[Shams] The Sacramento Kings are hiring Houston Rockets assistant GM Monte McNair as new head of basketball operations, sources tell me and @sam_amick

#92
And everything about where he came from fits the roster that Vlade put together. This should mean that firesales can be put to the side for now. Watch, typical Kangz his first move will be a blockbuster that moves out Buddy, Fox, and Bagley for a bunch of 2024 mid firsts. LOL.
If he did that, all the people that wanted Hinkie better be on their knees worshipping this guy.
 
#93
And everything about where he came from fits the roster that Vlade put together. This should mean that firesales can be put to the side for now. Watch, typical Kangz his first move will be a blockbuster that moves out Buddy, Fox, and Bagley for a bunch of 2024 mid firsts. LOL.
Sometimes I struggle to follow the logic in your posts. Like here - you start with 'and the move suits what we have, smart' then out of nowhere you are 'lol he's gonna mess it up'. Which is it?
 
#94
Sometimes I struggle to follow the logic in your posts. Like here - you start with 'and the move suits what we have, smart' then out of nowhere you are 'lol he's gonna mess it up'. Which is it?
It's called hyperbole. Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally. That's what the 2nd part of that post was. Like with our luck, they'll still find a way to screw it up. It was a joke.
 

bajaden

Hall of Famer
#96
Yea, I've converted. Willing to give him a chance and to see where this goes. Hopefully Vivek will make contact with his third swing.
Well, we all have our favorites, but the bottom line is, we don't really know any of these guys. We don't know for sure how much influence they had over any of the deals that happened while they were on board. We don't know what their personality's are like. So at this point, why not put a good spin on it and hope for the best. We'll have plenty of time to criticize later. I would feel better about the whole situation is Dumar's wasn't involved. It may amount to nothing, but the perception is bad.

Other than that, go Kings!
 
#98
Except for the fact I cant find a picture outside of his profile as to what McNeal looks like, for now I like the hire.
I like the bilingual analogy, aside from the analytics nothing PDAish about him.
 
#99
Fox can be elite at pushing the pace and getting to the hole (scoring, drawing fouls, and distributing to others). Would assume he'll rate pretty high in McNair's eyes, since he enables the team to score at the hole (the highest percentage shot) and to develop more shots on goal per game (with his speed).

Would be fun to see the Kings draft a Kira Lewis type and just go 110 miles per hour each game. If McNair goes that route.
Lewis,Fox, and Bagley we won’t stop anybody and we won’t be able to spread the floor
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
Except for the fact I cant find a picture outside of his profile as to what McNeal looks like, for now I like the hire.
Well, I don't suspect that he's going to be on the cover for the 2021 Sacramento Kings Front Office Swimsuit Calendar, so what he looks like probably won't factor too much into his job performance.
 
PDA was and is a salary cap specialist who convinced (.. somehow..) Vivek that he was a general manager material. PDA was always awkward, unsure, and insecure. I do not know how he was able to convince Vivek to give him that job and Vivek was so impressed by him.
 
Lewis,Fox, and Bagley we won’t stop anybody and we won’t be able to spread the floor
Fox and Lewis can be sequenced. Fox plays 80% of the minutes, Lewis comes in and runs like crazy the other 20%. They may overlap for 10% of it.

Bagley would need to work on his shot for sure, especially when he's a trailing big.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
Fire, fire, fire. The smoke was legit, gee, who would have guessed. We've been around Vivek long enough to know how this process works. Hopefully now will be the first time it doesn't bring total chaos. Which BTW the only time we didn't see TOTAL chaos was with Vlade. Things were much, much worse prior to him.
To be fair, this appears to less be Dumars taking over a basketball position but rather Dumars taking over Matina's position, which, all things considered, can only be a positive.
 
Last edited:
So what is the correct number of drafts before questioning his picks are fair game?

Vlade had:
2015: WCS
2016: PappaG, Malachi Richardson,Skal,
2017: Fox, Justin Jackson, Harry Giles, Frank Mason
2018: Marvin Bagley, Gary Trent (for Portland)
2019: Justin James, Ignas Brazdiekas, Kyle Guy

after the 2017 draft I was pretty much done. What do you think is fair for this guy? He will have numerous 2nd rounders.
 
PDA was and is a salary cap specialist who convinced (.. somehow..) Vivek that he was a general manager material. PDA was always awkward, unsure, and insecure. I do not know how he was able to convince Vivek to give him that job and Vivek was so impressed by him.
Vlade who convinced (.. somehow..) Vivek that he was a general manager material. Vlade was always awkward, for sure, and secure. I do not know how he was able to convince Vivek to give him that job and Vivek was so impressed by him.
 
So what is the correct number of drafts before questioning his picks are fair game?

Vlade had:
2015: WCS
2016: PappaG, Malachi Richardson,Skal,
2017: Fox, Justin Jackson, Harry Giles, Frank Mason
2018: Marvin Bagley, Gary Trent (for Portland)
2019: Justin James, Ignas Brazdiekas, Kyle Guy

after the 2017 draft I was pretty much done. What do you think is fair for this guy? He will have numerous 2nd rounders.
Just this one. With the 12th no reason not to get a decent player, low pressure pick with what looks like some good players. Three second rounders should allow him to nail at least one steal or get creative with draft position.
 
A non-shooting PG won't win you anything in today's NBA.

But Fox isn't a finished product. I would hate to see him traded and blow up elsewhere if he ever gets consistent from range.
Fox isn’t a “non-shooting” PG. That’s just a ridiculous thing to assert.

