Kings players remember Rick Adelman’s trust, guidance and humanity
Tony Delk didn’t hesitate when asked how helpful Rick Adelman was for his career.
Adelman, who died Monday at 79, coached the Sacramento Kings for eight seasons from 1999 to 2006. He was known for the work he did with marquee players such as Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac. But Adelman also thrived at instilling confidence in players like Delk, a former star at the University of Kentucky who struggled with the Golden State Warriors prior to signing with the Kings in August 1999.
While Delk played just one season in Sacramento, he became a useful bench player for the Kings, averaging 6.4 points while shooting 43% in 14.8 minutes per game. He left for a multiyear contract with the Phoenix Suns following the 1999-2000 season, though years later Delk had not forgotten what Adelman did for him.
“He saved my career,” Delk said. “He just told me, he was like, ‘If you work hard, your opportunity time is going to come.’ And he was a man of his word.”
How Adelman coached the Kings
Lawrence Funderburke remembered what Adelman told the Kings when he first met the team.
Funderburke had averaged 9.5 points per game as a rookie for the 1997-98 Kings, a rare bright spot on a miserable 27-55 team. Eddie Jordan was fired as coach following the season. Adelman was hired as his replacement in September 1998, with an abbreviated, 50-game regular season beginning a few months later following a lockout.
Some coaches can micromanage. That was not Adelman, who was low-key and trusting of his players. He was like this from the outset of his time in Sacramento.
“When we met with him, he said, ‘Listen’ — I remember just like it was yesterday,” Funderburke said. “He said, ‘On this team, we’re going to have fun. We’re going to have fun, we’re going to play the right way and we’re going to be free.’”
Under Adelman, and led by players like rookie point guard Jason Williams, Webber and Divac, the Kings quickly became one of the most entertaining teams in the league, playing a freewheeling and at times chaotic style of basketball.
The 1998-99 Kings averaged 16.8 turnovers per game, second-most in the NBA that year. All the same, the team improved dramatically right away, posting its first winning season in the Sacramento era and losing a thrilling first-round playoff series to the Utah Jazz.
Better things were to come in the ensuing seasons, much of it to the credit of Adelman.
“I had so much respect for him, because in my mind he was the perfect players coach,” longtime Kings radio broadcaster Gary Gerould said. “Players really liked playing for Rick Adelman and I don’t know what the secret was.”
Scot Pollard arrived in February 2000 as a midseason free agent on his third team in barely a month. Pollard, who’d been a first-round pick out of the University of Kansas in the 1998 NBA Draft, thought of quitting. He called his college coach, Roy Williams, who encouraged him to finish out his three-year rookie contract.
Pollard didn’t immediately get minutes in Sacramento, stuck behind backup Jerome James. This changed, Pollard said, after he fared well in a matchup against Utah Jazz power forward Karl Malone. Eventually, Pollard became a vital big man off the bench for the Kings, backing up Webber and Divac and occasionally starting.
“Rick’s belief in me was the impetus of my NBA career,” Pollard said.
How Adelman handled stars
Under Adelman, Sacramento became a destination for players to revive their careers, with players like Jim Jackson, Jon Barry and Bobby Jackson finding new life as Kings.
Pollard, Funderburke and Jackson became part of an elite second unit, “The Bench Mob,” whose members might have started on lesser teams during the peak of Sacramento’s run in the early 2000s. That depth was part of the reason the 2001-02 Kings went 61-21 and took the Los Angeles Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference Finals.
“We never got back to that success that we had in the Western Conference Finals, but I think we always felt like we could beat any team and I think other teams knew that we had a very dangerous team because we were a very deep team,” Funderburke said. “I mean, Shaq and Kobe were the two best players in the NBA, but we had the best team from 1-10.”
It wasn’t just role players who thrived in Sacramento during Adelman’s time. Divac joined the Kings as a free agent from the Charlotte Hornets shortly before the start of the shortened 1998-99 season. He enjoyed arguably the finest season of his career in his first season in Sacramento, playing all 50 games, averaging 14.3 points and 10 rebounds and helping lead the team to the playoffs.
The year was anything but easy for Divac, though, with NATO beginning to bomb his native Serbia late in the season. Divac lost sleep while he worried about family members who were still in harm’s way.
“There were days where Vlade just was not ready to be there and he couldn’t be there physically,” Pollard said. “Rick would say, ‘Hey Vlade, just take the day off.’”
Even though the gesture was often in vain, as Divac would still come to practice, reeking of cigarettes, Pollard remembered the humanitarian example Adelman set.
“He was just the right man for all of the stuff that was going on from top to bottom,” Pollard said.
Perhaps Adelman’s greatest success with any player he coached in Sacramento came with Webber, who arrived in a trade with the Washington Wizards in May 1998 for franchise cornerstone Mitch Richmond.
Webber initially didn’t want to play for Sacramento. He’d had an up-and-down career up to that point, having been drafted first overall in 1993 after starring for the University of Michigan, but he was traded by the Warriors after just one season and later suspended for marijuana use while in Washington.
Webber eventually suited up and, in time, became the finest big man the team has had in Sacramento, and perhaps in franchise history.
Webber also softened toward Sacramento, with Funderburke remembering a conversation they’d had on a plane together.
“He said, ‘Fundy, you know, playing for Coach Adelman and playing with you guys has been the best experience of my life,’” Funderburke said.
Adelman’s legacy
Adelman went 395-229, good for a .633 winning percentage, during his years in Sacramento before he and the franchise mutually parted following the 2005-06 season.
There was nothing like Adelman’s success before him for a Sacramento Kings coach. And there has been nothing like it since. The team has mostly struggled in its 41 seasons in Sacramento, making Adelman’s tenure look like something of a miracle.
Following his time in Sacramento, Adelman coached the Houston Rockets and the Minnesota Timberwolves, finishing his coaching career after the 2013-14 season with a 1,042-749 record in 23 seasons. Adelman never won an NBA title as a coach, though he twice won the Western Conference as coach of the Portland Trail Blazers prior to his time in Sacramento.
Perhaps the lack of a title contributed to Adelman being underrated for years after his career ended. He finally made it into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.
“I’m so happy that he got inducted into the Hall of Fame while he was still alive,” Gerould said. “I think that’s such a great and fitting tribute to Rick.”
Pollard said Adelman was his favorite NBA coach, by far.
“That was the man that gave me confidence, like: You can actually play in this league, so get out there and go and do what you do,” Pollard said.
