Because of the NBA chaos that ensued within a global pandemic fog, it went unnoticed for a tiny portion of time. At the start of the 2020-21 season, it flickered in the hearts of Sacramento Kings fans like some starving revenant who was long thought to be dead after sticking their entire head inside a garbage disposal on a whimsical dare. The hope. That hope from over a decade ago. That mind numbingly glorious hope.
Did it come in the form of Rookie of the Year finalist Tyrese Haliburton?
How about De’Aaron Fox?
Harrison Barnes?
Or did it come in a staggering sliver of competence from a paterfamilias who peaked at the starting line of his own career in the bay?
(Hint, it’s the first three.)
However, head coach Luke Walton did manage to pull off something quite remarkable during his bloated corpse of a 31-41 sophomore season (same Looking Glass mirror record from last season, look at that): He somehow managed convince not only his players, but a small group of the media to suspend disbelief this season.
For the sake of enjoyment
For those not aware of what suspended disbelief is, it’s the intentional avoidance of logic when looking at a fictional situation in order to actually enjoy it. Like when reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, one decides not to analytically rip it to shreds because there is no possible universe where a rabbit would keep checking his pocket watch and fret obnoxiously about being late.
Naysayers of Walton tend to lean more toward the analytical side of things, their distaste over punctilious actions the man, with his mask shielding his chin from COVID, made during the past season.
A portion of the media and those choosing the path of suspended disbelief are peaking at the paper and marveling at the fact that Walton is standing behind the shadow of Rick Adelman in terms of win percentage, breathing hot air into an apparition’s ear.
Sure, let’s ignore that pocket watch and button up vest a white rabbit is sporting!
Ignore those two nine-game losing streaks!
Ignore the fact that croquet is being played with flamingos and hedgehogs, something that is clearly animal abuse!
Ignore the fact that the Kings finished 30th in the league in defensive rating!
Everybody wants to continue to grow together and keep this group together, Fox said to the media following the lackluster season. And continue to play for a coach that you believe in.
Ignore it all.
Luke and I talk every day, we have a great working relationship he’s got the support of the players, general manager Monte McNair said. We found some success, especially late in the season to get back into the play-in race. And I felt that we could build on that, and that he’s the coach who’s going to get us back in the playoffs.
The psychological mind bend which occurs to those who swoon over Walton since the moment he stepped into Dave Joerger’s shoes often feels like something similar to suspended disbelief because of the painted pony carousel of head coaches that were paraded in since Adelman (10 there were 10 of them. That’s two hands).
The stability has been non-existent, so the disbelief is put on hold, logic ignored, and over the course of time, the players come to sympathize with the man in charge as a way to cope with the trauma of the situation that traumatic situation being they’re playing for a franchise that has the longest active playoff drought in the NBA.
Nagging injuries played a part in the overall picture this season especially during those nine-game losing streaks, but Walton still holds a significant portion of the blame because, well, it’s his team. He’s the one moving the pieces around the board. He’s the rabbit with a pocket watch leading everyone down the rabbit hole into some fever dream.
And it looks like it will continue into next season.
Oh, joy.
“F”…………..
F – Fuxk
F – Failure
Luke Walton has no clue for a head coach…….
1) Who in the league would tell the best spot up shooter (i.e. Hield) to handle the ball
2) Who in the league would put Barnes as 5 to play against B. Lopez
His only good I can think of is
1) not letting Bagley to play late 4th Qtr……..
p.s. Would McNair take a look at those available coaches ? (It’s still not late to hire a qualified coach and start over)
Stotts or Atkinson would be a big step up.
That went out the window once Chris Finch was hired mid-season by the Wolves. If the wolves didn’t fire Ryan Saunders, I believe Walton would have already been fired as of today.
It feels like summer camp again.
As is one of my favorite songs.
I hate that the Kings are serenading Walton with it.
Greg ruined As.
This was written by TJ. I forgot to update the listed author. So I ruined something, but not the song.
TJ Messiedup As?
Avatar checks out.
Also, as I was reading, I was going to compliment you on the article, saying it was as good as something TJ would write, but you ruined my compliment!
I actually never said Stauskas’ over and over in that infamous video. It was TJ Macias who said it!
They’re serenading him with their favorite song:
Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four. That means we won over 4000 games last year! Long live Walton!
There is no greater damper on my ability to get excited about next season than the return of Luke Walton.
Apathy is the opposite of love, and I am feeling a whole lot of meh for the Sacramento Kings these days.
That’s perfectly put. Even if McNair manages to draft or otherwise acquire a real difference-maker, it’s certain that the end result will be a team-wide underperformance, because the Kings start every game with an intellectual deficit in coaching that requires a huge effort to overcome.
Still hoping for that 0-10 start to clean house, and a 70-2 finish.
