Flying Coach

not to mention the young guys would have to go through yet another change.

There aren’t really good candidates out there that would blow Westphal away. PW needs time to implement his system, and I find it rash that people are asking for his firing.

When this team beat the Wolves by one, I saw it as a bad sign and predicted we’d be one of the worst teams in the league. Everyone else seemed to think the team was bound for 30 + wins this year. It’s unrealistic to see Evans as anything close to a superstar at this point and I think anyone who has seen Cousins run around on the court can just imagine how hard it would be to coach him. With the lockout looming, Petrie couldn’t afford to add the kind of veteran presence that the team needed, and i think this is another season of getting high draft pick. OKC had three years of high draft picks in a row before they started winning. The Kings have only had two.

I don’t think it’s the coaching; I just think we have unrealistic expectations. Let him teach, and let them learn I say.

Don’t Stop Believing

I don’t think you bring in a new coach at this point. How many coaches are on our payroll right now? If we fire PW in favor of Elie, then I would be OK with that, but I don’t think going out and trying to find a new coach is the answer right now. Unless Brian ‘The Beard’ Wilson wants the job. In that case, give it to him.

Patrick Ewing?
Possibly a good mentor for DMC, someone who will have some respect because they´ve all seen him play, he has experience as an assistant and has played under some good coaches.
The question is whether he will leave Orlando to come here.

but this team has talent. They have more than enough talent to atleast beat the other poor teams at home. They have enough talent to atleast compete at home. This team looks far worse than they did last year but this team looks far better on paper than they did last year.

Remember all the talk last year about “if we only had a defensive center”? Well now we have one & we’re WORSE. Remember when it was" I can’t wait until we get K-Mart back" Then we got him back & WE GOT WORSE. Then it Landry was going to be so great because we lacked a low post scorer. THEN WE GOT WORSE.

Could we use more talent? Sure every team not named the Lakers, Celtics, & Magic could use more talent. A coaches job is to get the best out of the players they have. Is this really the absolute best this team can play?

Now I say I don’t think PW should be fired because we have no one to replace him & no decent coaches are on the market. My choice was always Tom Thibideau but he is taken so I really have no answers right now.

What good would it do now? If we’re gonna ditch him, I’ll wait until after All-Star Break. If he does manage to make this team turn in promising performances (at this point, decent would be nice, but not enough to save his job), wait until the end of the season to make a decision on his future.

That brings us to Answer 2: I don’t see Westphal as the guy who can move us forward rapidly. We don’t have the talent pool (or draft luck) of OKC (Imagine if the Blazers had taken Durant at #1). Not just yet. So to attain a more sustainable / realistic level of success, we need someone who can create a tactical system that, in a way, forms the identity of Kings basketball moving forward. It will shape the way all player acquisition (through draft, trade or free agency) is judged, based on how they would fit in to a current system.

Answer 3: Unfortunately, no coaches (at least none that aren’t Popovich or Sloan — guys who have had the benefit of coaching continuity & job security) come to mind. Perhaps raiding colleges is the way to go. After all, most of our players are of college age, so all we’ll just need is to bus in hot coeds into Arco to really make it a full on college experience. That and maybe break ground on the StR school of journalism, sarcasm and belligerence next door.

I do get what you are saying that we have players that are not multi-faceted enough and tend to be one dimensional, but that is why you need a coach.

In my opinion there are two individuals on a team that can make everybody better . That is the coach and the PG (I will speak to the coaching issue here and not how players like Nash work.). It takes a good coach to play players to their strengths. Good coaches make even marginally talented players look like a genius because they understand their limits and play them squarely within that range of talent. They don’t ask them to do more or less than they know they are capable of and that increases the players confidence and success.

Paul Westphal has not shown a grasp of how to use these players. They don’t look talented because their talents are not being used to their best advantage. Any professional NBA level coach is supposed to know how to best use talent and that is the issue when it comes to replacing PW or not. Can he effectively run plays to his players’ strengths? I have not seen it. Instead we get some kind of half ass system that ensures floor spacing, but nothing else. No movement and a lacking offense.

