Mike Malone Deserved Better
The NBA is not a coaches’ league. Red Auerbach is the canon and Phil Jackson walks on water but on a day-to-day basis, head coaches are easily forgotten. Hence the enduring myth of the coaching carousel, which remains the best way of understanding how certain guys stay in circulation while other qualified candidates never get a chance. If the game is decided on the court, not on the sidelines, then a team can go with whoever looks best in a suit.
Except this is a season where coaches really matter, which makes the Kings’ dismissal of Mike Malone all the more perplexing. The Warriors, on top of the mountain looking down at the rest of the league, owe a lot of their success to Steve Kerr. The Wizards, one of the East’s most promising teams, would be even stronger if head coach Randy Wittman had more imagination. The Bulls endure because of Tom Thibodeau; Gregg Popovich means the Spurs are never really out of the hunt. In Cleveland, it’s on untested David Blatt to turn his mega-roster into a contender. Jason Kidd has the Bucks off to a surprising start and in Oklahoma City, Scott Brooks is scrutinized like a player who can’t get over the hump and win a title.
Mike Malone, canned after only about a year on the job, is one of those coaches who made a difference. The Kings’ record isn’t the prettiest thing on the planet — they currently sit at 11–13 — but they’re also slumping after a very convincing start to the season. It’s telling that they’re 2–8 over the last ten games, since that’s roughly the amount of time that Sacramento has been without DeMarcus Cousins, who is still recovering from a case of meningitis. In Cousins, the Kings have a force of nature, a putative All-Star who has helped revive the franchise. They’ve also got a temperamental, even volatile, talent who is still very much growing up in public — a situation where a coach can have value beyond mere X’s and O’s.
It’s no secret that Cousins was fond of Malone; Cousins has improved by leaps and bounds since his hiring, and their body language on the bench could be heartwarming at times. This from a player who, early in his career, may or may not have forced out then-coach Paul Westpahl. A lot has changed for Cousins since then, and it’s condescending to attribute all of that to Malone. Players are not always under the paternalistic sway of their coach; they are more than capable of doing their own work or at least of getting help in other ways. But looking at Cousins’s trajectory, the correlation seems obvious: he fulfilled his potential as a basketball player because he had a coach who helped him.
If it were just Cousins, we could shrug at sample size and move on. Except Rudy Gay, the Kings’ other go-to option, has also been transformed, a career underachiever who, in Sacramento, has finally come around. Again, stuff happens and we never can truly peer into Gay’s soul. But twice is one too many times for coincidence. And there are less weighty cases, like Darren Collison finding a home and shedding his role as a longtime reserve. Before him, it was Isaiah Thomas taking on more minutes and taking on some real star power. Malone may not have been getting the results the Kings wanted, but the question is, were their expectations reasonable? He laid the groundwork for the team to get better and proved that he could get players to that proverbial next level, something few coaches can so clearly claim as a skill. There are rumors that Malone’s resistance to a Josh Smith trade played a part in his dismissal. Given Malone’s track record, his voice on a player like Smith should’ve been a real factor, not a reason to take issue with him for overstepping his bounds.
Maybe all Mike Malone did well was manage people well. Compared to Kerr’s total overhaul of the Warriors’ offense, that’s not enough. But Golden State was a playoff team tinkering, not a rebuild. No one’s saying that Malone was perfect and he might not be hired again immediately. Still, his tenure in Sacramento has proven that he’s capable of something, which is more than can be said of someone like rumored replacement Vinnie Del Negro. If Malone’s been typecast as limited, or a niche coach, well, at least it’s better than being generic. What happens next with the Kings will do a lot to determine how we view Mike Malone. If Cousins returns and they continue to slide, there will be questions about Cousins whether or not he deserves it. How the big man responds to this criticism would say as much about him as his post-Malone performance will. Then there’s Gay to contend with. And if the team unravels in the short-term, it could have disastrous consequences for their long-term goals.
As much as we can look at player development and ego management as secondary skills, it’s telling that Auerbach and Jackson — the two most accomplished coaches in NBA history — both excelled at making players better and happier than they would otherwise be. Auerbach kept a squad of Hall of Famers balanced and coached Bill Russell — an American hero and possibly the sport’s greatest player, but someone who needed the right coach. And then there’s Jackson, who while he always had Hall of Famers, is lauded today for being able to win that many titles with that many combinations of big names. That’s not to compare Malone to either of these larger-than-life figures, only to say that the Kings are undervaluing what he brought to the table. If the Kings had problems with Malone, they might have even more without him.
