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I've been a big fan of Coach Malone and what he has done with this team since he's been here but lately there have been some things I can not seem to wrap my head around.

- Rotations: I don't understand them at times. He leaves guys in way too long or pulls them way too early far too often. If I see the "no defense" unit of Sessions, Stauskas, DWill, Landry and Evans getting extended minutes too much more, I may just lose my mind.

- TImeouts: While Malone does draw up some great plays out of timeouts, I think he calls them too often. Especially during this stretch without Cousins, there are going to be times when we need to fight through the mental lapses and turn things around without needing a timeout to settle down. (This is probably the least of my concerns but it still bugs me sometimes)

- Help Defense: We are overly eager to help on defense and it has opened the gates for a barrage of three pointers against us. Luckily in games like Monday's against Utah, they just weren't hitting them so we were able to get away with it but teams are getting way too many open looks and from what I see, it's the help defense causing it.

- Ray McCallum: This is a popular topic in this forum so there's not much to be said here. Still trying to figure out why he gets no burn.

What do you guys see and what are your opinions on Coach Malone?

Agree with you rotations. He leaves bench players out there for way too long and it annoys the **** outta me. I get that that player made a couple of shot and looked good, but dont leave him out there for the next quarter, put your starters back in. And his rotation changes every game. Theres no reason why Casspi is DNP. I get that D. Will had a couple of good games, but Casspi has been the consistent bench spark all year. And agree with giving Ray Mac a chance cause god knows he cant do worse than Sessions

I'm still pro-Malone right now but he isn't without fault. His minutes disbursement to the bench is awful. He often leaves the bench way too long in critical moments in the game and 9/10 times, the bench lose leads & momentum created by the starters, This forces the starters to come back to the game in a hole...and their energy & effort will be used more in attempts to climb out of the hole that was created by the bench rather than icing the game.

His assertion of completely taking out all of the starting 5 for a complete different set of players at the start of the 2nd & 4th quarters is unbearable too.

And where the heck is Omri Casspi? One bad game out of 4 or 5 games deserves to be benched & ought to be teach a lesson? wut? Accountability in Malone's eyes is different than many eyeballs of Kings fans, imo. Frustrating to say the least.

The only legitimate gripe in my opinion is his rotations, but you can't ask the starters to play 40+ minutes every night, especially when two of them played over the summer. Also, as Malone said, he's just trying to find something that works. Can you name one lineup that as been consistently effective? I can't.

Using a timeout to calm a young team down is the definition of a non-issue and looking for a reason to complain. It's not like he's constantly out of timeouts for end-of-game situations, and when the guys grow up and learn how to regain their composure by themselves, you'll see the timeouts diminish. Timeouts become mandatory anyway, so he might as well call 'em before the Scorer does.

The help defense is a direct result of not having any truly elite defenders. Cousins is nearing that, but a truly effective team defense is more than just one guy. To mask everybody else's defensive deficiencies, they have to be reliant on help defense.

Ray McCallum is a classic example of Kevin Martin Syndrome (KMS). A player whose flaws are being overlooked because he's a fan favorite. Objective eyes would tell you that he's been late-Derek FIsher invisible when he's on the court.

tl;dr You're all asking Malone to make fine wine out of elephant piss. The quick start got our hopes up and we lost sight of what's realistic.

As much as I dislike Sessions, McCallum has not shown the ability to create off the dribble which our bench unit desperately needs.

Regarding the rotations he has seemed to stagger the substitutions a bit more as of late. That being said, when Cousins comes back I'd like to see him or Gay on the floor 100% of the time barring foul trouble. How hard is it to pull Rudy at the 4-6 minute mark of the first/third and let him start the second/fourth when Cousins is resting?

My biggest gripe is the fact that he continues to play Landry as a center. Seems every time this happens we get killed on the boards.

Overall he's been the best coach we've had since Adelman and for that I'm thankful.

Wolfay wrote:tl;dr You're all asking Malone to make fine wine out of elephant piss. The quick start got our hopes up and we lost sight of what's realistic.

I think Malone is the reason we've had such a great start, I'm not saying he's done a bad job by any means I was only pointing out a few things that bugged me. I agree with you on the timeout thing, like I said it's the least of my concerns it's just sometimes I feel he's a little quick to call the timeout. Also I agree with you that McCallum has some flaws. He isn't aggressive enough on the offensive end and gets into robot mode running the offense but he's always ready to play and is a much better defender than Sessions. That's my major gripe. Malone is supposed to be a defensive minded coach and we can see that by this team's improved defense, so I don't understand why he goes with the defensive deficient Sessions over Ray especially when he isn't contributing on offense.

