The Sacramento Kings search for a new head coach is in full swing, with candidates announced and interviews expected to begin this week. With seven candidates named so far, it seems only fitting to take some time to break down each candidate.
I’m joined by our good friend Jill Adge, who hosts The SportsEthos Sacramento Kings podcast. We highly recommend listening to Jill on any Kings topic, but specially when it comes to coaching searches. Jill has done overviews of candidates for the Kings next head coach, as well as deep dives on some of the candidates that I will link in their appropriate articles.
With that, let’s jump into our next candidate.
Steve Clifford
Age: 60
Current Role: Consultant, Brooklyn Nets
Resume: College coaching from 1985-2000, NBA assistant coach from 2001-2013, Head Coach of Bobcats/Hornets 2013-2018, Head Coach of Orlando Magic 2018-2021
From Jill:
Steve Clifford is known as a defensive savant in league circles. As one Ringer article said, “Franchises can do much worse than a coach who has a reputation of building strong bonds with his players and can make even the most lackluster rosters in the NBA competent defensively.”
Jill also did a deep dive on Clifford that you can listen to here.
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Steve Clifford isn’t a sexy or exciting name to land on in a coaching search, but if the Kings go with a retread I think they could do a lot worse than Clifford. As Jill noted above, Steve Clifford has a knack for getting his teams to buy in defensively. Taking that a step further, Clifford had a good defensive squad in Orlando when his centerpiece was Nikola Vucevic.
The flipside to this is the offensive end, where Clifford’s teams rarely excel. Clifford’s Orlando squads never finished better than 22nd in Offensive Rating, despite having offensive weapons like Vucevic, Aaron Gordon, Terrence Ross, and Evan Fournier. In fact, a Steve Clifford team has only finished top 10 in offensive rating once, when the 2015-16 Hornets finished 9th. The Hornets did finish 14th in 2016-17, and 13th in 2017-18.
Hiring Steve Clifford would be a low-ceiling but low-floor move for the Kings. Clifford’s teams play hard, they play defense, and have a very specific feel to them. The biggest question mark is how Clifford would make a defense-first team work when the roster is built around De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis.
Steve Clifford wouldn’t be my top choice for the next Kings coach, and it would be hard to sell the fan base on getting excited about a team led by Clifford, but I also wouldn’t see his hiring as an absolute disaster.
Up next: Mike Brown
Previously: Charles Lee
He is the ageless one!
Oh, if he gets the job with the Kings, he will DEFINITELY age.
Whoops! Fixed.
He now fits the profile of a Kings coach, aging exponentially. He went from 0 to 60 in 5!
Savant and coaching basketball is a real stretch ! It starts and ends with basic schemes that all experienced coaches know and ends with effort and accountability . Clifford does have a background of trying to get both . I would prefer a younger coach .
Clifford is my wild card in that I have no idea how I would feel about this one. Seems similar to Brown with less actual accomplishments.
Hope the FO would pair him with someone who can implement offensive schemes to take advantage of our strengths and would expect that, minus the team seeing some success quickly, he’d be on a very short leash, especially if the offense flounders.
Nah. Thanks for stopping by. Don’t forget your free bar of soap on the way out.
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