Kings fire coach despite gains
— -- When the NBA world was blindsided Sunday night with the news that Mike Malone had been fired as head coach of the Sacramento Kings, my first assumption was there had to be some ulterior explanation for the news.
Surely Malone couldn't have been fired for basketball reasons, not with Sacramento tied for its best start through 24 games in a decade despite playing more than a third of those games without star center DeMarcus Cousins. Yet apparently that's exactly what happened, with a source telling ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne the Kings "expected more."
Expectations? In Sacramento? Certainly not from objective outside observers. My SCHOENE projection system forecasted 35 wins; a projection based on ESPN's real plus-minus pegged the Kings for a dismal 25-57 record. The ESPN Forecast panel split the difference, predicting an even 30 wins, and the Westgate SuperBook set its line for Sacramento at 30.5 wins. At 11-13, the Kings were ahead of the most optimistic of those paces, on track for 38 wins despite facing a schedule I rate the NBA's fourth-hardest thus far. Sacramento was performing much better before losing Cousins, the only All-Star talent on the roster. With Cousins, the Kings had performed 5.1 points per game better than an average team against the same schedule, ranking them seventh in the league.
Much of the credit for that start has to go to Malone, who had done a commendable job of building a rotation out of the players delivered by the Sacramento front office. Of the 12 Kings averaging at least 10 minutes per game, eight have outperformed their preseason SCHOENE projection for per-minute win percentage (akin to player efficiency rating), dramatically so in the cases of nearly the entire starting lineup.
KINGS PERFORMANCE VS. EXPECTATIONS
Both Darren Collison and Rudy Gay, acquired by the Sacramento front office over the past 12 months, were playing the best basketball of their careers. Gay's 20.4 PER is the best he has ever posted, and he set his previous career high (18.3) just last season, when he improved his PER from 14.7 to 19.6 after a midseason trade by the Toronto Raptors. Collison had never posted a PER of better than 16.5 before this season, when he's boosted his rating all the way to 18.6.
For that matter, the most improved player of all might be Cousins. No one has ever doubted the talent of the Kings' centerpiece, but he has matured more quickly than expected the past two seasons after stagnating in 2012-13. Cousins has pushed his true shooting percentage from .524 two years ago to .555 and .586 so far this season, emerging as one of the league's most dominant interior forces.
At the same time, Malone's greatest influence may have been felt at the defensive end of the floor, long a weak spot in Sacramento. The Kings currently rank 17th in defensive rating, despite Cousins' extended absence. (They are allowing nearly 10 more points per 100 possessions with Cousins on the bench, per NBA.com/Stats.) Nonetheless, they were on track for their best defensive season since 2005-06, when they finished 13th -- not coincidentally, the last time Sacramento reached the postseason.
The Kings' decision to fire Malone echoes the Minnesota Timberwolves replacing Dwane Casey as head coach midway through the 2006-07 season. Like Malone, Casey was a defensive-minded, first-time head coach in his second year at the helm. Like Sacramento, Minnesota was playing well but not well enough for management.
"We started the season with certain goals and expectations that have not been met," then-Timberwolves VP of basketball operations Kevin McHale said in the release announcing the move. "We've struggled with being consistent throughout the year and ultimately that's the head coach's responsibility."
At the time Casey was fired, Minnesota was 20-20. Under replacement Randy Wittman, they lost 32 of their final 42 games. The Timberwolves have yet to finish .500 over the seven-plus seasons since the change.
The Kings may find a better replacement for Malone, and perhaps the organization is correct to believe its strong start is despite Malone and not because of his coaching. But Minnesota provides an ominous example of the danger of making a coach the scapegoat for unrealistic expectations.