Management May Be Kings’ Toughest Rival
Put this one down as a mercy killing. By sending Garry St. Jean home with 15 games left, the Kings did everyone a big favor.
They accepted the inevitable, gave themselves a chance to salvage whatever’s left of a tattered season and generated new interest among a legion of fans who had grown sick of St. Jean’s syrupy excuses for shameful defeats. They gave St. Jean the freedom to lower his blood pressure and find work as an NBA assistant coach.
As firings go, this one was neat and clean and necessary, a professional hit. Even Kings vice president Geoff Petrie, his suit clean and his hair unmussed afterward, acknowledged the surgical nature of the strike.
“There are some pretty ugly ways for people to lose their jobs in this business,” Petrie said. “I don’t think any of that happened here. No one on the staff came in and tried to take advantage of the situation. No players came marching into my office demanding changes.
“We just didn’t think the team was going to respond. It hadn’t responded. It’s a hard thing to do, but it’s the right thing.”
And with that, an experiment came to a close - an experiment that began with St. Jean deferring to a senior assistant and ended with him having abdicated authority to an All-Star.
The Kings went to great lengths Thursday to shield St. Jean from blame. They fired him, but wanted the world to know it wasn’t his fault. As absurd as that sounds - if he didn’t do anything wrong, why unload him? - it makes sense once you understand how the NBA works.
In the modern NBA, the successful head coach is a kindly caretaker, a patient sidekick who strokes the egos and overlooks the excesses of his volatile prodigies, his darling pampered pupils whose personalities have the durability of spun glass.
There are exceptions - tough old goats who call the shots with a now-hear-this rumble in their voices. But other than Pat Riley, the majority of NBA coaches know their survival depends on their ability to get along with the players.
St. Jean never had any illusions about what it took to coach the Kings. The first year, St. Jean took guidance from an assistant named Mike Schuler, a former head coach.
More important, St. Jean knew he needed Mitch Richmond. The coach and player were joined at the hip.
There was nothing unusual in St. Jean’s willingness to run everything by and for Richmond. Any modestly intelligent person wearing the coach’s tasseled loafers would have done the same. The relationship with Richmond was the only reason St. Jean survived as long as he did.
And that’s the way Eddie Jordan will have to coach. Jordan spoke eloquently about putting passion and energy back into the Kings, but Richmond is the circuit breaker. If he sulks over St. Jean’s grave, no amount of brilliance from Jordan will save the season.
For these reasons, Jordan is a fine choice as coach. A former player, an experienced assistant, a bright and engaging personality, Jordan will be at least as competent as the dozen or so retreads who will surface this summer.
Truth is, the coach won’t matter much. A far more crucial question will be the disposition of Richmond and his fragile teammates, including the easily distracted Billy Owens and Olden Polynice, plus Brian Grant and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
The Kings shouldn’t worry about hiring a fancy new coach. What they need is management that can transmit a sense of responsibility to the players - someone who can make those lads understand that they owe their fans more than a smile and a wink for all that dough.