Now that the Kings find themselves back to winning ways, were early critics wrong to have called for major front office changes?
Since moving Buddy Hield to the bench and Bogdan Bogdanovic to the starting lineup on January 24th, the Sacramento Kings season has suddenly been transformed. They have won twelve of their last seventeen and have found themselves in the middle of the race for the eighth seed in the Western Conference. Even better, early Kings critics seem to have disappeared.
Considering the disastrous start to the season, this February has been nothing short of miraculous. We have gone from fans booing the team at home and many, many calls on social media for the heads of either Luke Walton or Vlade Divac (or both), to hope in the kingdom once more and a fan base that has settled down, at least temporarily.
However, the Kings’ playoff run has inadvertently brought up an interesting phenomenon. There has been a re-litigating of sorts amongst the fan base as to whether the fans who were earlier furiously criticizing the Sacramento front office’s decisions over the past off-season were right to do so in the first place. As the roller-coaster nature of the Kings’ successes and failures doesn’t seem to be settling down anytime soon, this re-litigation is worth talking about.
Joerger vs. Walton
A prime example of this re-litigation is the ongoing back-and-forth regarding the decision to fire Dave Joerger as head coach and hire Luke Walton to replace him. Now that Walton has settled into a rotation, there are some fans who are criticizing early calls to fire him, after the Kings stumbled into an 0-5 start and a recent six game slide that seemed to knock them out of the playoffs for good. Were those fans wrong to have not given Luke a chance? Were we sure Dave Joerger was as good as his last year seemed to imply? Do Luke’s critics need to just relax?
However, it’s no surprise that people criticized Luke when the Kings lost consistently, then stopped when they began to win and find an identity. There’s no conspiracy against the Kings coach. People got on Walton because the team was losing and those fans wanted the team to win. It was truly as simple as that. If the team regresses or underwhelms from here, Walton’s critics will return again. So it goes.
Perhaps this is unfair. But understand that this is no ordinary first year for an NBA coach. Luke Walton represented an unexpected change in leadership after an unprecedented period of success for Sacramento. There were real questions about his coaching ability that were only exacerbated by the team’s sluggish start this year. Intellectually, there was a real chance that the team would take a step back in order to take two forward, but a step back was irritating after the best season in fourteen years.
The Drought
Fourteen years.
It should be obvious, but fourteen years is a long time to not see the playoffs. It is natural for fans to be anxious about a team that seems to make decisions that could politely be described as “outside of the box”. It also seems wildly unfair to demonize fans who question decisions that seem irrational, especially when they come from a general manager whose overall plan can be hard to visualize at times.
It’s clear that there are many, many Kings fans who are willing to be patient and can see the vision that Vivek, Vlade and Walton have put together. But there are just as many who worry the fleeting success they have gotten to experience so little of since George W. Bush was in office was going to be whittled away.
It should go without saying, but voicing one’s frustration with a team that has gone years without even coming close to sniffing the playoffs should not disqualify you from cheering for the team once they begin to play well. On the flip side, fans who are able to hold back their frustrations and can see the positives on the horizons aren’t just being blind. After all this time, fans should fan however they want.
But of course people are going to stop complaining once the Sacramento Kings finally start winning.
Winning is all that matters.