Same, especially with quality coaches hitting the unemployment line. I admit I much prefer a fresh face, but could totally get behind Terry Stotts or Steve Clifford for head coach, as opposed to Walton.
At least Clifford has a proven track record for defense with a wide range of rosters.
Exactly. I’d actually would have more confidence in Walton if Clifford was brought on as an assistant.
Clifford had good defensive teams in Orlando, but was just plagued by injuries with a roster the pretty muck lacked a go to scorer.
He also coached Kemba in Charlotte, so he knows how to lead a team built around a point guard.
Though that begs the question of whether or not this team should be built around its point guard.
For now that train has left the station.
The train hasn’t gone anywhere yet.
Nate Bjorkgen is available!
Oh goody.
He seems pretty stable.
I don’t have an issue with him. But I don’t really see what he does other than not being Luke Walton, either.
I figured that everyone understood that Nate clearly doesn’t have the temperament for a job like that.
Mediocrity seems like an overwhelmingly generous assessment.
Agreed, that bit struck me to.
We like to use the word “mediocre” for the Kings, but fact is that we are simply bad.
Mediocre is hovering at .500 and a first round exit, or as the Kings FO would call it “mission accomplished”.
The fact that play-offs and the play0-in has devolved into allowing mediocre teams sneak into it doesn’t change that, IMO.
The play-in was basically designed for permanently bad teams to occasionally get lucky and land in the first round, generating revenue and “excitement.” These are teams who refuse to be bad enough to get high draft picks and who are too incompetent or undesirable to add the talent to be good. (OK, this might only fit one team.)
It was basically designed for the Kings permanent limbo organization, and they couldn’t even manage to get that right.
Can we put this on a billboard? Please Vivek worst owner in the league and a total embarrassment to the NBA and Kings Fans.
Now that even Dolan has tasted the promised land Vivek is crowned shittiest owner, even by that metric.
You may be ignoring the Grizzlies fantastic post-season performance, so you may be ignoring evidence that completely refutes your assertion. They acquitted themselves splendidly in the play-in and playoffs and proved they belong.
That was not a scrub “pergutory-destined” team; they showed far more skill and execution than a sorry ass team like the Knicks who landed an actual seed. The Grizzlies play is a strong argument to make the play-in permanent which will likely be the case.
I suspect the experience the Grizzlies got as a result of the play-in will also be a catalyst for them next season, particularly Ja and Brooks getting a taste, similar to how the performance for the Suns had in the Bubble was a catalyst for them this season, almost certain to be Western Conference finalists.
So you may want to factor these variabes into your opposition of the play-in. I personally like it for the aforementioned reason and bc do-or-die games bring out peak levels of competitiveness which is what makes games compelling.
Pretty much. If league-average would be 15th out of thirty, then a truly average team makes the playoff. Whether below-average or bad varies from day to day, but with a fifteen-year streak, the latter has to be the right choice.
Exactly. 20/30 teams made at least the play in, and Kings were 21. Worst possible position. Only some strange playoff position tanking at the end of the season even gave us the tie. Calling the kings mediocre is like calling a 57 year old middle age. Really, you’re going to live to be 114?
Oh, another season with Luke Walton as the coach?
Let me count the days until he’s no longer here…
It’s not all bad .. We have De’Aaron Fox holding up the tree ..
And our chances of bringing back Holmes, Harkless and TD are good. Maybe they could be nutcrackers.
I’m curious about your reasoning about the likelihood of return for these three. I’d say Davis is a pretty safe bet, since he won’t be expensive, and the Kings have some measure of control there.
Holmes & Mo, however will be subject to outside forces on the free market. Ideally, both could return, but barring some change in the cap situation, only one can be re-signed, even if Harkless were to accept a fair deal. What the Kings have available to re-sign Holmes seems like a pretty on-the-nose figure, but I still think that he’ll have offers in the $13-$15 million range, and I don’t know that I’d go that high for an undersized center, even one that I enjoy as much as Richaun.
Yeah, I fully expect Holmes to be somewhere else next season. Or here on a contract that makes me kinda wish he wasn’t. As for Harkless? Well, whatever. He’s deep bench fodder. As long as he isn’t overpaid I’ll probably just shrug at it.
Exactly correct on both points.
just saying, a free agent might be more inclined to sign somewhere he had relative success than a place called basketball hell. Players seem to like playing for Walton and they’re not calling Sacramento basketball hell anymore. Concerning the numbers, they can jettison Bagley.
As ever, and to quote Dunbar, “who is ‘they?'”
And Yossarian: Who is Spain?
I’m a lot less smart than
GregTJ, but Walton got career years out of three players (Fox, Barnes, Holmes) and had at worst the #3 rookie in the league, and couldn’t manage to improve the team a single game from the year before, where it had already dropped from the previous season and coach.If Walton is stunningly incompetent, the numbskull front office who retained him is worse.
