The story of the Kings’ coaching change started on Monday, when Terry Murray was fired and replaced on an interim basis by John Stevens. The presumed long-term replacement is Darryl Sutter — there have been no other reported candidates — but Dean Lombardi has not spoken publicly about Sutter (or anyone). So the process is ongoing. The difference between this midseason coaching replacement and some others is that the Lombardi and the Kings did not talk to candidates for Murray’s full-time replacement before they fired him. Lombardi wanted to make a clean dismissal before he sought a replacement, so that’s a large part of why things stand where they do today. There’s a process to go through for coaching candidates, particularly those who are still employed by other teams, and — presumably, because of his longstanding relationship with, and respect for, Murray — Lombardi waited until he made one move before he made the next. Thus, no immediate hiring of a new full-time coach.
For everyone, from the coaches to the players to the fans and beyond, it’s been a crazy couple days For my LAKings.com feature this week, I took a look at what led up to the change, and how it all went down. Thanks for reading…
Rules for Blog Commenting
Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.
Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.