Dear Sacramento Kings: What’s the plan? Firing Luke Walton doesn’t solve anything
It’s hardly a novel thought to look at the Kings and wonder: What direction is this team headed?
Yes, that’s a perpetual question to those who follow the NBA organization with the longest ongoing playoff drought at 15 years. But the Kings fired coach Luke Walton on Sunday, which was confirmed after Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news on Twitter. The Kings still have a relatively new general manager Monte McNair in charge and a baffling roster construction. It’s time to ask it again.
Where is this all going?
Why did the team keep Walton when McNair started work in the summer of 2020? Why expedite the rebuilding process with playoff expectations forcing Walton to look over his shoulder? Meanwhile, McNair’s roster is unbalanced and it’s becoming increasingly clear a major roster move (or two or three) is needed. The team lacks capable wing players and is heavy on guards.
Firing Walton won’t solve the Kings’ more glaring issues whether you think Walton is the right coach or not. Just like taking pain killers won’t fix a broken bone that needs to be in a splint for weeks and then get rigorous physical therapy. Walton’s lack of success was more likely a symptom of something worse.
And if all it took was a bad start in a competitive Western Conference to fire Walton, then why begin this season with him on such a short leash? Why wouldn’t McNair pick his own guy after inheriting Walton, who was hired by former GM Vlade Divac before the 2019-20 season, instead of letting it get to this point?
It hardly signals any long-term direction, which is what the Kings need more than anything else.
Why the Kings urgently want to end their playoff dry spell is understandable. It’s embarrassing. They have a shiny new arena in the middle of downtown Sacramento and an owner trying to make good on his promise to put a winning team on its court. They have a fan base aching for success, but also one that would appreciate a clear path, even if it meant taking a year or two to build a strong foundation for sustainable playoff viability.
The Kings, as they currently exist, don’t have any of these things.
Instead, they are watching De’Aaron Fox struggle with efficiency while eating into Tyrese Haliburton’s development, with Marvin Bagley III serving no purpose on the roster and having no trade value after he started his career as one of the team’s most prized assets as the No. 2 pick in the 2018 draft. Harrison Barnes is a fine player, but he’s making over $20 million just to be reliable. Richaun Holmes is one of the team’s few established pros.
For whatever it’s worth, it doesn’t sound like the players believed Walton was the problem.
“The coaching staff comes in every day, they do their job well, they scout the other team, give us what we need,” Holmes said Saturday night. “ ... Blaming the coaches, I never really understood too much, in my perspective. If you blame somebody, blame 22 in purple ... blame me for that, blame the players for that. That’s just always how I felt about it. They come in and do their job every day, put us in position we need to do our jobs. We need to go out there and do ours.”
The Kings lost again Saturday night to the Jazz, dropping seven of their last eight, in front of a half-full arena that was hardly buzzing with excitement (the crowd’s most notable reaction of the evening came when a fan sitting court side had to leave after vomiting on himself and the floor near the scorers table. Symbolism!).
The Jazz, who started the night third in the West, are a team with a plan, with a roster that makes sense, that took time to build, while the Kings are perpetually going through an identity crisis by rushing their plans to end the playoff drought.
A look around the Western Conference provides a pretty obvious takeaway. Even in a league built around stars, the teams with coherent plans, who aren’t cycling through players and coaches, tend to have the most success. The right move is sometimes doing nothing.
If the Suns and Nuggets can build rosters capable of reaching the conference finals, then why can’t Sacramento? The teams that aren’t contending are blowing it up, like Houston and Oklahoma City, who have a real path, even if it’s going to take more patience than what the Kings are going through right now.
The Kings came into the season in NBA purgatory. Not good enough to credibly contend for a championship and not bad enough to tank for the top pick in the draft, which is always the best avenue for teams like Sacramento to land a franchise centerpiece.
Barnes was asked after Saturday’s loss to the Jazz what needed to change with the way his teammates were playing, which also felt like an allegory for the entire organization.
“Maturity,” Barnes said. “It’s really just a matter of maturity. When we choose to do those (winning) things and we do them right, and it doesn’t work, okay, then we can come back to the table and draw up something different. ... But until we execute what we said we were going to do ... at that point, we’re just banking on getting hot.”
The Kings fired Walton on Sunday, but don’t expect his replacement to be the answer. Don’t expect the team to suddenly get hot. It’s November, early in the season, and hardly a time to wade into the coaching market. Doing so might risk wasting the season entirely.
The better solution? Find a plan for the future, tell the world exactly what it is, and stick to it.
Otherwise, fans will be booing their way out of the Golden 1 Center all season long, just as they did Saturday night after the loss to the Jazz.
This story was originally published November 21, 2021 at 6:33 AM.
