Chris Mullin was one hell of a player and not so great Executive Vice President of Operations for the Golden State Warriors. When Mullin was an Executive for the Warriors his top assistant was Pete D’Alessandro. Pete Alessandro was fired by the Warriors and ended up working for the Kings for awhile, then Pete recently got promoted to the Kings general manager position. Pete made everyone scratch their hands this weekend when he fired the coach Mike Malone for what he calls this dismissal “Malone just didn’t meet expectations for this season.”
What expectations Mr. D’Alessandro? The Kings record was proably the most surprising story of the NBA, before DeMarcus Cousin’s went down with a illness viral meningitis. While Cousin’s was out, the Kings record took a dive at 11-12. In the last 9 games the Kings went a dreadful 2-7 without thier superstar. When DeMarcus played with Sacramento teammates this season, thier record was 9-6. The Kings looked very improved this year and shared big leads on good teams, but just didn’t finish!
Chris Mullin in 2013 was working as a close advisor for the Kings owner Vivek Ranadive. Ranadive spent much of the last 24 hours trying to entice Mullin to replace the fired Mike Malone, despite his lack of coaching experience. Today NBA insiders have been talking to the media and many seem to believe Chris Mullin doesn’t want to jump into a bad situation taking the coaching job midseason. ESPN insider Chris Broussard went on twitter today saying,
Sources: Chris Mullin won’t coach Kings this yr. IF he coaches them, it would be at start of next season. Corbin likely 2 remain all season
— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) December 16, 2014
No one knows if Chris Mullin will be a good coach. Mullin does have a high basketball IQ and at times I have seen Chris covering games as an analyst on television. Mullin has a great understanding of schemes and X’s & O’s (which is half the battle). One thing is for sure the owner and general manager will not be butting heads with Mullin like they did with Malone. Many believe the disagreements between management and coach was a big part of Malones dismissal. I would second that theory.