I’m particularly shocked by the Adelman praise, guess he’s starting to realize how good we had it all those years, coach wise.

When over the summer coach Theus talked about an offensive system based off of the Triangle offense. In the clippers game I saw only two people really moving without the ball JT and Udrih. That was nice to see and the extra passes were good to see as well but I though that the passing and motion spoke more to the basketball IQ of the indiviual players than to a system that Coach had implemented.

Which has me wondering… who would make a good coach for this squad?

Paul Silas?
Avery Johnson?
Flip Saunders?

or do we try for an assistant coach like Tom Thibodeau?

Thanks for getting this up, TZ (that’s what she said!). I heard the interview this morning and couldn’t believe my ears. While Maloof stopped short of throwing Theus under the bus, he definitely threw down the gaunlet at Reggie’s feet. I also loved that Maloof was emphatic about developing the youth on the team.

Not to beat a dead horse, but how do the Rise Guys manage to elicit a level of candor and frankness from guys like Joe Maloof and Jerry Reynolds, as opposed to the pander-fest that takes place on the Peaches show?

to Ziller previously but I personally am fond of Saunders, he’s a soft touch with a good offensive mind and the reality is no matter how much we or Joe Maloof or the media in general discuss the need for defensive improvements Petrie is fundamentally an offensive minded GM who drafts offensively prolific players. Saunders has come under considerable criticism, but it has generally surrounded his inability to get teams OUT of the playoffs, not into them. Given the cult of personality surrounding Silas and the Van Gundy on Novocain system associated with Avery, Saunders, fairly mild mannered and paired with a fairly mild mannered team, seems a solid fit.

However I agree with anyone who argues that Saunders had a history of underwhelming performances with overwhelming talent.

I personally don’t get the criticism. Sure Theus lacks direction at times but let’s be honest, its not like he’s coaching the ShowTime Lakers. Hawes- 2nd year, Thompson rookie year, Brown Rookie year- Douby/Williams first round busts- Miller 5 game suspension- Martin/Garcia injured- Jackson/Thomas mostly dead, oh yeah….and the season is 9 games old. I’m not sure what the Maloofs want when 3 of the top 8 are either 1st or 2nd year players, there star and 6 man are hurt while there GM has amassed talent but, for tomorrow, not today.

Let’s look at the sucky-ass Spurs and their lack of success when both Genobili and Parker are out. The Spurs might be 10 or more games under .500 before they get their backcourt back and they probably (along with Utah) have the most established system in the NBA. Utah has made it through the injury to Williams but only because they have solid experienced depth in Brevin Knight and Ronnie Price.

I loved Adelman, when with the Kings no one coached a team through injuries like him but he got fired and works somewhere else now which is the Maloofs fault. Oh and I forgot he coached a team to 21 consecutive wins last year after losing his all-star 9 foot tall center in game 12 of the streak.

Theus has the Kings at 4-5- certainly he is taking lemons and making lemonade. The aggressive play of Hawes and Thompson is something special that you can’t just go to the NBA superstore and find more of. As long as the Kings stay together and play hard, I don’t want to see another coach until the 2010 season when the Kings roster will look substantially different. By then Theus will have either learned to coach and handle the media but done so on the cheap.

• The Kings are overachieving. The coach should get some credit when that happens.

• A team with Brad Miller and Beno Udrih starting is going to suck defensively. Beno used to be decent at keeping guys in front of him, but now they blow by him like he’s a statue. Time to promote Brown.

• I think the RGs should have asked Maloof his take on Petrie.

• I can’t see how he is complaining about Theus playing youth. JT is pretty close to a first-team rookie all-star. Does he thing Donte Greene should be starting?

• Joe Maloof is an idiot
• Why would Terry Porter want to work for morons?
• Joe wants to make his presence his felt, but why? Joe’s a moron
• The Maloof’s in general aren’t any more knowledgeable than any other Kings fans—in otherwords they’re stupid

Bottom line, it’s a dumb all around criticism, but it exists. I’m not sure there’s a great deal of difference between Terry Porter, Brian Shaw or Reggie Theus, and I think the “idea” that Terry Porter is coaching the Suns is probably the point that the Suns are more stable than he Kings are. I wouldn’t want to work for the Maloof’s either. These group “seems” not only impatient, they’re stupid. I can’t take rampant stupidity, and that’s all that oozes out of Joe. I hope his other family members are carrying better sense, but I doubt it.