I've seen things out of Malone I don't like, but I've seen way more that tells me the Kings finally have a winner at the coaching spot. First time since Adelman in fact. As for the gripes:

- Rotations: What's he supposed to do? I mean this is a team largely built around non-defense oriented players and nowhere on this team is it more emphasized than on the bench.

- TImeouts: You know you have at least a decent coach when you can almost always expect at least a decent shot out of a timeout.

- Help Defense: Once again, this is a personnel problem. I will say that his defense is centered around conceding something I personally despise because my pet peeve is the open corner 3. Always has been, always will be. Malone is having to resort to some fairly gimmicky over help laden defense to cover for incapable personnel for the most part. As is, he's gotten average to even some below average defenders to buy in and not really look that bad. Can't really blame the guy, but I will say the contrast defensively since Cuz has been out has been almost shocking. I know Cuz has stepped up but c'mon, one player? No way. A team doesn't go from good to the worst because of one player period. Pete has work to do. Only he can fix the issues on both ends right now. This team since Cuz has been out hasn't exposed Malone as much as it has exposed this roster. It's been hit and miss I guess. DC was a great signing obviously. Turning Ben into that 3 and D guy has for the most part worked (I guess Malone and Pete can share the glory there), and JT has bought into a role that he never would have under any other regime.

- Ray McCallum: As for this, I just have no clue. We've talked about the potential of Malone just not being into Ray because he was a Pete D'allesandro pick, but seriously? He's possibly the 3rd best pure defender on the team and you're a defensive coach. WTF? Then again, coaches are notorious to ride their vets to the death when they are trying to win. I didn't get the Sessions signing in the first place anyway. Ray was primed to have a solid role with this team this year. He's ready to contribute now. He's not a player that has to learn the game first. He's a coaches son and he plays like one, use him Malone. Pete scored big on a pre-draft favorite and beyond that he perfectly fits into this teams vision of how it wants to play on both ends. I'm just confused like everyone else I guess.

Wolfay wrote:The only legitimate gripe in my opinion is his rotations, but you can't ask the starters to play 40+ minutes every night, especially when two of them played over the summer. Also, as Malone said, he's just trying to find something that works. Can you name one lineup that as been consistently effective? I can't.

Using a timeout to calm a young team down is the definition of a non-issue and looking for a reason to complain. It's not like he's constantly out of timeouts for end-of-game situations, and when the guys grow up and learn how to regain their composure by themselves, you'll see the timeouts diminish. Timeouts become mandatory anyway, so he might as well call 'em before the Scorer does.

The help defense is a direct result of not having any truly elite defenders. Cousins is nearing that, but a truly effective team defense is more than just one guy. To mask everybody else's defensive deficiencies, they have to be reliant on help defense.

Ray McCallum is a classic example of Kevin Martin Syndrome (KMS). A player whose flaws are being overlooked because he's a fan favorite. Objective eyes would tell you that he's been late-Derek FIsher invisible when he's on the court.

tl;dr You're all asking Malone to make fine wine out of elephant piss. The quick start got our hopes up and we lost sight of what's realistic.

Uh OK, but even so, any position battle is a measure of comparison. The alternative is? On his worst day while Ray may be a low production player, he can still defend his position and possibly a few others depending on matchups.

I agree that some of Malone's decisions are head scratchers. While I do credit Malone with the improvement this team has had, I think this is because of behind the scenes preparation and less about game time decisions. I think some of these games that have been close should be in the win column if the coaching decisions were made better. Searching for a consistent lineup off the bench is a reasonable, but hard to achieve in reality, and doesn't explain the decisions that are being made. The bench lineups have been consistent in the extent that some of the worst players have been given constant playing time, and inconsistent with the benching and DNPs of players who have been giving us solid minutes. If he's trying to find a good lineup, then stick with one thing and wait for it to develop, or go with the players that are playing well and sit the ones who aren't. This seems perfectly simple, but neither of these strategies have been employed by Malone. This begs the question, "What is he thinking about?" Seems kinda rookie-coaching moves to me.

The Sessions thing: I think Malone shows favoritism towards vets. Sessions is historically a better player than the way he is playing with us. To this end I think Malone feels patience is warranted because Sessions will come out of whatever funk he's in and be a solid contributor off the bench. However, the better coaching decision would have been to limit the detriment that Session's has been to this team instead of having him play through it. Ray may have been "invisible", but even that is preferable to being "detrimental". My hope is that Malone is right and that Sessions will turn a corner and make us all grateful for Malone's wisdom.

