upinsmoke
All-Star
You guys who are calling for Malone to be fired are crazy. And just to set the record straight this season is not a playoffs or bust year its another rev up year to the 2016. PDA'S seat may be heating up but what has Malone done to warrant these types of comments besides a few quirky preseason rotations?
TheJewishKing
G-League
Seems to be a very puzzling decision, I can't really comprehend why would coach Malone choose Derrick Williams over Omri Casspi.
From what I have seen in the pre-season (and I have dedicated some time to witness the Kings in action in this pre-season) Casspi was flat-out better than D-Will.
D-will improved his game and output towards the end of the pre-season but overall Casspi was simply more superb and productive.
Therefore, Malone's decision really doesn't make sense, I know that when we look at potential D-Will tops Casspi, it is pretty much obvious and I can definitely agree on it, but D-will is entering his fifth year in the league and he is yet to stand out and fulfill his potential, and if to be honest I don't see it happening, not in the close future at least....
Kings should not compare the potential, not now at least, they should look at the current situation, and in the current situation Casspi is more effective and simply a better player than D-Will, he shoots the ball better, make better decisions he can pass the ball and he also grabs rebounds and lately we've seen him penetrating to the hoop as much as possible, and even if he has an off-night in terms of shooting the ball he finds other ways to atone for it, for instance: passing the ball to the open man.
I have not seen anything close to this from D-Will to be honest, I am not sure he can provide it.
I really believe coach Malone is mistaken with his decision but I believe that he will eventually realises that Casspi should be the first choice of the bench for Rudy Gay.
From what I have seen in the pre-season (and I have dedicated some time to witness the Kings in action in this pre-season) Casspi was flat-out better than D-Will.
D-will improved his game and output towards the end of the pre-season but overall Casspi was simply more superb and productive.
Therefore, Malone's decision really doesn't make sense, I know that when we look at potential D-Will tops Casspi, it is pretty much obvious and I can definitely agree on it, but D-will is entering his fifth year in the league and he is yet to stand out and fulfill his potential, and if to be honest I don't see it happening, not in the close future at least....
Kings should not compare the potential, not now at least, they should look at the current situation, and in the current situation Casspi is more effective and simply a better player than D-Will, he shoots the ball better, make better decisions he can pass the ball and he also grabs rebounds and lately we've seen him penetrating to the hoop as much as possible, and even if he has an off-night in terms of shooting the ball he finds other ways to atone for it, for instance: passing the ball to the open man.
I have not seen anything close to this from D-Will to be honest, I am not sure he can provide it.
I really believe coach Malone is mistaken with his decision but I believe that he will eventually realises that Casspi should be the first choice of the bench for Rudy Gay.
FaStRmAn
Starter
You know the difference isn't that great. I think Dwill is a little more athletic, and Caspi has a little better BBIQ. But the WAR isn't that great I would think. Let them start by using DWill as the backup SF. If he fails to produce then he has been given every single chance and you can ship him out with no regrets. Casspi looks solid now and if he does improve all the better. But neither of these small forwards are in the top 60. They both lack areas of their game that make them liabilities. Malone gets to watch them every day in practice. Up close every game. Im going to give him the benefit of the doubt until there is no doubt.
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I have a problem with Malone's coaching. He does not hold his players accountable for their actions. Have you seen him?? When Cuz gets a stupid foul call, he leaves him in. When Cuz gets a tech, he leaves him in. I've never seen him once get on Cuz's back and yell at him for something stupid. It seems like he's always trying to find ways to protect Cuz and condone his actions.
In almost every game, I've seen Gay go into ISO with the 2nd unit in consecutive plays. Malone decides to keep him in the game and doesn't take him out until we're down by 10. Malone has never benched Gay because of his poor performance and isos that killed our team. It was worse than IT's "iso" plays.
Then there's Ben. Anytime Ben takes a poor shot and misses, he encourages him to take more and be more aggressive. He gives Ben pats on the back when he misses. He needs to tell Ben to make those shots because he can make them. Don't tell him, "it's alright, maybe next time?"
I want to see Coach Malone hold players accountable for their actions. The only person who I've ever seen him bench was JT because of poor play. BUT why didn't he bench the rest of the team last season?
I think Malone is soft. I hope he proves me wrong. We need Adelman back. I think George Carl would be able to fix a lot of attitudes on this team. I'll give Malone 2 more seasons. If we don't win at least 32 games this season, he should be fired despite our roster. There are better headcoaches out there.
gunks
Hall of Famer
With Malone's track record, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt... But our team does show all the hallmarks of one that is poorly coached. Crap ISO offense, horrible defense...
I'd say PDA should go before Malone though... He's made a lot of bad moves, and one "meh" move. Part of our problem is a lack of roster continuity.. which leads to poor chemistry, which leads to bad play... It would be one thing if the roster actually got upgraded... But it hasn't been.
