Would George Karl Be A Good Hire For Sacramento Kings?

The Sacramento Kings started off the season well, but when center DeMarcus Cousins went down with viral meningitis and missed some time, the team got off track and in turn fell out of playoff contention.

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Upper management within the Kings organization took matters into their own hands and decided to fire head coach Mike Malone, hoping that a new coach could create a different culture within the team and ultimately right the ship with the talent currently present on the roster.

It’s not as if the Kings have no talent. Cousins is arguably the best big man in the game, Rudy Gay is a scoring wing capable of holding his own at both ends of the floor and guards Darren Collison and Ben McLemore have proven to be worthy of their starting status.

So why has the team underachieved?

Well for one, this is a very young squad who hasn’t had a lot of years to really gel and play off of one another. The best teams in the league have veteran players who are used to playing with one another, something that is severely underrated in a league today that is more concerned about star power for the most part than actual team chemistry.

Another reason is that coach Malone was great at getting his guys to play hard on offense, but for how he was perceived to be a defensive-minded coach, the team was still below average on that end of the floor during his time with Sacramento. That may have to do more with the personnel than the coach, but management didn’t see the players 100 percent at fault.

So now that Malone is out as the head coach, multiple high-profile names have been looked at to be his replacement, including Mark Jackson and George Karl.

Word is that the Kings have been in serious discussions with Karl on becoming the next head coach of the team, according to ESPN.

The question is, would Karl be a good fit for a team that hasn’t exactly been a wreck on offense?

I get it, fans nowadays want to see teams run up and down the floor and put points up in a second. Who doesn’t love to see high-flying athletes go up for 70 dunks a game and shooters like Stephen Curry and Kyle Korver put the ball in the hole from deep 15 times a game? Even I love those things.

However, the game of basketball is played on two ends of the floor, not just one. Every good team that has won championships in this league has had balance.

Now all of this isn’t to say that Karl can’t coach a lick of defense. During his time with the Denver Nuggets, his teams never really underperformed in that area, but his focus was more on generating as many turnovers as possible to push the tempo down the court and create easy buckets in transition.

Karl never really spent a lot of time preparing his guys for true one-on-one defensive situations late in games, and it showed because the Nuggets only made it past the first round in the Western Conference one time during his tenure.

The Kings need to build a more professional culture in their locker room, and Karl can help to do that. What I don’t understand is why the Kings are going after a coach that has more knowledge on how to run things on the end of the floor that Sacramento has shown little problem excelling at.

The Kings need discipline and a better understanding of how to play defense, meaning Jackson would be a much better candidate for this team right now than Karl in my opinion.

Regardless, it isn’t like Karl can’t win games in the NBA. Right now, I see him as the perfect coach for coming in for a few years, turning things around and passing the job off to another coach that can take what he built all the way.

If the Kings are fine with looking for another coach sooner down the road than they may be thinking right now, then by all means they should go after Karl. If they want help in the one area that they have underachieved in for multiple years now, then they should look to hire Jackson so that things could potentially be turned around in a shorter amount of time.

Choose wisely, Sacramento. Kings fans deserve better than a losing season every single year.

Next: Is DeMarcus Cousins An All-Star?

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Would George Karl Be A Good Hire For The Sacramento Kings?

By Nathan Grubel | Feb 8, 2015

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