Theus will be evaluated more on his teaching ability and motivation than on his wins.. The Kings have – for better or worse – hitched their wagons to newcomers, Shawes, Jason Thompson and Donte Greene, and Theus fortunes will ride on how well those three, and the rest of the young core, respond and develop under his guidance.
     Theres a good chance, like Ziller said, that Theus does not, in fact, have the chops to pull this off, given his limited coaching experience, and clumsy player handling.

Also: Rebuild and REBUILD.

Last year was very frustrating, knowing at the start of the season that the Kings weren’t going to be in the playoffs, and yet not seeing the younger players get enough minutes to develop. Not making the playoffs + missing the lottery = huge failure.

The Kings have had, in my opinion, a pretty promising draft and offseason, but this is not a playoff team this year. If Theus starts really developing the youth, win or lose, I hope the management will extend his contract another year.

I’m not convinced Reggie is a great coach yet, but if he’s going to play the kids, he’s going to take the losses, and shouldn’t have to pay for it.

…to replace Reggie midseason if he’s unwilling to play the kids? Or will they be scared of the PR hit? Will the front office be frank with Reggie about the need to play the kids extended minutes even if it results in home losses to Atlanta and Charlotte? Or are we still pretending that this is a playoff squad if everyone stays healthy? I hope I can see that all levels of the organization are on the same page come November.

I wouldn’t over think Theus’ job security, or presumptive lack thereof, just yet. Remember where we were a year ago. The Kings were a laughing stock for his hire and pre-season previews couldn’t mention Theus without copious references to his previous career as Coach Bill Fuller. I thought Theus made the best of a bad situation. That those results remained underwhelming is less an indictment on Theus’ inabilities and more a statement on the state of the franchise. Without question Theus’ handling of player and playing time management last season was naïve and at times outright incompetent, but even the most gifted of NBA head coaches have difficulty navigating those swells (hello Mike D’Antoni.) Is he brash and blustery? To be sure. But short of the late spring Martin fallout I never saw any of the passive-aggressive, destructively disobedient behavior that doomed Musselman’s stay in Sacramento. Calling a coach out for being loquacious is a criticism, but not a damning one, and certainly not one that would warrant any job security concerns with Theus. As for Artest I was never entirely sure how much of Theus’ love for him stemmed from actual affection or simple survival. Fair or not, from a self preservation standpoint it’s best not to alienate the most mercurial player in the league, particularly when your past, and only, coaching experience was in Las Cruces.

I’ve always felt Theus’ job security will come into question when this Kings roster starts to develop actual expectations. This incarnation isn’t expected to be a lottery team in perpetuity and as we all know it’s considerably harder to make an above average team a playoff contender than it is to make a below average team above average. The weight of those expectations have doomed much more experienced coaches (Terry Porter, Paul Silas, our beloved Musselman) and I think it’s Theus’ ability or inability to shepherd this team from upended to upstart that will serve as the referendum on his Kings’ coaching career.

I haven’t been optimistic that Theus got young player development in the past, but I think the Artest trade is the real signal that things have changed. Theus is Inevitably going to win as many games as he can, and he should get that he needs to get the young guys minutes at the same time. It means that Miller, Moore and Salmons are going to start, but none of them should play more than 30 minutes per game.

Right now Petrie needs to take a “wait and see” approach. What he should be looking for:

1. Does he have the respect from the players and the buy-in from them for his program.

2. Can he develop young talent into NBA talent? This should be his strength, given his college experience, but I think several of the younger players (Hawes in particular) need a lot more guidance than they’re getting. Maybe a big-man coach would be a good hire.

3. Can he maintain a winning attitude among his players despite what will be some very rough stretches this season?

4. Can he out-coach other teams down the stretch of tight games with match-ups and play calling?

 I’m not sold on Theus yet, though I’m willing to be convinced.

Wait and see.

I believe that Theus should be judged on two things this season.

1- Does his team play hard, compete every night regardless of outcome for a full 48 minutes. This is where Theus won me over last year, his team always competed, came prepared, made good decisions out timeouts and quarter breaks which was a welcome change from the previous year.

2- How well he handles his players both behind close doors and in the media. Theus repeatedly shot himself in the foot last year by running his mouth. We all appreciate his ability to tell it like it is but the dude needs to develop a filter or he’ll run himself out of town.

I don’t expect improvement on last years win total but I would like to see Theus establish Martin as the man, define roles for his other players and let JT and Donte play. Unlike a lot of others here on StR, I could care less about Douby and Shelden, I don’t believe them to be NBA players. For me, this year is about setting up the infrastructure for the future, if a guy isn’t in the plans for the next 2 or 3 years, his role should be minimal, that goes for Moore, Douby, Williams and to a certain extent Jackson and Miller (although the team will probably need these two to be competitive on a nightly basis).

