George Karl’s first practice with the Sacramento Kings was one to remember. As the media arrived, the team hustled through a full court scrimmage. Players were more vocal than usual, possibly to impress their new head coach.
Spread around the facility, Vivek Ranadive, Pete D’Alessandro, Chris Mullen and Chris Granger looked on with keen eyes. Karl stood alone on the sidelines, soaking it in.
Eventually the team huddled up and finished with a shootaround. Routines appeared normal, aside from Reggie Evans practicing long baseline jumpers on the far court.
Darren Collison was dressed for practice but only participated in jogging and shooting. The veteran point guard was still hampered by a hip injury suffered before the All-Star break. Rookie forward Eric Moreland, who is out for the season with a torn labrum, was also in attendance, and mingled with teammates.
Karl addressed the media today, as well as Rudy Gay.
Coaches Notes and Quotes
- George Karl on his first impressions: “I was very happy with the effort. Today we worked offense, tomorrow we’re going to work defense. There’s a lot of good talent out there. So we got to figure out how to make it fit, get the pieces together, better, and get more confidence in the game, and get them angry, and let them go play.”
- Karl on his first practice since 2013: “I was very nervous. I was very nervous the first talk, and the first (I was) able to talk to the guys, I think I was nervous. But once you got on the court, I think it’s going to be a positive ride, a positive journey.”
- Karl on why he focused on offense in his first practice: “I’m not complaining, but the whole thing of an All-Star break and first practice, 24 hours before the trade deadline, you want to let them have their space a little bit. I know some of them have been rumored in trade rumors, and that’s a mental state that’s not good. So I didn’t want to get real detailed today. Tomorrow I think we’ll get a little more detailed because it’s defense, and try to clean up some of the stuff that we did offensively today.”
- Karl on his message to the team: “I think in general I said I want you to forgot about the last 50 games, the last 52 games. I said I’m going to talk to you all one on one, but I want to think about winning now in the 30 games that we have left. Stay away from blaming anybody and what happened. For me, it’s like the chalkboard’s clean. You guys don’t even remember going in to the chalkboard in school. For me, it’s what happens from now forward, not necessarily what happened in the last 52 games.”
- Karl on practice observations: “Their body language, their energy was very, very good. Their play at times was very, very good. There were some mistakes, there were ‘crazy’ out there, but that was mostly on me. I got to figure out what they do well, and what their habits are. If I had one today, it was we turned it over a little bit too much, but I sped them up too. We’re playing at a totally different speed than they probably played at all year.”
- Karl on his communication with DeMarcus Cousins: “I talked to him for about 10 minutes before practice. I talked to him about basically what was going to happen in practice and then I said, maybe on a daily basis let’s just check in with each other for whatever five, 10, 15 minutes. I thought he was really good. He’s a really skilled basketball player.”
- Karl on his expectations of Ben McLemore: “I think I said to him two or three times, ‘I want you more aggressive. I don’t you conserving. I don’t want you just to be a shooter. I want you to be a basketball player.’ And I thought he was somewhat into it. Somewhat into trying to take some chances. Actually I thought he had a good practice. He was probably one of the top five players.”
- Karl on reducing turnovers: “For me, it’s about shot selection without turnovers. And I thought they understood the shots I want, and I think we’ll get better at it everyday. Turnovers, basically, I tell them all the time, don’t be Magic Johnson. Just be a good basketball player. And good basketball players don’t make bad decisions. Make good, solid decisions, don’t try to make the Magic Johnson pass, because that’s when I think instead of throwing a pass that gets made 98 percent of the time, which it should be, we throw passes that have a 60/40 ratio, and that’s not even good for a quarterback in football. “
- Karl on helping Nik Stauskas: “We got to give Nik some minutes. I think he’s got to get on the court to get some confidence in his game, and give him some shots, try to find him a rhythm. He’s got this rookie mental block. And I told him, I said, ‘My first 15, 20 games in my career, I don’t think I made a shot. And I’m scared to death.’ The rookie gets picked on, and you lose your confidence, and you don’t play, and you don’t have an opportunity to regain it. But you know hopefully, somewhere in these 30 games, he’ll get a run of six, seven games where he starts playing at a better level and more confident level, and I think he’s talented enough to get that done this year.”
- Karl on using Rudy Gay: “One, I was really impressed how big he is. He’s a very long, athletic guy. I think I’ll play him more at four than he’s played the first 52 games. I think you’re going to see me play small with him being on my four-man. The last game against Chicago they played that way for a while and I thought it was pretty good. For me, getting 48 minutes of flow and rhythm might mean I got to change the lineup a little bit, and play people in a different way. I don’t know exactly what that means. But I want the bench to be more positive of an impact on the game. So how I figure that out, I really want to do.”
- Karl on incorporating his style this season: “I think I got to give them some of my stuff, and keep some of the stuff that they’ve been pretty good at. It’s a combination of both. Concepts and plays and NBA players and teams are somewhat similar. But I would like to gravitate to where I feel comfortable making calls for them and helping them get shots. But in the same sense, they got to take the opportunity of a game, when it’s played fast, is a player game. It’s for the players to make the decisions and find the shots and find the choices. And today there was a lot of good there, and there was a lot of ‘crazy’ there, so it’s going to take some time to get it to where we can win a basketball game.”
Players Notes and Quotes
- Rudy Gay on Karl’s offense: “We want to play more up-tempo. We want to attack people offensively, and defensively get in people’s way. It’s one of those offenses where everybody has a chance to be successful. I think the better all of us get, the better our team gets.”
- Gay on his history with Karl: “I played against him a lot and I know what kind of system he likes. He incorporated it today, but playing against it and actually being a part of it are two different things, and we really have to get used to it and get better at it.”
- Gay on what he understands of the offense: “Offensively we have to put pressure on people. We want to. We pressure each other out here on the court just playing five on five against each other. We have to incorporate high up-tempo play. It’s a good offense for me, I think it’s great, we just have to buy into it.”
- Gay on his first conversation with Karl: “He called me on the phone right after he actually got the job and just let me know things that he wanted me to do and what he thinks I got better at. I played against him a lot. I think we have a pretty good idea of how we feel of each other. So he just told me what kind of player he wanted me to be and what kind of veteran he wanted me to be.”
- Gay on whether he’s excited to have a new head coach: “Excitement level? It’s hard to excite me now, to be honest with you. It’s hard to excite me but I think it’s a little bit more security, knowing that he’s going to be here for a while, and the kind of reputation that he has. And just knowing what you’re getting into.”
- Gay on playing power forward: “It’s something that I did all summer. I’ve done it before. He hasn’t talked about doing it exclusively, but I don’t see how that’s a bad thing for us.”
- Gay on his All-Star break: “It was good for me. It recharged my batteries. I come in with a different mindset. It was a long half a season. Probably the longest half a season I’ve been a part of, and that can drain us sometimes. But I think the extended break helped me, and you know, I’m ready to finish the season out right.”
- Gay on treating the rest of the season as a training camp: “You have to. Obviously we don’t have much time to incorporate a system, so we kind of have to learn on the fly. We’ve been learning on the fly all year. But I think this time we really have to bear down and take it seriously and be who coach wants us to be.”
- Gay on the anticipation of Karl’s first practice: “I think we were all scared. We haven’t played in a week. We didn’t have practice, we didn’t have him (Karl). I think we just thought we would have our track shoes all day, back to high school days running with bricks all over our heads. We didn’t do that, so I guess it was successful.”
The Kings are scheduled to practice on Thursday, and Karl will make his Sacramento debut against the Boston Celtics on Friday.
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