Damn, when you paint it that way, it makes it all the worse.
I just hope he doesn’t mess up haliburton and that kid gets comfortable like fox.
I thought the Bagley recap was going to be ugly….
A mediocre coach with no actual consistent strategy or system of play.
An overall poor roster made up of predominantly borderline G league players on the bench.
Combine the two and you get the Kangz……
A bench of G league players.
Wow, brutal, but true!
Not many other NBA teams that can seriously consider sending at least four players to the G league.
“The psychological mind bend which occurs to those who swoon over Walton”:
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Anyone else believe in Luke?
Both of their mugs make me want to barf at this point. ð¤¢
Monte McNair.
I still think that’s the company line. I don’t believe that there’s a GM in the league that believes Walton is the right guy for…well, anything. But McNair is on the record with it, and that matters, even if there was almost nothing else that he could say on the topic.
Hopefully, he’s just counting the days, like the rest of us.
I agree. I had McNair’s pic up there but took him down b/c I 100% believe keeping him was a Vivek call.
If Monte is willing to take money to be Vivek’s figurehead, his mug should be up there on the wall of shame.
Sorry, the Kings wall of shame is already full. We have to build a new wall(s).
Yeah, Monte owns this now. Luke is his 1st HC on the job.
I spit my coffee. You owe me a new keyboard.
I guess you should have been wearing a mask. 😉
Absolutely infuriating.
He sucked! On to the next article
I feel like we’ve seen three basic takes on Walton:
4.Walton sucks and should probably go but it won’t make any difference until Vivek specifically (who also sucks) is gone so there’s no reason to waste money on a new head coach as the suckage will continue regardless.
Agreed. I’d like him gone, but firing Walton while everything north of him remains the same would be an exorcise (no misspelling) in futility.
I disagree, Rob. The worst owner in the NBA made the playoffs this season and infused some optimism for the future. Simply via a coaching change.
The Clippers finally became good under Sterling after years of futility.
Sometimes, basic good luck or a few “stopped clock” decisions can make a difference, even for bad franchises.
I wonder where this take fits into that chart: I don’t think Walton makes much difference either way. But the talent on the roster doesn’t work. Until that is solved, I’m far less concerned about Walton.
I don’t think he sucks, but I don’t think he moves the needle much either way. So maybe #2 according to your chart?
Maybe I just need to dial back the hyperbole a bit. Maybe just CTRL-H “sucks” for “isn’t/aren’t good.”
Gregg Popovich and Erik Spoelstra aren’t making this a playoff team. But maybe they have the cachet to get players to buy in most don’t have.
Correct.
But maybe a guy like Thibs would have.
Well we did have one of the 5 worst rosters in the NBA. Prior to this year we had perhaps the worst front office executive in the history of the NBA. We were projected to win 28 games and won 31. The marginal difference between NBA coaches is really quite small. So if we want to point the finger at the coach, have had it but a coaching change is really down the list of priorities with this organization. Previously successful coaches have come to Sacramento and failed, and coaches who have failed in Sac. have subsequently had success elsewhere. So yeah, point 2 makes some sense.
That’s a lot of suck.
Las Vegas preseason projected win totals for the Kings was 28.5. They ended up with 31. Way too many delusion folks on this thread and always over value the talent on this team.
Yep. As bad as Walton is, the cupboard is rather bare.
Which should have made tanking a fait accompli. Walton can’t do anything right.
Tell us delusional folks about all the lusions that indicate Luke Walton is a good NBA head coach then? Do you have anything other than he babysat the Ws for a stretch?
Also, do you think it’s possible, and maybe even probable, that people are evaluating Luke’s HCing prowess on more than just this last season?
Las Vegas factored Luke Walton into that line.
Very correct.
Las Vegas is about making money, not accurately predicting the win/loss for each team.
And having read all of the player recaps, I keep looking in the TV listings to see when the Kings are playing this evening in the conference semi-finals. The quickest way to fix this team isn’t to replace the coach, but to replace a bunch of the players. Unfortunately as we saw at the trade deadline, no one wants them…..
We don’t know how much of it is no one wants them or how much of it is our FO overvalues the players we have. It’s a complete unknown. Given Vivek is still in charge, I tend to lean towards the latter.
Correct again.
Outside of ownership, the biggest issue with this team is a lack of player talent. Leave coaching alone until the team has at least 7-8 quality NBA players.
As long as Monte and Luke are on same page on the strategy to get the Kangs into the playoffs, let this play out.
Luke exceeded expectations of any single member of the Kings organization this year. He not only survived the entire season, he is back for next year.
No one else is close.
Meh. He’s not horrible. He’s not great. Pretty good offense. Crappy Defense. I continue to believe we are more talent deficient than coaching deficient. If you have a chance at one of the few really good coaches (Doc, Pop, Quinn Snyder) the make a change. Otherwise it’s shuffling deck chairs.