Joe Maloof doesn’t know what to say. The family is hurting financially because they see the Kings as a business. The butts in the seats thing is really driving the anti-Reggie comments. Fans don’t go to see Reggie. Fans go to see Martin, Thompson, Hawes and the other young players. They don’t go to see whether Reggie runs a triangle. Sometimes as obsessed fans, we forget that we aren’t casual fans. What we notice is not what a typical fan see’s. Some people are critical of Reggie, which is fine.

Joe doesn’t seem too critical of Reggie or anything else on this team (until he’s directly asked). He doesn’t seem critical of the fans, or critical of anything. In fact reading this post makes me think the sky is falling with the family, but the truth is, Joe is unhappy with the defense of the 3 point line. The best 3 defenders on the Kings are: Bobby Brown, Quincy Douby, and Jason Thompson. Thompson is a PF and doesn’t defend the 3. Or he shouldn’t be. Brown & Douby are perimeter defender’s both of whom aren’t getting major minutes. Joe wants things that aren’t just happening, and I don’t care at this point whether he means it or not, and he expects things that aren’t realistic.

To be honest I don’t feel the Reggie criticism is very fair, but whatever, it’s honest. I’d rather Joe be honest, and stupid, than dishonest, and smart. The truth is he compares Reggie to Adelman, and how fair of a comparison is that? Adelman is only as good as the talent on the team he has to coach, and in fairness to Rick, that talent peaked in 2003, and at the latest in 2004. As the talent dropped so did the wins. A young team with less experience is not likely to win without injured players like Martin or Garcia. That is the reality of the situation. This is the same group of owners, who essentially didn’t re-hire Adelman (no he didn’t get fired “technically” but it’s not like he didn’t get fired either—you don’t bring back a coach whom you’ve been very successful with unless the relationship deteriorated so badly that you believe this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing—until the guy they hire without doing any looking around first makes fans 2nd guess themselves) because he didn’t coach defense, brought Musselman into help a defense that got worse, and expects Reggie to do the same. So what’s changed? Not a damn fucking thing.

Stupid is as stupid does, and if Geoff Petrie hasn’t ever been given the reigns to run this team the way he knows how to best, I say stop bothering to pay the guy and just fire him already. If you aren’t willing to admit Geoff is an offensive guy who plays towards that end of the floor, then you just aren’t being honest with yourself. Nobody wants to be more critical than I do of Geoff Petrie, but the bottom line is, the same guy who just went out on a limb to get Jason Thompson is the same guy who is an offensive minded GM, then well, clearly 2+2 ain’t setting in. Is Joe Maloof “really” stupid? No, he’s not. For a guy hose family’s net fortune is well over a billion dollars? Well he isn’t savvy for one thing.

The bottom line with all this (I love saying that!) is that if you want to run a NBA team with a franchise that does things one way, but you want things done in another fashion, then you hire people who will do things that way. You can’t have things both ways, and essentially, Joe’s comments speak to that. He wants better defense, and better offense. Shit me too bawse. You can’t say one thing, expect another, and believe something else. But, essentially, that’s what the Maloof’s when Joe speaks publicly, are showing off. If I was Terry Porter, why would I want to coach the Kings? Yeah, the Suns may be on the downside of things, but at least they got a chance to go somewhere at some point. They have a choice in what they want to do. I don’t really want to say this, but if I was a NBA head coach, working for the Maloof’s is a very dicey proposition.

I really hope that Joe Maloof doesn’t represent his whole family opinion, but I fear that he does. This family is trying to push a fringe caliber playoff team into a championship contender overnight. They won’t overrule Geoff Petrie, and they won’t listen to him either. So which is it? Cuz at this point, I’d rather be a Hawks fan. They may be dysfunctional, but they sure as hell ain’t bothering to pretend they aren’t either.

I’m not sure what I was watching last night, but it wasn’t a coherent offensive or defensive system.

The want to win (get in the playoffs)

But they also want to play the young players

They also want a system in place

And they also want to put butts in the seats

If we were a great team, all four could happen. But we are not a great team so there are some tradeoffs between these goals. It just isn’t realistic and blaming Reggie for this is ridiculous. Like you said Pookie, who wants to work for someone like that?