Kings fire head coach Michael Malone despite promising start

Speaking with ESPN’s James Ham on Wednesday morning, Ranadive said the Kings need to go “from a rules-based organization, which was important when you had chaos, to a values-based organization -- from kind of a programmatic offense to a read-and-respond, free-flowing offense.”

The Kings owner then changed gears by bringing up music, which is either eccentric or silly depending on who you ask.

That makes Jackson a reasonable candidate in Sacramento, particularly given the apparent win-now aspirations of ownership. It didn’t take Jackson long to turn the Warriors into a legitimate playoff team in the West, and with a core led by Cousins, it’s possible ownership thinks he could work similar magic in Sacramento.

Jackson is also friends with D’Alessandro and Mullin, two prominent voices in the Kings leadership. D’Alessandro was a video coordinator at St. John’s during Jackson’s senior season at the school, and Jackson and Mullin played together in college and the NBA for several years.

“Pretty soon, they’re telling [Malone]: Why aren’t you putting him in the games? That’s when it really started to get bad between him and the guys upstairs,” a source told Yahoo! Sports.

Ranadive had pitched the idea of playing 4-on-5 defense and keeping a cherry picker on the other end of the court, according to Grantland in October. This Yahoo! report verifies that story and says that some of this strategy might be implemented under interim head coach Tyrone Corbin. Yahoo also adds that Ranadive “shared tactical experiences with Malone about coaching his child’s youth team.”

Good morning. We did not expect to be writing about an NBA coach meeting his doom this early in the season, at least not unless it was a coach named, say, Monty Williams. But alas, the Kings stunned everyone -- ev-er-y-one -- by canning Michael Malone late Sunday night. The Kings are 11-13, having just fallen under .500 due to DeMarcus Cousins’ prolonged battle with viral meningitis.

Reports from Sam Amick and Adrian Wojnarowski are citing philosophical differences between Malone (who was franchisee Vivek Ranadive’s first hire) and GM Pete D’Alessandro, who arrived a couple weeks later. D’Alessandro wants to play up-tempo. Malone is a grinder. Alas. George Karl is the big rumored name. Ty Corbin is the interim.

In a stunner, the Sacramento Kings fired head coach Michael Malone, according to Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski. Assistant coach Ty Corbin, himself fired by the Utah Jazz as the head man last year, will take over in the interim.

Among the specific complaints: Malone and D’Alessandro didn’t have a close relationship, the team’s style wasn’t ideal and management didn’t feel players were developing enough.