But this one pulled me out of my self-imposed (and slightly LPA-imposed) silence while I focus of the first draft of my next novel.

Far from being united behind Theus, it seems most who matter have at least at one point publicly disagreed with or feuded with the coach. That’s not a good situation.

At this point in the Kings’ and Reggie’s development, I think that disagreement is exactly what the Kings do need if they are to improve. Not the kind of disagreement we saw with Musselman, where everyone basically said the coach sucked. But the kind of disagreement where each player thinks they should get more minutes, more shots, more respect, etc.

What that tells me is that you have a coach who isn’t giving in to anyone. He is doing what he thinks is right. You want more minutes? Great. Fight for them. You want more respect? Excellent, earn it. You want me to play the young guys more? Then trade some of the vets and give me a little breathing room in W/L column. A team at this stage in the Kings rebuilding should be barking at each other. If they were a happy little family, I’d be really worried. Let them be happy when they are solidly located in the playoffs. For now I want some bad attitude.

Given the mediocre quality of our team (plus the injuries) last season and some really big wins we managed to do, I give a lot of credit to Reggie’s coaching ability. It’s very disappointing however to see our youngsters play minor minutes. The last season was the definition of “transitional season”. We still had Artest and we didn’t have enough youth. So up to a point I can’t complain about Hawes’ lack of playing time.

That’s no longer the case this year. We have Thompson and Greene, Artest is gone and this is the first real year of building. Brad Miller and Moore have to play max 20-25 minutes. If the young players prove that they are capable of holding the team to a respectable level, then their PT should increase even more after the All-Star break (a Brad Miller and/or Moore trade would help).

If Theus gives 15 mpg to Hawes/Thompson/Greene I believe he should be leave next summer. That would be a “crime” to both the team as a whole but also to a every young player individually. It would be like holding back their career for a year.

Anyway… who is really responsible about making these calls? Who is the person that’s going to say “Hawes will play 30 mins this year”. Is it Theus? the Maloofs? Petrie?

Theus goes to management and tells them that by playing the young kids the teams record would look worse that what it could be. This is just from Theus’ perspective. I mean, he could get assurance by the Maloofs and Petrie that he’s not going anywhere as long as certain goals are met. I know this is a business and no such deals probably exist but from his perspective, his situation is not an easy one. Something like that could be arranged. If you were told by yout boss to hire incompetent workers just to save money for the future, thus risking the company’s profits in the present all the shareholdrs would hate you cause its your job to get those workers. It may not be the best example, and by no means im I calling our young guys incompetent but I just wanted to try to illustrate an example that we all can relate to.

I’m definitely on the camp of playing the young kids as much as possible so I’m not trying to defend Theus. At the same time, we all have to realize the tough situation he is in

Lots of anti-Theus angst here. We debated his performance at this site most of last season, but it seemed overall people were fairly positive about his first year’s effort, considering:

• Ron-Ron was trying to run his own program
• The team was dealing with massive injuries
• Bibby and Artest were playing tug of war with the ball on offense
• There really wasn’t much talent on the roster

Theus made some missteps last year – namely, the whole stupid cell phone thing in training camp that blew up in his face. He tried to discipline his players through the media unsuccessfully, and clearly has a massive need for attention and ego-stroking (not sure he’s much different than the Phil Jacksons/Larry Browns of the world there).

But the bottom line for me is that the team played hard for him, and they won more games than I thought their talent level was worth, especially in light of the injuries. I mean, he had Mikki Moore as a starting PF for god’s sake!

Beyond that, the team was actually fun to watch, which was a huge change from the Musselman, and yes, even the Adelman squads towards the end.

I think you’d have to call the first year a success for Theus. Just like any rookie coach, he struggled at times, but I got the sense he was starting to figure it out. He’s earned some leeway, in my opinion, and I’m still pretty optimistic that he’s going to be a good head coach over the long haul.

By the way, I think Adelman sucks nuts. He may be a decent coach, but I was tired of looking at his whiny ass on the sidelines and with the media towards the end of his tenure. Everyone crows about the San Antonio series (a first round exit in six-games remember), but the franchise was in a serious decline on the court. It was time for him to go.

I don’t have a major issue with the way Theus coaches games, and he did learn from some mistakes last season. I’m not happy with all the griping that went on with the players, which I blame Theus for. My primary question is whether Theus is going to play the young guys. Riding Brad Miller and Mikki Moore for 37 minutes per game is not what we should be doing at this point. I think Theus gets that, but we won’t know for sure until the season starts.