Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive has recently been raked over the coals, and for good reason.
He fired a very good coach in Michael Malone who had led a significantly-improved Kings team to a solid record prior to center DeMarcus Cousins’ bout with viral meningitis. He’s hired Tyrone Corbin to coach his team, perhaps for the rest of the year, despite Corbin’s uninspiring recent turn in Utah. Ranadive is also apparently begging Kings consultant Chris Mullin to take over the team, despite Mullin’s inexperience at coaching at any level, and the fact that Mullin would have to learn on the fly without assembling his own staff and without the benefit of a training camp.
Ranadive is currently ignoring the pleas from George Karl, who is practically begging for the job, despite Karl’s previous working experience with Kings general manager Pete D’Alessandro. Ranadive then added to the ha-ha chorus by meeting with former Golden State flameout Mark Jackson on Tuesday night, insisting that the Kings at least attempt to run a 4-on-5 cherry picking defense at times, and then during the most recent Kings contest against the Oklahoma City Thunder he offered this bit of lovely:
"I like to use a music metaphor. We had a Sousa marching band, which was needed when there was chaos. But now we need to shift to a jazz band, where people can be individually showcased and improvised. What we need is a jazz director. I think that's the kind of leadership moving forward."
“Jazz director.” Because Rudy Van Gelder was perched at a podium in front of Miles Davis and his various bands, clicking a baton and telling the be-boppers which modal runs to explore next.
Now that we’re done with laughing down our sleeve at this guy, is it possible to find some sort of strain of sensibility in all of this?
Ranadive hired Malone without his GM’s approval, mainly because he didn’t have a general manager in place in 2013 when it came time to hire a coaching staff. At the time, Malone was considered to be the coaching candidate to go after, the next lauded assistant that was long overdue a chance at running his own team. After the Kings ran roughshod over former coaches Paul Westphal and Keith Smart while the franchise’s creepy former owners attempted to move the team, a defensive-minded coach needed to be in place in order to shore up the nonsense.
Malone was not his GM’s choice, he was apparently not Chris Mullin’s favorite guy, and he was far from receptive to some of the dumber suggestions tossed his way. Even with relative success, these are reasons to let a guy go. Even if he is a really, really good coach.
The problem here is that this sort of maneuver only works if you have a proper replacement. If Malone was so off-putting, then the time to can him would be in the summer, because by now we’d all be months removed from out massive “let’s dump all over Vivek Ranadive” pieces, works long forgotten as the NBA churns along. Someone like Mullin may have been persuaded to dive into the pool, and the Kings would be a quarter of a season into their “jazz director” phase.
Instead, the team is stuck with Corbin, with no clear replacement on the way. If Mullin is the eventual successor but only for 2015-16 and beyond, then you’ll have a team full of players that can see it coming a mile away – working four more regular season months under an obvious lame duck. That’s no good for anyone.
(There is also the little matter of the Kings’ draft situation. If the team falls apart again, it may be saved from having to send its first round draft pick to Chicago. The selection is currently protected through picks 1-through-10 over the next three seasons; though it would be a stretch to assume that Ranadive wants to tank just to avoid giving up the 14th pick in the draft.)
The free-flowing argument is a sound one. The San Antonio Spurs charmed the league last season with their beguiling ball movement, but even before San Antonio’s ascension to the championship podium it was long established that ball movement and spacing are keys to a killer pro offense.
The issues here, in relation to the Kings, can be boiled down to two tenets.
First, the Kings don’t currently have the sort of personnel that would encourage defenses to flail about as they attempt to cover penetrators, dishers, and shooters.
Secondly, it’s more than possible to win a championship with a pass-happy offense that starts from the inside-out. Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan have enough rings in the modern NBA to prove as much.
You shouldn’t go as far as to refer to Sacramento’s offense under Malone as staid; he had some continually-developing action that made the Kings an intriguing watch even when the shots weren’t falling. It’s just that the Kings don’t have the personnel, currently, to turn themselves into a mini-Spurs.
The team is second to last in three-pointers made and third to last in three-pointers attempted. Darren Collison was signed last summer with the full knowledge that the point guard was not a good three-point shooter, Rudy Gay was traded for last season with his iffy perimeter credentials already in place, and though Ben McLemore has thankfully developed into an all-around offensive threat, rookie shooter (and Ranadive favorite) Nik Stauskas has had a rough rookie year even by rough rookie standards.
Is Ranadive aware of this? It hardly matters, because he’s in charge. And new owners want to get their licks in quickly.
Just ask Mark Cuban, who knows where Vivek is coming from:
“It’s not so much meddling and hands-on. That’s not the issue,” Cuban said. “The hardest thing in professional sports for an owner is hiring a coach. Period, end of story. I’ve said that a dozen times. The second hardest thing is hiring a general manager because there’s no template. No one does bad interviews because they’re all quality just to get there. I mean, it’s just not easy.
“After that, it’s really hard to turn off some of your basic business instincts. I would always try to push myself to learn more and get involved on the business side more to kind of take all that anxiety.”
In regard to basketball decisions, Cuban took an approach that is the polar opposite of Ranadive’s after purchasing the Mavs almost 15 years ago. He intentionally didn’t make any major decisions despite public pressure to fire coach Don Nelson and clean house.
“I really tried to learn,” Cuban said. “That’s why I didn’t make any changes when I first got there on the basketball side, because I wasn’t smart enough to know where to go or what changes to make. I feel [Ranadive’s] pain. It’s not easy. It is not easy. And you make mistakes.”
Younger NBA fans may not realize how inevitable it seemed in early 2000 that Cuban would dump Don Nelson directly after buying the Mavericks.
I read about Cuban’s purchase of the Dallas Mavericks at an online kiosk in the Denver airport, and joked in an email directly after that Nelson would be out as both Mavs coach and general manager by the time my upcoming three-hour flight landed. With Nelson so deep into the development following the moves he was criticized for midway through 1999-00, however, it made more basketball sense to give Nellie’s crew one more chance. The team responded with a strong end to the season and the franchise’s first playoff appearance in over a decade the following season.
That’s not to say Cuban didn’t play around quite a bit with his new toy – he signed Dennis Rodman a few weeks later and went after heaps of free agents the following summer – but as he points out the head coaching business is an entirely different animal. The coach is your last line of communication down from the owner’s box through the general manager’s office and all other manner of capologists, scouts, analytics types and assistant coaches. He’s the guy who has the final word in the huddle, and his or her importance cannot be overstated.
Despite the ham-fisted and laughable “jazz director” analogy, it’s important to note that Vivek Ranadive’s ideals are on point. You want to have a coach delicately lording over a fluid offense that keeps opponents on their heels, and you want to have a coach that’s on the same tactical page with the front office.
The questions are, will Ranadive find the right coach, and even if he does, is this the right page?
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
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