This roster has talent and PW should be able to make it work. He isn’t doing that and if he gets fired it is because he himself is not talented enough to make his players successful. He isn’t setting them up to succeed. He plays low post players in the high post and other such moves that limits players because he doesn’t put them in situations they are good at. He sets them up to fail.

I completely disagree with you about talent. This team has talent and it is up the coach to get the most out of it. If he can’t do that then he needs to go.

Primarily because there’s nobody better to replace him AND this team is clearly not playoff caliber at this point, so let’s spend the rest of the season evaluating him – just as we are for much of the roster.

I don’t have high hopes for PW at this point because…well, because the other day I asked myself “can you think of anything he’s done well in his tenure with the Kings”. And there was nothing that really stood out other than “he’s not Kenny Natt”.

Sorry, but that isn’t going to be enough come the end of the year.

I think probably not, unless, as has been mentioned several times, he “loses the team”. So, what exactly would “losing the team” look like? Maybe worst case, some of the key guys basically go into “open mutiny” mode, not listening to the coach one bit during games, totally blowing off practice, openly complaining about the coaches to the media and/or team management, etc. There could be less severe versions of that, but in any case, I think it’d be pretty hard for the coach to recover from something like that in the middle of the season, considering the relative lack of someone in the locker room keeping the young guys in line.

Wait, why dance around it, it’s all about Tyreke, really. ‘Reke is the one guy that could sink Westphal and/or sink this team. Boogie has the same giant billboards as ’Reke, but Cuz really hasn’t done crap on the court, yet. After last season and this past offseason, would anyone be shocked if Evans feels like this is already his team, not Westphal’s, not even Petrie’s? If ‘Reke decides he’s tired of listening to Coach Westphal, who in that locker room is going to talk some perspective into him? Dalembert? I’m sure all the guys have some level of respect for Dally, but he’s not exactly the pinnacle of NBA gravitas.

What could Westphal do to get ‘Reke in line? Bench him? That would be a much bigger deal than benching Spencer last year. I think it’s safe to say that Tyreke Evans has a much more durable ego than Spencer Hawes, with good reason. I can’t see ‘Reke agreeing to a feel-good public chest-bumpin’ reconciliation a few days later. If PW tried to punish Tyreke into learning his role, Mr. Evans would have quite enough ammo to turn it into quite a long and bloody war. I don’t imagine it would be very pretty.

Maybe someone in ’Reke’s posse would be able to talk some sense into him, and they could work-through this rough patch without any permanent damage. That would probably be our only hope. Otherwise, what choice would Petrie have but to appease the young savior? It sucks, but it’s probably the reality.

I’m not saying that things are that bad between ‘Reke and the coach right now. But I don’t think they’re great, and I’m not sure if Westphal can start to turn things around quickly enough. Honestly, probably the best thing that could happen right now would be for the team doctors to tell the coaches that Evans’ feet need some rest. Take ’Reke out of the equation for a few games, let PW try to win a couple (or, at least have the guys go a whole game without looking terrible), and maybe the pressure would be released just a bit.

Do you replace/retain Westphal now, and if so, why?

No. The reason is simple: This team needs another year. You want to can PW and get a better coach this offseason, than fine. Not now. It sends a bad message to the players, and quite honestly, it only goes to show that this franchise is making snap judgments rather than sound well thought out decisions.

What type of coach do you bring in to replace him?

Doesn’t matter. My criteria for a good coach is one that is effective, and you can’t exactly know that unless you’re MIss Cleo.

Do any particular coaches spring to mind, and if so, who?

This is my biggest problem. I don’t have anyone in mind, and Paul Westphal seems more & more like a caretaker right now than a coach who could be here longer than New Years Day. Still, I don’t think fans will be happy with PW if the team ends up 500 after 82 games. There are people with an ax to grind and if there are certain things that don’t happen to a particular individual’s specfications, than a coach has failed. This happened to Rick Adelman who will likely remain the franchises winningest head coach unless another head man gets the benefit of the Tyreke Evans era for a long time. (Or something like that.)

