Only five games into the season and the Sacramento Kings are latching onto an identity we have seen for much of the last 20 years: an offense-first, defense optional team lacking physicality or discipline.
Head coach Doug Christie wants to change that. The defensive-minded player he was probably is dying for it. Especially as he watched the Chicago Bulls score 70 points in the paint Wednesday, getting downhill with ease. But he needs less injuries, defensive players, better roster fit and probably a little more time in the head coaching experience category to do it. And apparently, he needs guys who have energy to play and don’t find all that fundamental stuff on defense boring.
“Fundamentally when they do it the correct way we see that it can be done, but it’s almost like sometimes we get a little bored with the monotony of doing things the right way and having success at it,” Christie said after Wednesday’s loss to Chicago, in which the Bulls scored 70 points in the paint. Christie wants them to stand their ground and be in gaps, things he has seen glimpses of this season.
So, the 1-4 Kings (fire up the tank!) can play the right way in spurts, but don’t really enjoy doing it all the time.
Sigh. It all sounds too familiar.
Aside from the Beam Team year, this has been the mentality of pretty much every Kings team from the time Ron Artest left up until now. They all wanted to get shots up and could play defense every now and then, but never did it consistently, and never played for a full 48 minutes with a strong set of fundamentals. They would beat good teams randomly and lose to all the teams they were “better than.” They would get pushed around and not be able to defend home court.
“The ability to consistently be present and stay fundamentally sound, it’s difficult but good teams do it and right now. … we’re not ready for that type of success because sometimes you’ll have success and it’s not really what it is and you’ll start believing it and we need to actually be doing it consistently for 48 minutes,” Christie said.
This current team has more overall talent than most of those other teams during that 20-year stretch, but it is a collection of talent that doesn’t fit combined with a lack of discipline.
Teams like the DeMarcus Cousins-Rudy Gay-Darren Collison Kings actually fit better together than this year’s team. That 2016 team lacked direction and defense (26th in defensive rating) but at least the pieces complemented one another. The 2018-19 “Scores” team fit decently and played a fun, fast-paced style of offense. It came with a 21st ranked defensive rating. This year’s team looks talented on paper but can’t figure itself out.
Christie is a rookie coach in a bad situation dealing with a lot, but he’s dedicated to changing things while he is here.
“Continuously move the ball and trust each other, and play for each other with next actions and next actions – that’s who the Sacramento Kings are and are going to be while I am here. We’re going to figure out a way to be physical, to rebound the basketball, and to share the basketball. You’ve got to defend, rebound and share, that’s our core principles,” he said.
He has the right intentions and I’m sure most Kings fans are still rooting for him to succeed, but shedding the ghosts of Kangz might be one of the most difficult tasks in all of sports.
Words must become habits, even the boring ones.
Yeah, but you can’t expect a group of
young, inexperiencedwily veteran players to do those things consistently.The ghosts of Kangz didn’t build this roster, Vivek Ranadive did. Until he moves on we’ll be left dissecting more words from The Walking Dead.
Exactly. Vivek and his puppets in the front office had an entire offseason to build or rebuild this roster, and they managed to overpay one journeyman guard and signed another guard on his way out of the league, on a team already full of ball pounding guards.
Sam Amick said on Carmichael Dave’s show that he hears the internal expectations, and these people actually expected to make the playoffs with this roster. It’s freaking comical incompetence.
Generally, I tend to give NBA front office people the benefit of the doubt as professionals, but whether it’s Vivek shadow GMing everything, or it’s Perry’s fault, literally everyone around the NBA saw that this roster was a disaster. You literally could do a better job of roster building with a dart board. It’s beyond incompetence at this point. It’s bizarro world, where everything Vivek does is the exact wrong thing, and he’s just going to keep at it, seemingly forever.
Bizarro world. Yeah, that hits it on the head.
A shortage of forwards — get more guards.
I had a friend from high school who was like this. Whatever the choice was, he picked the worst of the bunch. A descending spiral.
His comments scream of needing this team blown up. I have 0 doubt a team full of young players ready to be molded correctly could play the brand of basketball he wants. Would they be championship contenders right away? Of course not, but you instill those fundamentals into them early and watch the growth. Keegan is a prime example. The players we have now, at this point in their careers, are who they are.
We’re a team full of vets who apparently get bored doing the little things and just wanting to get theirs. We’re playing like the team that is currently constructed and it’s no surprise to anyone.
Like OKC did. Get their coach, draft young guys to learn the system/approach that the teams wants, keep them together and see what happens.
Exactly. The blueprints are out there and easy to read. Teams are playing chess and we’re still trying to play jazz unfortunately
Kings brought a saxophone to a chess match.
More like a saxophone to a gun fight?
Are we back?!
Oops! Guess I got too excited!
As I posted earlier (before it went pfffft into the nether regions) you can put lipstick on a pig, but at the end of the day it’s still a pig.
Doug seems like a nice guy who got a job he didn’t deserve because 1) the idiot owner likes to be around players and ex-players 2) the idiot owner’s rep is so toxic he can’t hire up and comers, only retreads and unqualified candidates.
He’s coaching a team of misfit toys who are all playing for their next/last contracts and have no incentive to play team ball.