Not the best start to the new era.
I'd say PDA should go before Malone though... He's made a lot of bad moves, and one "meh" move. Part of our problem is a lack of roster continuity.. which leads to poor chemistry, which leads to bad play... It would be one thing if the roster actually got upgraded... But it hasn't been.
Not the best start to the new era.
I'm not going to worry about Malone's choice of rotation until the games start. I think Stauskas has looked better than McLemore and I think Casspi has looked better than Williams. But until it starts affecting the Kings Win/Loss record it doesn't really matter to me who comes off the bench behind Rudy or which of our young SGs starts. For Stauskas I can even be on board with the reasoning. He's a rookie who needs to get in a bit better shape and add some muscle who will also likely hit the rookie wall at some point this season. And Ben still often looks lost but he's got quicker feet on defense and has been shooting better, at least in the preseason.
Williams over Casspi is harder to defend, but really we're talking about 12-14 minutes a night so I don't see that it would make a huge difference either way. Personally I thought playing Landry and Evans together at the PF & C was a far worse idea than giving DWill minutes over Casspi.
And for me, I'm fine with giving Malone and D'Alessandro three full seasons before calling for their heads. Personally I like Malone as a coach. And while I've been highly critical of our GM, I'd give PDA this season and next to turn things around. It can't always be knee jerk reactions in sports in terms of firing coaches and GMs. That's one hallmark of the perpetual basement dwellers of the NBA.
Williams over Casspi is harder to defend, but really we're talking about 12-14 minutes a night so I don't see that it would make a huge difference either way. Personally I thought playing Landry and Evans together at the PF & C was a far worse idea than giving DWill minutes over Casspi.
And for me, I'm fine with giving Malone and D'Alessandro three full seasons before calling for their heads. Personally I like Malone as a coach. And while I've been highly critical of our GM, I'd give PDA this season and next to turn things around. It can't always be knee jerk reactions in sports in terms of firing coaches and GMs. That's one hallmark of the perpetual basement dwellers of the NBA.
TheJewishKing
G-League
This is exactly why giving D-Will more minutes than Casspi in this very current situation is a mistake.
You have mentioned it yourself, you said Casspi is more solid and he improved, which means that as for now Casspi is in a better shape and in a better rhythm than D-Will, this is why the Kings should seize the opportunity and let Casspi have the more minutes as a backup player for Rudy, I mean if Casspi is currently in a good shape and looking even more decent than usual why would you suddenly decide to reduce his minutes and give more minutes to a player which wasn't able to impress as much as Casspi did in the pre-season, in that way you are sabotaging your team, D-Will hasn't showed that he is deserved to play as the first backup for the SF spot, unlike him, Casspi did showed that he is well-deserved that role.
Malone should let Casspi be the first backup player of the bench in the SF spot and when he struggles or doesn't provide efficiency and deliver his A game, only then you should consider letting D-Will get those minutes.
randymoss1881
Starter
We better hear Hibbert rumors by mid December. Hill and Watson are out for 2 weeks leaving them with no pg and were gonna struggle to score before that. Looking at there schedule they will be lucky to have 5 wins by mid-December. They will be selling early to tank especially with an abundance of big men in the draft. PDA needs to ship the scrubs DWill/JT/Ben get Hibbert in here before the new year to give us 50 or so games with Gay/Boogie/Hibbert.
This will us open up room for ray to play back up pg minuets with sessions playing sg
This will us open up room for ray to play back up pg minuets with sessions playing sg
Wait. What?
They have no PG so they'll trade Hibbert to us for DWill/JT/Ben because they're going to be "selling early to tank"? Yeah, I'm so betting that won't happen.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Unless there is some motive behind this then this is all indeed troubling. Casspi outplayed Williams in every way and earned those few minutes. Troubling.
Well, there is the chance (remote, perhaps) but the chance of a perfect storm this year in Indiana. Paul George is out for the season, and Stephenson went to Charlotte. They've got at least four other injuries (George Hill 3 weeks, C.J. Watson 2 weeks, David West 1 week, Stuckey expected to miss opener) that are going to hurt at the beginning of the season and could in principle linger.
Their opening day lineup may actually have only eight players with any NBA experience at all:
Donald Sloan
C.J. Miles
Chris Copeland/Solomon Hill
Luis Scola/Lavoy Allen
Roy Hibbert/Ian Mahinmi
With persistent rumors last year of tensions between Hibbert and George, little opportunity to go deep in the playoffs this year, and a potentially brutal start to the season (I don't think their schedule is particularly difficult, but if players don't get healthy, there's no team there)...they might get to the point where they want to dump the Hibbert max deal. If there turns out to be an opportunity there...