DWill vs Omri is another perplexing situation and somewhat contradicts what I said about Malone's decisions with Sessions. Omri has clearly been the better vet this season. Although too often I feel Omri commits to making a play too early in the shot clock, at least the frequency and quality of his bad decisions are orders of magnitude more preferable than DWills. I actually thought that Omri was sitting out during the Jazz game because it was the front end of a back to back and Malone wanted to save some of his stronger players for the Lakers. However the DNP for Omri on the second night is perplexing. Other than trying to showcase DWill, there is really no logical explanation for Malone's decision to play him unless there is something else going on behind the scenes.

I'd like to think that Malone is smart enough to learn from these decisions. He's still a relatively new coach, but he has enough experience to see what everyone else sees. I'm also glad that he's putting onus on his players, but I'm also waiting for the moment where he takes responsibility for his own decisions. He needs to get better and making the calls that can effect the outcome of the game. This is where he is really showing his lack of experience. If the players are playing poorly, then it's the coach's decision to play them or someone else. By continuing to play those who are a detriment to the team, he's either being a bad coach, or perhaps making a point that he's got nothing to work with.

The next person to start pointing fingers at is Pete D. His next job will be to eliminate the trash. Get better players so Malone can make better decisions, or at least limit the bad decisions that Malone has been prone to making. It's Pete's job to evaluate whether the problems are because of the roster, or Malone's decisions, then discuss the issues with Malone. If swapping out players is the solution. Then great. Otherwise, Pete needs to point out that at some point, no swapping out of players is going to make up for bad coaching decisions.

Also forgot to mention that whatever momentum Ray had from coming off an MVP Summer League Finals performance has pretty much been squashed.

Rudy Gay Iso's at the end of games needs to end. Rotations need to improve.

Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

AnDrOiDKing4 wrote:Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

In a topic that's supposed to be a discussion, posts like these that have little substance really bring down the quality of the board.

Wolfay wrote:

AnDrOiDKing4 wrote:Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

In a topic that's supposed to be a discussion, posts like these that have little substance really bring down the quality of the board.

If I could reword that, I will say this, if so much of your ENTIRE team is tied up to 1 guy being on the floor, we are in trouble. It looks like that this offseason we planned around 1 guy expecting he will be on the floor for every minute of every game.

We shouldn't need Cousins to beat the teams like the Lakers, Magic, and a 4 win Pistons team on the second night of a B2B. They are finding new ways to lose every night. That is 100% sign of a bad team and a team that isn't coached properly. If in fact Malone needs Cousins to beat these subpar teams then we are in deep dodo.

Just take a minute and look at this roster w/o Cousins. Outside of Gay, the only real talent is tied up in a 1st and 2nd year player, and the only other consistent vet that can do much of anything that can be relied upon is Darren Collison who while a perfect role player for the Gay/Cousins duo, is still a role player. The disaster that is this roster is on full display without Cousins and Gay isn't enough to clean the mess up by himself. Hopefully this is a positive in the end. This whole experience without Cousins that is, because at least now there is no argument about standing pat and not wanting to screw it up, haha. Pete has to be more aggressive now than ever.

AnDrOiDKing4 wrote:Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

You don't think Malone has had anything to do with Cousins' success this season?

Sent from my LG G2

SactoKingsFan wrote:

AnDrOiDKing4 wrote:Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

You don't think Malone has had anything to do with Cousins' success this season?

Sent from my LG G2

oh really i was under the impression that Cousins was a top pick and he had the talent to be one the best big in the game

btw what did he do with the rest of the players, JT has Digressed big time, but i guess molone magic only works with Cousins

a-rod wrote:

SactoKingsFan wrote:

AnDrOiDKing4 wrote:Fire this clown. Overrated coach that has been riding Cousins success this season.

You don't think Malone has had anything to do with Cousins' success this season?

Sent from my LG G2

oh really i was under the impression that Cousins was a top pick and he had the talent to be one the best big in the game

btw what did he do with the rest of the players, JT has Digressed big time, but i guess molone magic only works with Cousins

I never said Cousins wasn't a top prospect with star potential. I just think Malone has played a role in Cousins' overall improvement.

Not sure why you brought up JT. He's never been anything special and would have just been an above average PF had he reached his ceiling.

Sent from my LG G2

Is this woj tweet about him being fired legit???


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if true..im actually quite surprised about this move...