The Sacramento Kings have lost eight of their last nine games including four straight, and a season that looked like it could end with a playoff berth looks to be headed in the opposite direction. With the poor play recently, the Kings are expected to move on from head coach George Karl any day now, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.
Stein reports that the Kings will fire Karl in the coming days and that they "are going ahead with the coaching change." The Kings play their last game before the All-Star break on Wednesday night, and that is fully expected to be Karl's last game as the Kings' head coach unless he is fired before then.
When Karl is let go, it is expected that assistant coach Corliss Williamson will take over as the interim head coach, according to Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee. Williamson was a former teammate of Kings general manager Vlade Divac and has been on the staff since 2013. Williamson is the only coach still left from when Mike Malone was the head coach last season, so his promotion might be an effort to gain some sort of stability. Hiring Karl after the All-Star break last year was an attempt to gain some stability, but that has not worked out.
If Williamson is in fact named the interim head coach he will be taking over an extremely talented team, but it has its issues. The biggest issue is on defense, where the Kings are regularly getting burnt by their opponents and often look unprepared. Rajon Rondo spoke out about Karl having optional workouts, saying that it is hard to get better and win games when practices are optional and only a fraction of the team is showing up.
Williamson will be tasked with changing the culture of the Kings if and when he takes over, and that is not an easy task. Williamson does have head coaching experience at the college level, but this would be his first opportunity to run a team at the professional level. The good news is he will inherit a team with a lot of talent, the bad news is that team has a lot of bad habits he will have to try and fix on the fly and in a short period of time.
