And even though StR may have not been totally for hiring Westphal, at least Evil Cowtown Inc supported him!

give me a little snapshot of Westphal’s style as a coach, what he’s known for, etc? Is he a disciple of the Princeton school? Is he defensively minded? Hard-nosed? Musselmanesque? Theussy?

Doesn’t hiring an excellent D-League coach make sense? We have a very young team and I believe most of the “teaching” done at the professional level is done by the assistant coaches. The D-League is all about teaching. While I also thought the rumors of grabbing Porter and Ellie would be great, the bottom-line is that these young guys, and the three new young guys coming in about two weeks need to be tought how to play Pro Basketball. It is less about matchups and in-game strategy, and more about fundamental team basketball, on both ends of the floor.

“Westphal also did poorly in terms of managing the team’s stars. Again, not an easy task, but he tried to coddle Gary Payton (who did not respect him at all) and went tough on Vin Baker (who crumbled mentally)”

In my opinion he didn’t try to “coddle” Payton. He just recognized “Gary was going to be Gary” and just choose not to fight that battle. i don’t think anybody else got much out of trying to. Karl fought with him but what did he change? I can’t say.

In my opinion he wasn’t tough enough on Baker. Baker crumbled because of many things but least of because of Westphal.

Still most of the blame for the Sonics fall goes to it just being time after a great run and age and contracts catching up, some of Wally Walker’s bad moves in the rebuild and Baker (and the Gary Payton and lockout effects on Vin). I’d give Westphal 10-20% of the blame.

The Kings have no stars unless you count Martin and I don’t. His nurturing of young players (like Rashard Lewis) is more relevant in this situation than his treatment of stars.

No coach is making the Kings a playoff contender these next 2 years. Westphal’s handing of these 2 years is likely to be decent. Not great, not terrible. He’ll treatment players as young men with respect and do some mild pushing.

Then you’ll probably get your next coach. What will really matter is who you’re coach is in 2011-12 and beyond.

His staff is key. The next coach might be on it.

I don’t know who was doing it but it doesn’t seem likely to me that Rambis’ representation would be saying we prefer to wait and at the same time engaging in a relentless attack and the Kings then offering the job to that guy thru that agent? I’d say that is more likely from an agent of another candidate trying to move up by tearing down.

I am not big on Westphal but I don’t think he is terrible either. I think the Phoenix firing was more about Fitzsimmons wanting one last shot and knifing his assistant to get it back and Colangelo’s impatience / drive to win it all than Westphal.

…but who are we kidding? Those guys expect salaries.