I would like to say that I think Jeff Van Gundy is a head coach that would get the Kings to a high level, but I don’t think he is. I think JVG is a very overrated and hyped coach due to his Pat Riley and Knicks affiliation. Then again, I could be wrong.

I don’t want Don Nelson, and I don’t want Kenny Natt. What I want more than anything is to see what happens over the course of the season rather than having a massive over-reaction to every little detail of every single minute of every single game every other day. But I doubt that will happen so I should go live in my glass house.

The Sport Magazine cover shown at the top of this post is (from left and standing) Bill Russell, Dick Motta and Wilt Chamberlain, and (from left and sitting) Spencer Haywood, Bob Love, and I’m guessing Caldwell Jones. Chamberlain was actually hired to be a player/coach for the San Diego Conquistadors, but the Lakers sued to block him him from playing, and he was ultimately reduced to coaching for this one and only season.

Sactown Royalty – your home for pointless NBA/ABA archeological digs.

Let’s suppose that Tyreke shows he is disappointed with all of the losing. He mouths (mumbles) his disapproval to the media. That translates into a Mark Stein ESPN Dime sideline story. Westphal reacts and has a sit down with the 21 year old Kings star. That gets carried by James Jones and shows up on the ESPN True Hoop daily and both stories are repeated on TNT or during a Kings telecast by opposing play by play. The Maloofs follow that up with a comment to the Bee editorialist. Petrie stares. And on, and on and on.

This team is losing. Shouldn’t everyone – players, coaches, owners, and maybe even fans – get a bit, uh ticked? Is it anything more than fuel for the infitnite fire?

Losing provides the kindling and the embers are lit. Will this be heat, smoke, flames (fanned by fans), bonfire, explosion ? I am not saying extinguish the fire, but with 15 games into an 82 game season at this pace burn out is inevitable.

The situation is not dire. The Kings end up with the 5th worse record this season. Or the 8th. or the 11th. Did they get better or worse? I don’t believe anyone can address that at this point. The blame game does not provide answers.

At least not until, like Section said, he loses the team. If that happens there’s no point in keeping him around.

As far as a replacement goes… I have to say I kind of like Erik Spoelstra. He doesn’t fit with the Heat, right now. Spoelstra will be part of the next generation of NBA coaches, which would be great on a young and developing team, but doesn’t quite work with a team that should be contending. He hasn’t been around long enough to learn to deal with the massive egos of guys like Lebron and Wade. That’ll be less of a problem with a young team.

I also wouldn’t mind Lawrence Frank. Or rolling the dice on the Italian guy in Russia… Ettore Messina?

and record definitely doesnt matter because we arent really competing for anything important this year.

Wins are the measuring stick of how a team progresses. They matter.

Nobody expects this team to make the playoffs, but we want to see improvement. More wins is an important way to measure that.

<a href=“http:// ”http://www.sactownroyalty.com/2010/10/26/1776936/realistic-expectations-for-a-25-win-team" target="_blank">http://www.sactownroyalty.com/2010/10/26/1776936/realistic-expectations-for-a-25-win-team" >I wrote a post previously about how teams with a similar record to the Kings last season averaged an improvement of 11 1/2 wins in the following season. Probably more importantly, only three teams out of 18 had fewer wins in the following season.

Guess what happened to their coaches?

I think another sub-plot of that piece was whether the Kings did enough in the offseason to match those previous teams and improve in the win column. So far it’s looking like more or less standing pat at the shooting guard and small forward positions isn’t going to translate into an improving team.

More important, though, is the play of Tyreke. As he goes, so goes the team to a large degree.

I think Hubie Brown would be a good coach. He could school the youngin’s on the basics of basketball, dating back to shooting at the peach basket without the reliance on a backboard. He and Coach Carril can talk about the olden days and get the team to bond together through aversion from hearing another one of the duo’s stories.

On a serious note, Hubie Brown did a decent job with the Grizzlies when they moved to Memphis with a young team. On the other hand, I would rather see PW coach the team till the end of the season. But I also am curious at the possibilities of Hubie Brown coaching the Kings.

Great players rarely make great coaches

Recd.

fire paul westfall ,case closed!!