Very well said.
“We found some success, especially late in the season to get back into the play-in race”
Is that the same as saying we fought hard for our “participant” ribbon?
Not a walton Fan but i have a slightly different take on why he is still here:
So tired of this Coaching…
Personally I would prefer to read articles from authors who interact with the community.
You mean like get together for drinks or something?
Just breathe into your face for a while.
No i mean like actually make one comment. This author never made a single comment i could find on the last forum and has continued that practice here afaik.
I think this is actually a fair complaint. TJ’s great, but one of the hallmarks of this site (and the prior one) is being able to converse with the author in the comments.
Walton may be a ‘players coach’ and the players say they like playing for him, but honestly, the problem we have is that they don’t play HARD for him, and the way they play doesn’t amount to WINS.
Stotts would insist on getting WINS. He wouldn’t be hired to be ‘friends’ and have a great time just ‘playing’ basketball. He’d be pushing for defense, offense, etc. He and every other decent coach with proven playoff experience.
Walton won with the Warriors dream team who already were a cohesive team who had bought into defense and offense and beyond that, he hasn’t proven anything….
Why keep Walton to offer ‘stability’ when the status quo is league worst defense and making players play out of position and all kinds of other unforced coaching errors that are maddening to any serious fan? He’s got to go.
The front office spin is just complete bullshit.
Jerry talked abt this in the last podcast, the difference between likability and respect. It’s a HUGE difference, and Luke definitely appears to fall into the “likability” category.
Absoutely agree with what you said…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG0nKSY6HvY
Just look at the youtube and how our players interact and laugh with their coach.
Every players like him, and like his joke.
This kind of likable coach cannot push their players for better defense, offense and improvement.
I don’t think that’s true. I know Pop scares the hell out of his players, but I doubt he’s had many that didn’t like him. Off the court, he seems like he understands how to enjoy life, and I think his players are drawn to him for that.
No coach scares the hell out of the top players in the league.
Which player has Popovich scared the hell out of?
Never seen anything said about that.
I can’t tell if this is satire or not…he made a reference to getting the hell out of the locker room to go watch the Superbowl after a good performance and win. Players laugh and this means he can’t motivate?
Pop jokes and insinuates Kawhi is selfish after a championship…did he lose Kawhi’s respect and other players at that moment? Lose his ability to motivate because they laughed at him? Get outta here.
Many people would cite their very best teachers in life and the ones that got the most of out them were teachers they genuinely liked as people. Doesn’t have to be the case, but often is.
Walton’s got a million faults and maybe he can’t motivate the players. Or at least get them to buy into a winning strategy (defensively). Seems like he can’t thus far. Citing a locker room “joke” as an exhibit of inability to push players seems rather odd.
There are a million good reasons to state why Walton sucks…
I used to be pretty cold on him…but now i’m lukewarm. I do like how the players have his back, that means something. Doesn’t mean more than winning but it means something. Part of the magic of a really special team is having each others backs, and trust. Going into the offseason and next season optimistic!
Wouldn’t they play harder at the defensive end if they really had his back? I mean, that seemed to be the most obvious way to help save his job (outside of his big guaranteed dollars).
There was no lack of effort. They just are not very good. Big difference.
You’re deluding yourself. There were plenty of games the effort was minimal, especially at home.
They are not very good, but not historically talentless. This season was bad scheme, bad players, shit effort.
Over the course of the season every NBA team has games where they don’t show up. Relatively speaking the effort level from the Kings was above average. As far as one deluding themselves, you talking about schemes is the epitome of delusion.
This is craziness. We’ve seen plenty of teams that gave solid effort, even when they weren’t very good. This team did not.
His roster is similar to Joerger’s, which had the 18th best defense in the NBA. Walton’s was one of the worst in modern NBA history.
You’re cheerleading for incompetence.
For some reason you constantly want to misconstrue my postings. If you honestly interpreted my several posts on Walton you would know I held him accountable in large part for the lack of defense the Kings played the entire season. I explained in specific terms what the Kings were failing to do on defense and said over and over Walton had to shoulder much of the blame. I know what I’m see when I watch a basketball game. I’m just not going to be one of those echo bloggers that blames everything on Walton.
Effort level was not the problem with the Kings. For the most part, the team played hard for him all the way to the end of the season. On offense the team performed adequately even though it wasn’t perfect and I can pick at things especially in crunch time when the ball often got stuck in Foxes hands too much. This however is a chronic problem in the NBA not unique to the Kings. The Kings have a roster problem as a result of an incompetent front office for many years. The head coach is far down the list of priorities this organization has and I doubt another NBA retread will make any difference. So shout all you want about schemes where you are very unqualified but your shouts are misdirected.
Is there gonna be a season review on Kayte, Doug, Mark, and Draper lol
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