If Donte' Greene and Pete Carril have anything in common, it's that they're restless.
Greene, the 20-year-old rookie small forward out of Syracuse acquired by the Kings in the summer trade with Houston for Ron Artest, hasn't seen the floor in seven of the last eight games and is itching to feel like a basketball player again.
Carril, the 78-year-old Princeton coaching legend whose offensive mind was such an asset to the Kings when he was an assistant in Sacramento for 10 years, yearns to make an impact on the floor again as well.
Both men will get their wishes soon, as the Kings announced Thursday that Carril will be pulled out of retirement to serve as a consultant and Greene, according to sources close to the team, will join the Kings' NBA Development League team in Reno on Saturday.
Greene's departure may be for only a few games, but his mere presence on the Bighorns' roster is historic because he is the first player sent by the Kings to their D-League affiliate. The team, which hosts Bakersfield on Saturday and Los Angeles on Sunday and Tuesday before playing four of its next five games on the road, is coached by Jay Humphries, a former NBA player and Phoenix Suns assistant. Monarchs assistant coach Tom Abatemarco is an assistant for the team as well.
The addition of Carril is significant in more subtle ways. When he left after coach Rick Adelman wasn't rehired in 2006, the offensive style and system that proved so successful during that era went missing, too. The heavy emphasis on ball movement and reacting based on reading the defense was replaced by traditional halfcourt sets and a more scripted approach under former coaches Eric Musselman and Reggie Theus. The ball-sharing ways had led to assists numbers that routinely were among the league leaders, followed by Kings teams that were among the worst in assists and turnovers.
Enter Carril. The man widely known as "Coachie" has remained close with Geoff Petrie, the Kings' basketball president and Carril's former player at Princeton. He will be on hand as a source of wisdom and teacher, but he will not be on the bench of interim coach Kenny Natt.
"Coach Carril brings a lot of winning experience and knowledge about basketball in general," Natt said in a release. "As a young head coach, I will be able to utilize his experience and knowledge about getting the best out of our players. I'm looking forward to his input. It's exactly what I need at this point."
Read the Kings blog at www.sacbee.com/kingsblog.
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