He may not shoot as consistently as we’d all like, but there are places in between can and can’t.

Not everyone can shoot it like Curry. And many teams have had success with a PG not being a stellar shooter or even a scorer. However Fox can clearly score, regardless of his perceived shooting problems.

Furthermore, De’Aaron Fox is near the bottom of the list of KINGS problems. The inability to draft well, outside a couple players here and there, and the inability to find a competent GM or worthwhile HC have been the mainstay issues.
 
Last edited:
To be fair, this appears to less be Dumars taking over a basketball position but rather Dumars taking over Matina's position, which, all things considered, can only be a positive.
For sure, the only problem is that it does indeed sound like his role indeed limited options and might have scared potential candidates away.
 
PDA was and is a salary cap specialist who convinced (.. somehow..) Vivek that he was a general manager material. PDA was always awkward, unsure, and insecure. I do not know how he was able to convince Vivek to give him that job and Vivek was so impressed by him.
Don't forget 'ol Mully! He may have been the bigger problem in the end. McNair comes with more of a rep than PDA, but man, the question is whether or not Vivek again stuck Dumars in the Mully role. That dynamic was a catalyst for so much of the Kings failures. Nothing congealed because it seemed like nobody had a real direction. Vivek tried running his basketball ops like a freaking tech firm and if he didn't learn that lesson before it's going to be rough. Unless the next coach is so successful that politics can't wipe them out this time that is.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
I don't know anything about Monte McNair besides what I've read in the last couple of days, but he's qualified for the job and his association with the Sloan Conference over the years is encouraging. I do feel like a team in this market is really going to have to win games in the margins not necessarily with superstars and top 5 picks but by finding guys nobody else is looking at and putting them in position to be successful. Houston obviously has James Harden leading the league in scoring every year but they've got 14 other players on their roster helping him to get to the playoffs and most of those guys aren't big names.

The PTSD thing is real. My initial reaction to any Kings news at this point is to find the negative in it, but I had to stop myself and really take a step back here. Yes it would be easy to cynically dismiss this as Vivek being wowed by a Silicon Valley friendly stathead and making another rash decision. We all know the painful history but you can't change the past and sometimes people do learn from their mistakes. McNair earned a shot to see if he can turn this team around.

This is one of the first things Google turned up when I searched for Monte McNair and I thought it was an interesting discussion which helps to give you a sense of some of McNair's management philosophy and also because McNair is sitting right next to our current VP of Analytics Luke Bornn:


I've said this before, but it seems relevant to bring it up again here since Moneyball is a big part of this discussion... the Oakland A's don't win big every year and they make personnel mistakes like everyone else but more often than not they find ways to be successful far above what their limited budget and market share indicates that they should and that's not why I'm a fan of that team but I can tell you that over the last 15+ years I've found very little to be upset about with that front office. I'm confident that even when I disagree with their decisions (like the Josh Donaldson and Yoenis Cespedes trades), they'll probably be proven right in the long run or at least they'll find a way to bounce back even stronger if they're not because they have the track record which backs them up. And that's really the best that any fan can hope for from their favorite team's front office staff -- confidence that they're the best people for the job and they're doing a far better job than I could hope to do.

Fast forward to the 33 minute mark in that video where Luke Bornn talks about why he thinks FG% is analogous to batting average in baseball as an outdated concept that new data models have made obsolete. Then immediately after that Monte McNair fields a question about player tracking technology. This is the kind of stuff we need to be looking at as a small market team just to *remain* competitive. So all in all, I'm excited that we may have brought in an executive here who is actually capable of backing up the rhetoric and bringing real value to the team as a decision maker. Also it seems pretty clear that we have at least two people in our front office now who are on the same page and looking at things from an objective point of view. Seems to me like there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about this hire.

* Note: The word "remain" is rhetorical of course in this context because clearly we need to first catch up and become competitive.
 
I'm not really big on analytics more than a tool in a big picture in basketball. Basketball definitely differs from baseball in that there are a lot more intangibles and variables. A baseball player batting against a pitcher or fielding a ball is an individual act. Beyond free throw shooting, there are very few individual acts in basketball. The intangibles of a player can shift a whole team. It's why Jimmy Butler can drag a couple of teams to the Eastern Conference finals, and why he knew, despite the talent, he couldn't do anything with Minnesota. It's why the Kings fell apart after losing Shumpert of all people.

However, I'm a huge fan of having a unified plan and creating synergy. If Vivek loves analytics, McNair is all in on analytics and the team is going to hire appropriate pieces, including a coach, that are all on the same page, then I'm all in too and excited for what the future could hold.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
Don't forget 'ol Mully! He may have been the bigger problem in the end. McNair comes with more of a rep than PDA, but man, the question is whether or not Vivek again stuck Dumars in the Mully role. That dynamic was a catalyst for so much of the Kings failures. Nothing congealed because it seemed like nobody had a real direction. Vivek tried running his basketball ops like a freaking tech firm and if he didn't learn that lesson before it's going to be rough. Unless the next coach is so successful that politics can't wipe them out this time that is.
To be fair, Dumars at least has some sort of track record as a proven GM in this league whereas Molly’s highlight as a player personnel guy in the league was being in charge of the Warriors when they were hopelessly bad. Plus, I feel more confident in McNair’s ability to bridge the gap than PDA (who once famously got on a literal party bus full of season ticket holders and then spent the next several hours bumbling through a defense of his more puzzling moves)