McNair gone

NewArena said:
It was “Monte is great” when the Kings were winning two years ago (no credit to Vivek at all) and now his bad moves are all Vivek’s fault? I don’t get it
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I don't think anyone was critical of Vivek two years ago if that's what you mean and he did get credit for hiring a good GM and staying out of the way, which is generally what we expect from an owner. None of us really know how involved he is in any decision anyway so it seems natural to apply the credit (positive or negative) for roster moves to the GM. It might be unfair of me to assume he was responsible for firing Mike Brown but he created that perception himself when he publicly co-signed on firing Mike Malone back in the day and then oversaw a revolving door of subsequent coach hirings and firings.

And the other thing which has happened in the past year is his undercutting of negotiations between the A's and the city of Oakland on a temporary lease while the Vegas stadium is being built. Oakland's Mayor was angling for a guarantee from MLB that they can keep the team name and potentially get an expansion team in a few years and that all ended when Vivek offered Sutter Health Park to John Fisher free of charge. A lot of people here (Sacramento based fans) may be happy about the A's being in town but I ain't ever going to be shaking Vivek's hand because of this.
 
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ockingsfan said:
While Sabonis was instrumental in making the year one Beam Team click, Hali would had been the better long term answer for the Kings. Like I said, it's a guard and SF league, not a big man league anymore.

Also, yes Fox value was low, but you could see the potential of Hali after his first year. If anyone was untouchable at that time, I thought it was him.

I would had waited to get Fox and Hali a real coach, and not Luke Walton, before I decided to ship Hali out. And if a Fox-Hali duo didn't work with a real coach, I would had traded Fox for pennies on the dollar than trade a young All-Star guard.

I could had lived with passing on Sabonis and the one year of playoffs if we still had a young All-Star (All-NBA level?) PG on this team to build around.
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its part of the problem stacking <6’5” guards. You struggle to get value for them in trades.
 

gonna be really hard justifying following this franchise much after this year
 
iowamcnabb said:
Amick said Monte did not want Doug to be coach moving forward and would have built the team differently if left to his own devices. There it is.

our only hope is Scott really truly has Vivek’s trust. If he doesn’t

View attachment 13486
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I mean Monte or someone can easily feed this narrative to Sam amick before getting his next job. Doesn’t necessarily make this true
 
The_Jamal said:
If this were Spurs or Heat ownership, I might believe you. Vivek has earned absolutely no good-will in terms of letting his GM run the team
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Yeah I’m just not ready to believe that Monte was held back from being Sam Presti all of a sudden. Time will tell i guess
 
NewArena said:
Yeah I’m just not ready to believe that Monte was held back from being Sam Presti all of a sudden. Time will tell i guess
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What if he was held back from retaining Mike Brown through a full season, after he had just extended him with a new contract.....and held back from waiting to trade Fox until the off season and not acquiring Zach Lavine?
 
iowamcnabb said:
Sam isn’t just going to share something he heard from one group or individual, that’s not a very good way to build a career in journalism.
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Sam also has always had a soft spot for Sacramento. One of the few guys out there who 1. actually pays attention to this team and 2. Gives them fair coverage. And he's like a legit journalist, so I tend to believe things he puts out. Or at least, things he does put out, he's not just "guessing" or giving an opinion like most of our other Sacramento media.
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
How many sources can there be for what McNair's future secret plans are? Unless he's got multiple personalities...
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If you are referring to where his next job is Sam framed it as speculation as far as I can tell. 13 years with Houston, the only other franchise he has worked for. The other landing spot was his former boss who is now in Philly.
 
captain bill said:

gonna be really hard justifying following this franchise much after this year
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Yeah, and I see a bunch of wrong opinions from Monte on most of those, lol. Monte was apparently on the cusp of setting fire to more future assets to marginal move his way back to the middle to appease a player that was already 90% out the door.
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
What if he was held back from retaining Mike Brown through a full season, after he had just extended him with a new contract.....and held back from waiting to trade Fox until the off season and not acquiring Zach Lavine?
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Well apparently he was held back from crapping away picks on someone like Collins. Good. His makeup trades involving 2nds were good though. It would interesting to see how all the other moves came about.
 
captain bill said:

gonna be really hard justifying following this franchise much after this year
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I can’t buy into this mindset because he had the chance to mold the roster and did jack**** for a full season. Is RUN IT BACK season also Vivek’s fault?

Monte wasted a year sitting on his hands. Impatient owner got impatient. More news at 11.
 
SacTownKid said:
Well apparently he was held back from crapping away picks on someone like Collins. Good. His makeup trades involving 2nds were good though. It would interesting to see how all the other moves came about.
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Whether agreeing with the moves or not, do you believe that it was McNair's decision to extend and fire Brown....and trade for Zach Lavine?
 
SLAB said:
I can’t buy into this mindset because he had the chance to mold the roster and did jack**** for a full season. Is RUN IT BACK season also Vivek’s fault?

Monte wasted a year sitting on his hands. Impatient owner got impatient. More news at 11.
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Multiple bad things can be true at once. McNair’s roster shortcomings don’t really matter anymore but Vivek’s failings we’re stuck with
 
hrdboild said:
I don't think anyone was critical of Vivek two years ago if that's what you mean and he did get credit for hiring a good GM and staying out of the way, which is generally what we expect from an owner. None of us really know how involved he is in any decision anyway so it seems natural to apply the credit (positive or negative) for roster moves to the GM. It might be unfair of me to assume he was responsible for firing Mike Brown but he created that perception himself when he publicly co-signed on firing Mike Malone back in the day and then oversaw a revolving door of subsequent coach hirings and firings.