It’s pathetic and the only thing that will bring the chance of decent basketball to Sacramento is an empty arena. Tell your casual fan friends to watch at home this season.
How about not watching the games at all? Weak TV ratings may finally break vivek’s ego and show him the fan base is fed up with this mediocre is good enough mentality he’s pushed since taking over.
The only game I’ve even partially watched was the one in the photo where DS ran to the scorers table and sat down and sulked while Doug tried to talk to him like an upset child. It annoyed me so much like get your ass on the bench and act like a pro.
Streamed that game too btw(Suck it, Cuban)
I’m checked out to the point where I haven’t even watched a highlight of this team. Fk vivek.
We all know that the Kings team as constructed are going nowhere. Things need to change. Why are we waiting to the trade deadline. If Scott if possible can make trades now for younger players and or draft capital why wait. Doug would have more time to work with these new players. Guys lake Sabonis, Monk and maybe even Ellis ( they won’t play him enough) still have trade value. Even Derozan but you aren’t going to get much. The Kings don’t have to completely tank but do a rebuild. They have young players on the team already but need to get rid of the older players and their contracts.They, the front office needs to do things now not later, Example, Sabonis is 29 and if you wait his value as he gets older goes down. I like Ellis and a second or two for Eason. You have to give up something to get something.
It’s also because they’re still paying Mike Brown, and Christie works cheap. In Vivek world, the second in command is always there to take over when the main guy is fired. He’s done it over and over.
Now that Brown is the Kings coach, he thought the money owed by the Kings is only the difference paid from what the Kings owed him versus what is deal with the Knicks is
Of course I could be wrong but I thought was how it worked?
I haven’t watched any of the games and don’t plan to. But what I’m noticing with the NBA is there’s a lot of teams that need ball handlers/shooters (Orl, Minny, Hou to name a few) which we have plenty of. (Dennis, Russ, Monk, Lavine, DDR)
As the season continues to go south heading into the next calendar year and the trade deadline, Perry is going to have the opportunity to blow this up and postion this franchise with a top 4 pick in this upcoming draft and to accumulate some assets.
We’ll see if vivek allows him to do that.
2nd half schedule too easy for the 4th pick.
they’ll be playing a lot of tanking teams and this team is too good to beat active tankers. I think they end up with pick 8 at best unless they get lottery luck.
That’s why they need to embrace the tank fully and trade the vets and only play young players.
We back? For a minute there I assumed Vlade took over as webmaster.
We had a better webmaster two days ago.
Vlade webmaster, you say?
It’s still a bit slow to load, but it looks like it’s back for me as well.
I like Doug, I really do, but I don’t think this coaching thing is going to work out for him.He is the most inexperienced coach in the league, aside from JJ Redick who’s got some generational talent to work with. I look at all the “new” coaches in the league, like Adelman, Mazzulla, Hardy, Jordi, etc. and they have years of assistant experience from solid coaching trees. Doug just doesn’t have it. This also doesn’t take into consideration his age. Doug is not some young coach learning the ropes with a young roster like Daigneault did. Doug is 55. Folks, that is older than Mike Malone and Erik Spoelstra. Doug is the same age as Chris Finch, who has been coaching basketball since the 1990s.
Age is necessarily bad, but it is when combined with lack of experience. There are only 8 coaches in the NBA older than Doug and they all have decades more of experience than him. In many ways Doug is reflection of this roster. Just too old and too ill-equipped to be successful.
I fear as this season quickly tailspins, Doug will be the sacrificial lamb to welcome in the Woodson era. It’s just a shame it has to happen to a good guy and it’s disgusting that the franchise is using him this way.
Why are people so adamant to portray Doug like some innocent victim?
He knows the inner workings of this franchise and despite that decided to play the company shill in order to get this job, knowing full well that Vivek likes to hire guys from the “golden” era.
Doug got exactly what he bargained for, and he gets zero sympathy from me.
Thank you, well put.
Because I really feel Doug wants to win as he loves the fans, city and team. He also a competitor and he feels he can make an impact, despite is lack of qualifications. I can’t say the same for ownership. They are using him far more than he is using them.
I think we can all agree that if Vivek wanted to win as bad as Doug does, Monte and Mike Brown would still be here and Doug would still be sitting behind the bench.
Doug also didn’t pick the roster and probably didn’t pick his bench staff. Does that make him a shill or a guy just trying to have a positive impact?
Either way, it’s all speculative as none of us currently know the real workings behind the curtains, but I do know Doug’s history of competitiveness and passion for the city of Sacramento. I like to think that still drives him.
I agree with everything you have to say except for feeling sorry for DC. No one forced him to take a job he’s unqualified for. It’s his choice and he’s using it to make a nice salary and to gain experience as an NBA HC. So I don’t get the DC is being used and feeling sorry for him. Dude has benefited his life and his family’s lives immensely by being traded to the Kings as a player and benefiting in so many ways thereafter, and good on him, he’s an awesome human being.
What are the odds that Woodson becomes coach at some point this year or next? I’d say 90%. Id put $$$ on this if there is somewhere to bet it.
Under Vivek, the gap year is the one you make the playoffs.
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