The best Kings coaching move of the evening:
And the worst coaching move of the evening:
Now guess who made which call.
Yeah, Ron Artest is the guy who called a timeout after Steve Nash cut the 17-point halftime lead to nine in six minutes. Not Rick Adelman, not Mike Bibby. Ron F. Artest saw the time bleeding and wanted to talk it over.
Of course, Rick Adelman made the decision to go small, subbing a swingman for the center to try to matchup with Phoenix's lineup.
At that point, the Kings were up by five. When Miller came back in about four game-minutes later, the Kings were down by two.
But Miller didn't come in for Wells or Artest or Martin, the three swing guys on the court with Bibby and Abdur-Rahim. He came back in for… Shareef Abdur-Rahim, clearly the most effective King against the Suns' weak inside players! Baffling.
Look, I'm all for experimenting with lineups and matchups, especially with young guys. I love Speed and Francisco. I think they are bright lights in Sactown's future.
But sh*t, man. Let's not have the season ride on a singular 10-minute experiment in the 79th damn game of the season! It's not f*cking rocket science. Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Brad Miller are two of your best four players. One is having a stellar game (Reef: 6-7 for 16 points in 22 minutes), the other having a solid game (Miller: 13 points and 8 boards at that point). The one having the stellar game CANNOT BE DEFENDED BY ANYONE IN A PHOENIX UNIFORM! Not freaking rocket science.
If you try to match up with Phoenix slasher for slasher, speedster for speedster, swingman for swingman, you will get burned. It seems pretty obvious, though someone felt the need to see it proved.
So this doesn't happen in the fortunate chance Sacramento meets Phoenix in the postseason, let's lay out some ground rules for our head coach:
Naming Ron Artest the new head coach is perfect, really. One of my biggest concerns with losing Adelman would be bringing in a Rick Carlisle-type coach that would structure the offense in a way that limits Artest's shots. Limiting Artest's shots is dangerous, as he likes to shoot. I know the team would be a lot more efficient if half of Ron-Ron's shots went to Shareef or Brad. But, I also know that an agitated, angry, slighted Artest is worthless both on this roster and on the trade market. So I can live with the bad shots Grant Napear and Mark Kreidler can't.If Artest is the head coach, here's what we'll see:
Hey, if you're going to go down, you might as well have some fun with it. Let's start lobbying the Maloofs on this today.
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