hammer
All-Star
The funny thing is, I think he is "losing" the team, or rather the team is "losing" him.
I think Rondo and perhaps some assistant coaches are influencing the philosophy and style of play. They went inside to Cousins a lot tonight, and at key moments. It's like Karl's not on board. One of the weirdest coaching situations I've witnessed.
Sac.1989
Starter
very true. right now its as much of just getting by as well as we can. Karl is a significant handicap, he should be gone but we dont have the balls to make the cut now. I full well expect Vlade to move on this in the offseason. We need to go on one good run to get to the 8th spot basically and thats good enough for this season in the eyes of the powers that be even though we have the ability to push on further to the 6th spot.
The Hammer
All-Star
Very well said. Exactly what I think.
Vlade is a master for having to deal with this.
I think Vlade thinks it would make too many waves to make a mid season coaching change. It would damage morale and cause too much negative speculation that would only be a distraction. So I think he must be somehow letting Rondo, Karl, Cuz, somehow he's influencing things to let these guys play the way they clearly think is best (Rondo has always recognized going inside was our best option). Tonight our offense was working very well, and it was not a Karl signature offense. It was a Rondo signature offense. Actually a very encouraging sign.
Rondo is so smart, he actually could be a coach right now. I wonder if he's actually playing that role, under the pretense of Vlade whispering to Karl to "give his pg a lot of freedom". Karl's body language on the bench is so weird. He almost looks like a spectator. The man can call some amazing plays out of a timeout though. So credit where credit is due.
Hopefully he'll just be quietly relegated to game management (calling timeouts, etc), plays out of timeouts, and cheerleader, for the rest of the season. And defense will be coached by the assistant coaches, and the offense ran and even coached by Rondo.
And ego's can all be soothed by Vlade's magic. Karl can be doing this under the pretense of "delegation".
Then come the offseason, make the change.
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Sac.1989
Starter
my issues with this approach hammer, and im sure you'll agree are:
a) what if we continue this win one lose one, win two lose two approach and actually not make the 8th seed. what if that run never comes under Karl?
b) assuming the decision is made to remove Karl post season, surely it has, i mean we can see the dysfunction and ill-fit ourselves - assuming it has, what if we lose out on a great fitting coach such as Thibs and have to settle on someone like Scott Brooks. For me there is a huge gulf there. You take Brooks but dear god its very much like how we took Karl initially. Brooks for me doesn't actually help us long term. Thibs does however the demand for him is heating up very fast and waiting till the offseason is not our best bet there.
KingsFanGER
Starter
Funny how everything that worked well is because of Rondo, Cuz or even Vlade, but when things go bad Karl is the one to blame.
Of course Karl is just some dumb Nellie ball believer. It can't be, that he wants his team to play Cuz inside, when the Clippers only have one guy above 6'9 available.
With all due respect, but your point of view looks very biased to me.
To me it's obvious, that Karl and the team managed to built a solid professional relationship and Karl is actually making adjustments to the way we act on offense and defense.
In no way Karl is a basketball mastermind and I think his decision making when it comes to rotations leaves a lot to be desired. But he after a rough stretch he has Cousins playing great, he gets the most out of some role players and while I don't like watching our offense we certainly are not a bad team on offense.
Gotta give Karl at least some sort of credit.
The Hammer
All-Star
Yep, agree.
Keep in mind I've been advocating ditching Karl for a couple weeks now. And that is a problem (a). However there may be financial reasons that ownership is putting on that prevent ditching Karl now. That was a massive mistake of a contract. So, perhaps Vlade can't convince Vivek to make the change. Maybe Thibs and Vlade have been talking, and maybe Thibs is also vetting other suitors. Lots of things could be going on behind the scenes. I hope all those things are happening.
BUT. Until that happens, this latest (hopefully) shift in authority over the offense can only help. It's our best chance of going on a little run. And it's also our best chance, given the circumstances, of attracting a top coach.
These guys looked GREAT out there tonight. Offense was clicking exactly the way I had envisioned (though I would like to see more WCS lobs as a weak side threat that keeps interior defenders second guessing double teaming Cousins).
But the overall offensive chemistry was fantastic. RONDO, and I mean RONDO was getting the best out of his guys, not Karl. Honestly reminded me a bit of what happened under Adelman, when intelligence ruled the day.
KingsFanGER
Starter
I wish we could just hire a defensive coordinator. All we have to do is to become mediocre on D.
The Hammer
All-Star
You don't actually. And there is very little evidence for that. We have seen his ideas cost this team 4-6 wins this year at least, and the majority of the fans around here saw it plain and clear.
And Karl actually is SUPPOSED to be a basketball (offensive) mastermind. That's his trademark. That's what is getting him into the hall of fame. That's why people say he's a top ten all time coach. But he completely fell flat here. I don't believe the recent adjustments are due to his leadership, is what it comes down to, and the reason I think that way is because of what I have seen, not because of a bias. I have seen him trying to force this team to play in a style that was completely against the strengths of this team, and he forced it, long after it was obvious to all of us it was costing us games. I have not seen him making subtle tweaks that have gradually resulted in what we saw today. What I saw today looked like the result of a dramatic shift in offensive approach, and my best guess is that somebody had a conversation with somebody and perhaps somebody else, and that authority over how the offense is run must have shifted away from Karl. This is why I'm reluctant to give Karl credit. Because if he was still in charge, I think we'd still be camping Cousins out at the three point line or worse, MID RANGE, and shooting contested jumpers ten seconds into the shot clock.
