Sacramento has fired coach Mike Malone, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) December 15, 2014
Assistant coach Ty Corbin will take over as interim head coach, league source tells Yahoo Sports.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) December 15, 2014
Despite star DeMarcus Cousins missing past nine games, Malone didn’t meet win-loss expectations of ownership, sources tell Yahoo.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) December 15, 2014
GM Pete D’Alessandro hadn’t hired Malone, and had never been strong bond between them. Still, ownership’s expectations are unrealistic.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) December 15, 2014
This move comes as something of a shock. The Kings (11-13) are off to a better start than they’ve been in years, even with DeMarcus Cousins missing the past nine games with viral meningitis. Nobody (well, nobody reasonable, anyway) was going into this season expecting the Kings to a playoff team. They’re still young and missing a piece or two, despite Cousins’ emergence as a legitimate superstar and the improved play of Rudy Gay.
An 11-13 start for the Kings isn’t great in a vacuum, but considering the abysmal seasons that franchise has endured in the years since their early-2000s title contention, it’s an improvement, and the team seems to have an actual direction for once.
Either there’s a lot more to this story that’s going to come out soon, or owner Vivek Ranadive has lost his mind completely. The Kings aren’t a great team, but that isn’t Malone’s fault. They don’t have the talent to be a playoff team in the loaded Western Conference.
This doesn’t make sense. Not yet, anyway.
