What Are the Sacramento Kings Doing Firing Head Coach Mike Malone?
These were supposed to be the new Sacramento Kings: grounded in analytics, stable in leadership and advancing on innovation.
Firing head coach Mike Malone 24 games into the season felt much more like the old Kings: marked by chaos, lack of process and impatience.
According to Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski, Kings management cut Malone loose late Sunday night, apparently unsatisfied with everything from style of play to the development of the team's young talent.
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Right up front, we have to acknowledge that any number of behind-the-scenes reasons could have motivated the move. NBA front offices are high-stress environments, and we may never know specifically who clashed with whom, over what or for how long. It's entirely possible that the working relationship between the Kings and Malone was untenable and that there was no alternative but to fire him.
Nevertheless, if we only go on the reported reasons for Malone's ouster, it's difficult to arrive at the conclusion that Sacramento's decision was sensible.
Let's unpack.
Expectations?
Granted, 11-13 isn't a sterling record in a vacuum. The Kings don't play in a vacuum, though; they play in the West, a conference that may feature eight playoff teams with at least 50 wins. And let's not overlook the fact that the Kings knocked off inter-conference foes like the Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets (twice), Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs in the first two weeks of the season.
Sacramento won nine of its first 14 games and went 9-6 overall with a healthy DeMarcus Cousins in the rotation.
Viral meningitis shelved Boogie—who was playing the most dominant interior offensive basketball the league had seen since Shaquille O'Neal was knocking dudes over in his prime—on Nov. 28, and predictably, the Kings lost seven of their next nine games.
Given the roster and circumstances, it's difficult to envision any head coach getting better results in the 24 games Malone had with the team. Even now, a squad that hasn't added any significant talent to a roster that won 28 games last year (Rudy Gay was on board for 55 contests last year, 21 of which the Kings won) is on pace to win 38 games.
Most coaches don't lose their jobs for increasing win totals by (an admittedly projected) 10 games. Most coaches who do that get contract extensions.
Strategy and Player Development?
The Kings rank in the bottom half of both offensive and defensive efficiency this year, per NBA.com, but with Cousins sidelined for the last nine games, it's awfully difficult to judge their overall game-planning. Led by players with (to put it kindly) limited passing vision like Rudy Gay, Darren Collison and Ben McLemore, this was never going to be a brilliantly fluid offensive attack.
Without Cousins in the middle to deter drives and alter shots, the defense was bound to suffer too.
Still, it's not like the Kings took a step backward this year.
Given the lack of information on which to judge Malone's strategic shortcomings, it would seem the philosophical differences between coach and management go deeper and probably predate this season.
"I don’t care what anybody says," Malone said after after a Dec. 6 loss to the Orlando Magic, per Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. "Analytics, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s all B.S. Defense wins in the NBA, and (Saturday) we didn’t defend anybody."
There we go.
New owner Vivek Ranadive is an unabashed devotee of analytics and has long made it clear that his organization would be second to none in the study, use and cultivation of new data.
"We’re on the leading edge of all of that," he told Jared Dubin in a piece for ESPN's TrueHoop Network. "We’re actually going to look at more data than any other team. We’re going to look at about 30 gigabytes of data, which is probably more than all the data that existed in the history of the NBA in that area."
It's not hard to see the disconnect between coach and owner on that topic. And if you're looking for a reason behind the shaky ground Malone has been on for some time, that would be a good place to start.
Perhaps it wasn't a difference in strategy so much as a rift in core philosophies that motivated the split.
As for the assertion that Malone fell short in player development, well...that's a harder sell because of Cousins alone. Boogie had morphed into a monster before getting sick, impacting the game on both ends of the floor and flashing true superstar potential.
His growth was obvious.
Beyond Cousins, the Kings didn't have many young players with the potential to get better—besides McLemore, of course, who has actually become a viable rotation guard this season after doing next to nothing a year ago.
Consider this, too, as we close the topic of analytics and player development:
What do the numbers say about alienating the team's biggest star?
What Next?
The Kings reportedly don't have a succession plan in place, which means lead assistant Tyrone Corbin will sit in the big chair for the time being.
Corbin won 43 percent of his games at the helm of the Utah Jazz from 2010 until he was let go at the end of last season. What he lacks in overall success and reputation he'll supposedly make up for by embracing management's stylistic preferences.
This seems like a good time to note that Corbin's Jazz ranked 26th in pace last season, per NBA.com—not a great indication that he understands how to coach an uptempo team.
Down the line, we should expect a major coaching search. The Kings will likely want to make a splash, if only to compensate for the nearly universal criticism they're getting in the aftermath of canning Malone.
It's all speculation at this point, but we should anticipate big names cropping up as candidates. The Kings are losing the PR war on this one; they'll need to wow critics to turn the tide.
Perhaps Malone is a predictable casualty of a personality clash, a throwback with no place in a forward-looking organization. Maybe this was the right decision.
But the timing of his removal doesn't inspire confidence that the Kings—for all their commitment to playing smarter, faster and ultimately winning basketball—are any different than the capricious, unrealistic franchise they've been for the better part of the last decade.
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