And the other thing which has happened in the past year is his undercutting of negotiations between the A's and the city of Oakland on a temporary lease while the Vegas stadium is being built. Oakland's Mayor was angling for a guarantee from MLB that they can keep the team name and potentially get an expansion team in a few years and that all ended when Vivek offered Sutter Health Park to John Fisher free of charge. A lot of people here (Sacramento based fans) may be happy about the A's being in town but I ain't ever going to be shaking Vivek's hand because of this.
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When the coach gets fired, the GM takes it upon himself to say he was responsible. However, Vivek made the decision on Mike Brown, Mike Malone, Luke Walton, every head coach, etc.
 
The difficult thing about evaluating GMs as fans is that we have incomplete information. We don’t know about the offers that were not accepted, the alternative moves that were contemplated but rejected, much less the pressure and constraints from players, agents, or ownership. GMs should be evaluated on process as much as, if not more so, than results, but as fans we pretty much only know the results.

For example, there has been a lot of criticism of “running it back” after Beam Team I. There was a lot of smoke—sudden creation of cap space, rumors of Kyle Kuzma, Draymond, or Beal, and then it’s just a re-signed Barnes and a Sabonis extension. It’s hard to know what the options were, but frankly “running it back” gets blown out of proportion if it really came down to Kuzma or Barnes (and Beal perhaps was a bullet dodged).

There are a number of moves that while maybe I wasn’t 100% in agreement with, at least I understood. The one that was puzzling at the time, and also gets a lot of attention, is the Davion pick. One thing I think we can glean from Monte’s process is that he was focused on too much on value and flexibility with each piece, winning every trade and picking BPA, but not enough on making additional moves to ensure that the pieces fit. The Davion pick gets held out as an example of maybe taking BPA to a fault, and not risking a swing on a wing. The funny thing is, though, the team picking after the Kings did that exact thing. They took a swing on Zaire Williams, who of course is no longer on their team either. And now Davion is looking like an actual piece for Miami.

Of course, results matter at the end of the day, and one playoff appearance in five years isn’t going to cut it. I do think the team is in a better place than when Monte was hired, but it’s hard to feel excited about their direction. Unlike when Monte was hired, tough, it’s hard to feel excited now that the direction is going to improve any time soon.
 
24 rick barry said:
Vivek's decision to extend and fire Brown.
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I don't think Vivek really wanted to extend Brown. He was basically forced too because Brown went public with his contract demands even though he still had 2 years left on his contract.

Firing Brown, yes probably Vivek, but I wouldn't say that was a mistake.
 
SLAB said:
I can’t buy into this mindset because he had the chance to mold the roster and did jack**** for a full season. Is RUN IT BACK season also Vivek’s fault?

Monte wasted a year sitting on his hands. Impatient owner got impatient. More news at 11.
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While I do think that we made a lot of bench shuffling and "run it back" really only refers to the starters and Monk, the reality is the moves he did make all sucked. The big get was Sasha who depending on your perspective did not get a fair chance to show what he could do, or sucks and wasn't NBA quality to begin wit. Either way, that was our big add. The additions and subtractions were a net negative. Namely, Chris Duarte and JaVale McGee both came and received significant playing time without contributing to winning. Chris Duarte, is in fact, NOT an NBA player. He is now out of the league and playing in Puerto Rico because he was not good enough for the Bulls. I place a lot of blame on Brown for how he used the players but Monte brought them there so he is equal to blame. Somehow I doubt that Vivek played much a role in bringing no name rotation/depth players to Sacramento. You may blame him for a fascination with big-name players like LaVine or DDR but something tells me he probably didn't know who Chris Duarte was 3 years ago.
 
ockingsfan said:
I don't think Vivek really wanted to extend Brown. He was basically forced too because Brown went public with his contract demands even though he still had 2 years left on his contract.

Firing Brown, yes probably Vivek, but I wouldn't say that was a mistake.
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I think Vivek was as disappointed as all of us were following the 23-24 campaign. It was ludicrous for Brown to demand a raise following that season but he played the media who were already hostile to Vivek like a fiddle. Power to Brown for doing that. If he takes the Suns job he is only going to increase his reputation when he get fired there through no fault of his own and adds another 2-3 years of doing nothing to his early retirement life.

At least we'll be off the hook if he actually takes a job before his Sac contract is up.
 
GMs generally develop a “type” and roster philosophy. Clearly McNair valued basketball “skills”, shooting (which is ironic looking back at how inept we became at shooting), hard workers and team first guys. This resulted probably in too many guards, too many nice guys, not enough tough guys, length and athletes. Going forward, I would love to see an infusion of the Rockets DNA in this team. I think Christie would like that too. Doesn’t mean we become the villains of the nba, but I’m tired of seeing us pushed around (both athletically and by physicality).
 
Tetsujin said:

“Keon gambles too much on defense. So I’m going to start Kevin Huerter instead.” I’m sorry, what?
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While it is true that Keon gambles a lot on defense (and this was my suspicion of what Brown was using as his reasoning to not play Keon)…. It’s 100% absurd when he was playing Kevin or Monk instead who were both awful defenders AND Keon was a better 3 point shooter on top of it.

I have to wonder if we would have even been put in the play-in if Keon started at the 2 the entire season. Had the stubbornness ended sooner, I think we are at least a few games better record-wise.
 
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