Welp, The Sacramento Kings Are Back To Doing Dumb Sacramento Kings Things
Fresh off his 4 year extension to continue to run the Kings, we have Vlade Divac acting all drunk with power. You may remember from back in November, there had always been a little tension between Dave Joerger and the front office, mostly with assistant GM Brandon Williams who ya know, Vlade just fired too.
The less-than-solid relationship between third-year head coach Dave Joerger and the team’s front office took a strange turn Thursday with Joerger requesting Kings assistant general manager Brandon Williams not be in attendance a shootaround, according to Sam Amick of The Athletic.
Reported tension between Joerger and and the front office was revealed almost two weeks ago by Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports. He reported the front office was not pleased with how Joerger was handling the team’s young core and the minutes, especially No. 2 overall pick Marvin Bagley, were playing.
“Dave (Joerger) has our full support and confidence,” Kings GM Vlade Divac said, according to Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee. “We continue to work together to develop our young core and compete.”
According to Amick’s report, Joerger believes Williams intentionally leaked the false information to Haynes with the intention of jeopardizing his job security. The coach pushed the organization to punish Williams, which has not yet happened.
Despite having a year left on his deal, there were always rumors that something like this may happen with Joerger. The whole thing is pretty confusing to me because you look at what the Kings are building and they are one of the more exciting young teams in the league who took a legit step forward this season. Sure they missed the playoffs and finished 39-43 but guess what, those 39 wins were the most this franchise has had since 2005. Something tells me that Dave Joerger was a big part of that success, and you would think that as this franchise tries to take a step forward, having a coach that the players seem to like and is having some success witht his current group would be exactly what you want.
My question is this. Is going from Dave Joerger to Luke Walton that much of an upgrade? Outside of Walton’s run with the Warriors which you can’t really compare to, what has he shown that he would be a better fit for the Kings rebuild? I guess we should have seen this coming when Vlade came out and said Joerger had their full support, everyone knows that’s the kiss of death for a coach with job security rumors, but it’s just another example of how this franchise can’t seem to get out of their own way. Just when it looks like they are stable and starting to figure things out, they go and do something like this. I’m not saying Dave Joerger is a perfect coach, but it’s a little messed up that he finally gets talent, shows forward progress and then gets canned with a year left on his deal. I suppose if they didn’t want to extend him this is really the only option as opposed to having him be a lame duck coach, but from a results standpoint I can’t see how he was on the chopping block when he just turned in the best season in 14 years.
I also love that tweet from Woj. Of course Joerger is going to see and hear this news before that meeting with Vlade, imagine how awkward that’s going to be. Do you even show up? We clowned Magic for how he resigned and didn’t tell his boss, and I think this may be worse. You can’t have that leak out to Woj before you even tell the guy. Just the Kings doing Kings things I guess.
It’s a good thing they actually have talent now, because if I were a Kings fan shit like this would drive me bananas.