There's an interesting thread over at PacersDigest that talks about the possibility of them tanking the season.
Just to remind people... Hibbert just had the worst playoff performance in the history of the NBA and gets a max contract. I'll pass thank you very much.
Edit: An interesting graph that shows where he's heading:
Edit: An interesting graph that shows where he's heading:
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Just to remind people... Hibbert just had the worst playoff performance in the history of the NBA and gets a max contract. I'll pass thank you very much.
Edit: An interesting graph that shows where he's heading:
I told a lot of NBA fans that Hibbert was overrated after his 2012/13 playoff run.. people started naming him the best C in the NBA.. I was historical.. now those same people mock him lol. I think Hibbert is underrated now.. people don't expect a lot from him and look down on him. Maybe he needs a change of scenery to Sacramento.
randymoss1881
Starter
Miles, Sloan, Copeland are starting for 2 weeks they might not win a game 10 in.Then they get there starters Hill, Watson not scores so there 1 2 options are West/Hibbert. There next 20 games 15 are vs playoff team ( who got better) and ( kings, Detroit,NO, MN). If your not scoring over 95ppg how do you beat those teams they lost there 2 scores from last year a loss of 35 ppg and also there 2 best defenders. If your sitting at 8-22 let's say, with a center who has an opt out this year why would you keep him when your a bottom 5 team and the draft has Towns/Okafor.
Iced Espresso
Starter
I'm not as far as you are with this, but it does look bad. That is if in practice there is not much to see of any difference than we saw in the games. Omri was simply much better at just about everything than Williams was. If anything Omri needed to take a step back and let the game come to him more, but certainly he showed a decent all around game, one we should be happy with on such a cheap contract.
Nik coming off the bench however is an option that could have some advantages to it, especially if they lack some scoring options. Now if Nik gets 15 mins, and McLemore the rest at the SG then I'll be pretty upset myself.
The coaching staff could have saw something with Evans on the floor that started becoming an issue with the offensive flow of the starters as well. I did not see it besides them passing him the ball too much however.
I can see Thompson and McLemore situation logically, but not with the Williams/Casspi situation at all.
Still I'd be starting Stauskas, Evans, and giving most backup mins at SF to Omri, with occasional stretch pf moments in a smaller lineup.
Yeah, no denying that he had a terrible season last year (though he's already two years into his max contract - he didn't get it following the playoff bomb). The question is whether he had any extenuating circumstances (injury, personal problems) that brought that on. Can he bounce back? He's only 28, so it's not as if he should be falling apart physically.
So you think he deserves a max contract? Nothing is for free you know. Having Hibbert consume so much money would mean you have to make other compromises and pretty much give up any thought of having a third big name (Josh Smith, Rondo etc) with Cousins and Gay.
Well, if we were to acquire Hibbert, he would be the third big name. But we would definitely need him to play like it. We couldn't afford to get the Hibbert from the last few months of last season.
randymoss1881
Starter
I think we can afford Hibbert going 12-8-2-2bpg with his elite rim protection as a third man. It would be fine with Boogie/Gay averaging 20ppg then Hibbert/Collison/Nik rounding out the lineup is more than enough scoring.
If we can get a front court of Cuz/Hibbert, our defense would probably increase by AT LEAST 3 rankings.. Hibbert does all the dirty work on defense. I think a combo of Cuz/Hibbert/JT would probably be top 15 in the NBA. I'd even go as far to suggest top 5 front court in the NBA. I'd put D-Will, Ben, Sessions or Collison, Landry, and Casspi all on the trade block. However, I don't think we'd have enough pieces to trade for him.
randymoss1881
Starter
I think we would have enough teams I think need a center shot blocker:
Ben/JT/Dwill
Atlanta: Dennis/Antic/Payne (would they trade milsap)
Boston: green/bradley/zeller/Olynyk/
Cleveland: don't see them trading to them
Hornents: Henderson/zeller/Vonleh
Chubbs
Starter
Perhaps. It's hard to see anything he's saying actually working, and since the FO seems so proud of the talent they've assembled, someone will be the fall man. Right now it looks like Malone.
I'm not calling for firing him. It's just hard to miss the direction this is heading.
Chubbs
Starter
Wait, The Jewish King is on Casspi's side? You don't say.
In this case, we are all with you.
NewArena
All-Star
Lol @ "showcase"
what is there to show? everyone in the NBA knows what some of our lower level guys have to offer, and it clearly isn't all that much. What kind of offer would we be expecting? let's get real. The offseason is all the proof we need, in terms of no one being super interested.
what is there to show? everyone in the NBA knows what some of our lower level guys have to offer, and it clearly isn't all that much. What kind of offer would we be expecting? let's get real. The offseason is all the proof we need, in terms of no one being super interested.