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Very well said. It's funny how people clamour for Karl to adapt and coach to our strengths. But when we see changes then these same people are unwilling to credit Karl. Yeah sure, it must be players choosing to ignore Karl. Ridiculous.
you literally have no evidence other than speculation and your opinions. Meanwhile, our offensive numbers this season (otherwise known as facts):
10th in ORTG
6th in eFG%
10th in FT rate
5th in 3PT FG%
Those are really, really good numbers. We didn't become a top 10 offensive team in 7 games either. The offense has absolutely turned around from past seasons under Karl and he deserves credit for it. I think a lot of what we're seeing is guys getting comfortable in their role in the offense and starting to thrive playing off Cousins and Rondo.
Defense is another story for sure. We suck and a lot of that is on Karl too for his rotations and not getting WCS in for more minutes to see if he can help out the defense. But that's the point too; it's not fair to Karl to pin all the blame on him defensively (which he certainly deserves many shares of), and then turn around and not praise him for putting together an offensive system that's working.
The Hammer
All-Star
You'd think there'd be SOMEONE on the asst coaching staff that could handle the duties of teaching defense. These are NBA level coaches. They know defense.
jcwkings
All-Star
Karl is implementing some head scratching stuff( mainly on defensive schemes and not using Cuz in the post more, although that has gotten better of late), but the ball movement has been MILES better this year than any other Kings team I can remember in recent memory. Also his out of bounds stuff has been very good also. I don't think he's the answer but at this point he deserves to get the full season. No reason to create another crapstorm right smack in the middle of the season.
jcwkings
All-Star
I just watched last nights game and the defense was actually much better. We held the Clips to 39 percent shooting. Their top scorers in Reddick and Crawford made some tough shots with hands in their faces. I know the Clips were short handed but I saw way more effort om that end from Ben, Rondo, Collison and even Marco.
Glenn
Hall of Famer
Indeed.
Note that the team is playing better. Perhaps that is because Karl is stepping out of the way. Even that, if true, is a coaching decision. Perhaps it is only because the schedule is softer. I would love to know what has gotten to Cuz. He is not the same angry player. That in itself may be the most important change of the year. Cuz has never before had this attitude. Who gets credit? Perhaps it is Vlade. Perhaps it is Karl. Let's see how the season unfolds before sending Karl down the road (I can't believe I wrote that.).
It could also be that the western conference is uncharacteristically weak at the bottom this season, and for the first time in Cousins' career, his season isn't over by now. He actually has something to play for, and that's where his focus is, instead of all of the **** that normally has him pissed off.
Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
This is at least partially true -- when I went back looking to see when the last time we had won 17 of our first 40 was, what jumped out was that in the last decade we had multiple times when we were in fact at 16-24 or 15-25 at this stage, but that effectively meant it was over.
The other thing is that we have generally been trending up after a 1-7 start, whereas in every other year we either started fast and then started failing in a big way, or at best just tread water without much hope of another gear. We're now 16-16 since the 1-7 start, which may be the longest stretch of .500 ball for this team since the Adelman years.
... And ain't that a kick in the ass? 
I don't know about this. When you have Cole Aldrich and Josh Smith on Cousins, why would you not want to exploit it? Both have about 0 chance vs. Cousins...
What change? You mean the fact that we beat the Clippers without Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan? That was another one of those games where we would have all been thinking "how the hell did we manage to lose that?" afterward if we didn't win. Their 10-game win streak consisted of wins over Lakers, Jazz, Wizards, Hornets, Pelicans, 76ers, Blazers, Hornets again, Pelicans again, Miami. Only 1 of those teams has a winning record. What about letting them score 103 points with their leading scorer on the bench? What about letting them cut the lead to 2 points with a wide open layup?
We shot a miraculous 52% from three in this game and needed every one of those shots because our defense was again pee-poor. Sure George Karl subbed Cauley-Stein in for the last 11 seconds if you want to count that as a defensive substitution. Ben got hot and George left him in the game so we didn't get to see more Belinelli 4th quarter heroics. Darren Collison ratcheted up the intensity by several notches against his former team and hometown crowd (maybe the best all-around game I've seen him play this season). I don't see any of those small one-game adjustments pointing the way toward lasting change. We close out the month with some tough but winnable games. Atlanta, Indiana, Charlotte, @ Portland, @ New Orleans, @ Memphis. We need to be on our A-game for all of them. We'll see if any of those adjustments hold up.
Did you find it curious that in the second half when LA went small and they had Prig, Crawford, Wesley Johnson and I forget the others but we had Collison continuing to guard Crawford while Ben was on Prigioni who was just spotted up. There was no switching, it was by plan to have Collison on Crawford.
So the questions that come up...Why? Why wouldn't Ben check Crawford.....and I get when Crawford goes hot, he is a load but why go with an inferior defender in Collison who is much shorter than Crawford? It's stuff like this that I can't wrap my head around.
LA attempted their highest 3 point attempts for a game last night.....this is the Karl scheme by design and last night it worked because, they just didnt make enough. I don't doubt the players effort last night, I just question these schemes and lack of anything resembling a defensive lineup.
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