The movie "A Big Drama" describes such a plot, a group of prisoners performing the classic play "Waiting for Guotuo", which is a great success under the favor of no one. At the final stop of the tour, the theater sold out, but the actors escaped from prison. Samuel Beckett, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the playwright of the play, laughed widely when he heard this, saying bluntly, "This is the most beautiful thing that has happened to my play." ”
If the prisoner's mental state is just apt description of a certain part of the Waiting for The Goda. That was last week's Jazz game against the Kings, Luke Wharton's final game as the team's manager, a fan vomiting on the pitch, and it was clearly the most worthwhile and montageable scene at the Kings' home in all these years. Because, not many professional teams can disgust their own fans to this extent.
In the 2005–06 season, the Kings fell again in the first round of the West, and Rick Adelman resigned after the season. Since then, they haven't made the playoffs in 15 years, and not a single season has ever won more than 40 wins. If that's all there are, there are a lot of bad teams in the league, but the most intriguing thing about the Kings is that no one can understand the continuity of their overall plan.
One of the most bizarre operations is that every 1-2 seasons, the Kings' organizers mysteriously disappear and become several other different players in possession. The late Paul Westphar was Tyrec Evans/Beno-Judri/Sergio Rodríguez; Keith Smart was Isaiah Thomas/Terek Evans/John Salmons/Aaron Brooks. 2015-16 was a chaotic season, with three managers Mike Malone (11-13), Tyrone Corbyn (7-21) and George Carr (11-19) in mid-season, with point guards Darren Collison and Andre Miller in that season, followed by Lajan Rondo the following season.
During the Dave Chogel era, team command slowly shifted to Daron Fox, who may have been the Kings' closest all-Star player of all years. But the Kings didn't seem to have any intention of playing around him entirely, which was understandable, but the team went on to pick two young backcourt players, Terris Halliburton and David Mitchell.
Fox is sticky and not a good shooter, and the coach understandably prefers the young but fairly sophisticated Halliburton. But the Kings shouldn't covet the potential of the former, but want him to be a Kyle Lowry-esque player, who is only 23 years old and needs the space to make mistakes. Either make a deal and pursue the present, or choose to believe and wait for the future. But the Kings chose hesitation, so Fox played a season of poor efficiency this season, and in the end they still had to make a decision.
We know that point guards are the soul of a team, that the system and tactics of professional teams are so complex that you can't have another person in command every other season, which is why the Kings never seem to be able to build good chemistry. It's not just the fans who never know what the team is going to play, not even the players.
In the 2015-16 season, the Kings were in charge of Carr, and their offensive pace was the fastest in the league (100.0); two seasons later, their manager was replaced by Jogel R, and the pace became 94.9, the slowest in the league. How is this possible? Such a change is hard to imagine happening on a professional team.
The kings didn't suddenly go through reconstruction, they had been rotten, trying to find a leader to lead them out of the mud. So it's not because they suddenly have any big changes in the squad, but because the team doesn't know what they're going to play from start to finish.
Over the years, the Kings management has not failed to tap the potential of the good players, the previous Thomas, Cousins, and now Marvin Bagley III, Barty Hield, Fox, are good players, have also shown potential.
But one of the hardest things about building a team culture is finding that trustworthy core and building the ideal squad around him. With responsibility and trust, the king seems reluctant to take any risks at the moment, trying to beat up the retraining as soon as it doesn't improve for a while. Judging from the results of 10 years, it is undoubtedly a failure.
Luke Wharton's era is over, and that could be a turning point. Although the young coach never reached the heights of what was once praised when he was in the Warriors, he is already the King's highest winning coach in the 15 years since Adelman.
Will Wharton's departure be a turning point? Gentry is a real-game coach, but it may be difficult for the Kings to replicate what McMillan accomplished at the Hawks last year. The mid-season coaching change represents a pessimistic ending in the NBA for most of the time. Monte McNair had to think hard about whether to make the record decent for the time being, or to solve the mess left by Vlad Divac once and for all.