Bring on the Reckoning

Funny, most people wait until they are proven right before doing so, but YMMV.

Here’s my take on Westphal – nice guy, did a bang-up job with Cousins last season but otherwise he’s done very little of note. The players aren’t getting better, the product isn’t getting better, he’s gone to war with one of his bright young talents to start the season, and the team is getting blown out pretty regularly.

I think he’s doing more harm than good at this point.

Don’t forget, PW was not in demand when he hired him. He’s allegedly attempting to initiate a new offense, one that looks awfully familiar to the old one. And my eyes see a team that’s not responding to him and is losing their hustle.

You may think 7 games is a kneejerk reaction, but it’s the perfect time to move on from Westphal. It’s still early enough in the season to right the ship and get these guys pulling in the same direction. And if a guy like Keith Smart isn’t the answer, you haven’t really lost anything.

You speak of patience. I’d say Kings fans have been excessively patient, and to say otherwise is ridiculous.

(Which point you could have made without insulting the entire StR community, but I digress.)

Maybe you could give some examples of things he is doing right. I mean, beside the swipe you took at Hawes and Casspi. Or maybe you could give us a breakdown of why you think his offense is brilliant and works to perfection if the team would actually run it. Or regale us with a story of how he has helped develop at least one of our young players into more than what most people saw as his potential.

No? Me, neither.

because even if you rise above the noise, it’s really hard to defend the guy like this

There’s more than enough fault to go around for everyone!

Not because I think he is an amazing coach. But because of these reasons:

1) In the past (and to some extent now) I didn’t think we had the players to compete. So honestly there was no way of knowing how adequate PW might be as a coach. He seemed to know his x’s and o’s

2) As a Raiders fan, I’ve seen how bad a team looks to prospective players, fans, and other coaches when a team can’t stick with one guy for more than a year. It made it almost impossible to get good coaches, players, and even hurt attendance numbers.

3) I trust GP, who sees much more than we do. If he didn’t think PW was the problem, maybe it wasn’t.

At this point, I am finding it harder and harder to accept that PW knows what he is doing. You’d think that at some point he would say, "We are trying to do x, y, and z, but people aren’t getting to the right places. Several players have said there is no offensive game plan, which is something in and of itself, considering that PW has such a dictatorial control. If players are still willing to say there is no game plan, I tend to believe it.

I still have a big issue with a coaching carousel. If we fire PW and use Smart or whoever as an interim coach, that will be what, five coaches since Adelman? Whoever we hire will be number 7. Please tell me what quality coach is going to jump at that chance. However, I am coming to believe that keeping PW make hurt as even more. He is alienating players and fans alike.

I still trust GP. But one thing we don’t know is what kind of conversations are going on behind closed doors. Is GP telling the Maloofs we need a new coach? Are the owners just being cheap? Is GP trying to cover his butt?

I guess what I am saying is that PW has now built his own rope, he is already polishing the gallows. If the Maloofs thought Adelman was bad PR, they have got to be foaming the mouth now.

With all that said, I do NOT want to fire Westphal until we have a quality, experiences coach waiting in the wings. The Maloofs/GP should be making calls now. As unhappy as I am with Westphal, I do not want to see us replace hi with a college coach/cheap washed up coach/friend of the family, etc