George Karl Hire Would Reveal Old Red Flags for Sacramento Kings
George Karl may be the right coach for the Sacramento Kings, but everything leading up to his possible hiring feels familiar in all the wrong ways.
Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee reported talks between Karl and the Kings were heating up on Feb. 7, and the ensuing frenzy proved those discussions sped past the smoke phase and quickly reached fire.
The first unsettling aspect of the Karl rumors is that we know about them at all. The Kings have a head coach, Tyrone Corbin, and letting this news leak, however it happened, is a bad look.
Remember, after firing Mike Malone in December, general manager Pete D'Alessandro told reporters: "I give full support to Tyrone. You don't just put someone out there on the floor and say 'you don't have full support of the organization.' That would be totally unfair if I had that in mind."
Less than two months later, it's clear support for Corbin—from D'Alessandro and the organization as a whole—is something less than "full."
The Kings have come apart under Corbin, which doesn't come as a surprise. DeMarcus Cousins liked playing for Malone and was visibly upset by his firing.
When a team's best player is dissatisfied, there tends to be a trickle-down effect. Beyond that, Sacramento's roster had overachieved in its brief time under Malone this season, which meant a regression was imminent anyway.
Toss in Corbin's uninspiring .434 winning percentage in four seasons leading the Utah Jazz, and it's no small wonder he's gone 6-19 through his first 25 games with the Kings.
Because Corbin never profiled as the Kings' long-term answer, and because his predecessor was having more success than anyone reasonably expected, the general consensus was that firing Malone was hasty. It has proved to be something worse than that.
It's hard to know what coaching options were available to the Kings when they canned Malone; logically, you wouldn't assume Karl was a possibility at the time. Why endorse Corbin if he were?
If Karl was an option, and the Kings bumbled around for weeks (maybe because they were reluctant to pay what it would cost to hire Karl; maybe because various front-office factions couldn't agree on what to do), that period of indecision highlighted two things that have defined Sacramento for too long: poor timing and too many front-office voices.
Sam Amick of USA Today pointed the finger at the latter:
Karl is certainly the splashiest name out there, and if the Kings are pursuing him because a headline-grabbing hire might distract from the mounting losses and rising panic, that's a bad sign.
From the start of Vivek Ranadive's tenure as owner, the Kings have been marked by an unrealistic idea of where they were in the construction process. They've wanted to win immediately, despite lacking the talent, continuity or system to do so.
"We’re not trying to be patient anymore, we’re not,” D'Alessandro told Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee before the 2014-15 season started.
Hiring Karl would be another decision brought about by impatience.
Karl is a demonstrated winner, was the NBA's Coach of the Year in 2012-13 and has a better track record than anyone else available. But he is also nearly 64, and he knows how he wants to run his time-tested systems on both ends.
Taking over a deeply flawed Kings roster in a tough conference means understanding wins won't come right away. Is Karl at a point in his career where he has the patience and wherewithal to build, to take small steps and trust the process over a period of years?
Can the Kings restrain their win-now mantra long enough to let that process play out?
And what if Karl doesn't respond well to the type of strategic input from management that Malone resisted?
Maybe the best coach isn't the best fit.
There's also the Cousins issue, which conflicting reports indicate is, at best, complicated.
On the one hand, we have this from Amick:
On the other, we have this from Voisin:
Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports reports that Karl is a Cousins fan. We don't know if the feeling is mutual and if anything, indications are that the opposite is true—at least as far as those close to Cousins are concerned, per Amick:
"Cousins' day-to-day agent, Jarrin Akana, worked with Karl in Denver and was re-assigned from assistant coach to scout when Karl took over for coach Jeff Bzdelik in 2005. Dan Fegan, Cousins' lead agent, represented Karl's son, Coby, as a player for years before he was eventually replaced. That circle, by all accounts, has been against the notion of adding Karl.
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We could have a long discussion about whether Cousins or his camp should have any say in who the next coach is, but the fact that we've been privy to so many leaked opinions from team and player camps means we can agree on this: There are too many competing agendas at work in Sacramento.
Maybe it's not a power struggle, but it's getting close.
And that's really it: The most unnerving part about all of this for Kings fans must be the familiarity. More than a decade of misguided Maloof disinterest resulted in a rudderless ship, which made continuity difficult and winning nearly impossible.
The lack of direction persists now, but the difference is that new ownership, instead of letting the ship drift aimlessly, is wrenching the wheel back and forth with impatient, violent even desperate hands.
The resultant feeling is the same. Though clearly engaged and well-intentioned, those steering the Kings still seem to lack a coherent, logical plan.
The Kings haven't exhibited the patience necessary to build a winner in small steps, which is bad.
When they try to make big, ill-advised leaps, they can't even agree when to jump or where to land.
And that might be even worse.
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