What a shame.

I was really enjoying what he did at the Kings.

The Kings are definitely the team to beat now in season 19/20.

Lister head hunts JvG away from QLD government to lead the Kings. He fails miserably at it and in reward gets another gig under Lister. Huh?

Boti's piece reads like AEG are about to announce a nation wide search for a retired journo to work from home writing press releases @ $180K a year, wonder who they have already appointed.

Always amused when boti's "talk truth to power" fluff module plays up, hard to get parts for vacumm tube managed electronics these days. :)

What a ball sack!

Mastermind according to Boti. LOL.

A disputed the term and JVG's achievements on Boti's FB page and he took me to task over it.

Congrats to Jeff; Congrats to Sydney Kings fans.

/sings "ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead!"

He's obviously got some dirt on harvey, but that's ok, as this was the most important thing to get settled before the end of the Finals and if he's not involved in the head coaching process, I have a lot more faith in it...

Now to lock in the obvious choice for Head Coach, give him whatever resources and assurances that he needs and let's get this team back on track!

Looking forward to a reasonably fresh start next season. New coach, should be a fairly different roster as well. JvG deserves some credit for luring in some of the names that he did, but overall I'd give him about a C- if I'm being fair. Hamstrung by a couple of bad choices every season that negated the good.

Just curious as to why you think the roster will be much different?
I would have thought that the core of Lisch, Newley, Bogut, and Kickert will remain. Possibly even Randle, and Wear?

I don't think that Randle is a great fit for that team.
I don't think that Wear is a great fit for any NBL team.

Wear might be good at state league level.

Angus probably thinks that because they only have one player under contract for next season and this roster significantly underperformed.

Yeah lots of FAs. Hard to imagine they'll all be back and I imagine less $$$ on offer for those that do. Kickert still around and I'm ok with him on the bench for a starter who isn't David Wear. Still got his uses, just not how we used him last season.

Success comes from stability, not trying to rebuild every season.

This team made it to the finals with a dud coach, and might have gone further with the right motivation.

I'm not saying they'll all be back, who knows, maybe the money has dried up, and they will all defect to SEM. But the goals needs to be to keep as much as possible that works.

The one it works now, teams get to have the best 6 players they can afford, then squeeze 5 into the bench cap. So they really need to look at keeping Bogut, Newley, Lisch, and Randle, at a minimum, as their core. (Not sure how much Kickert is on, whether they could squezze him into the cap?)leaving slots for 1 or 2 stars. I guess that realistically they will need to replace Wear with a quality import PF. But that should be the limit to their changes to their starting line-up.

The problem with wanting guys like Newly and Lisch to take less money, is that SEM will be on the prowl for good local talent.

The perceived weakness of Randle on D, mostly came about because Gaze kept pairing him with Adnam. Any small PG is going to suffer in that lineup. As long as he's with Lisch, and they get a decent backup SG, it could work.

I'm confident we'll keep one of Lisch or Newley, but I think SEM will take the other. I hope it's Lisch we keep, and if it's Newley I'd like to have him off the bench, because I feel like that's the best way to extend his career and get 100% out of him for 15-20 mins a night. I don't see us keeping both for hundreds of thousands of dollars each to be honest. I'd rather throw big bucks at Nathan Sobey.

Agree 1000% re: the Adnam lineups, and that Randle's man defense is underrated as far as effort goes, but he gets wiped out on screens and struggles to recover and good teams target that. For me the gap between him and the other top guards grew a bit this year - maybe it's the Gaze factor, but with Randle if he isn't at least putting 20 on the board he's probably hurting you overall I think.

If we did bring him back though, I'm OK with it as well if we have the right guys at the 3 and 4 spots in particular. Can do plenty worse than Randle, it's just that it takes the right team around him. JvG was good at throwing cash at good players, but couldn't get the roster balance right - I'm hoping we manage to do the latter better this year, even if it means we are a bit less talented on paper.

Not any more.
The way the system works is that you need to have 5 players earning less than circa $450k. That's why you end up with guys like Adnam, Pienaue, Deng, etc, etc. And probably why they got Turner as their 3rd import. If you've got a few guys on minimum wage, then you may be able to squeeze a good "7th man" in there.

For your top 6 guys, it just comes down to the depth of your pockets.

It will be interesting to see who else SEM hoover up, whether that triggers a lot of secondary movements, and who has the cash to splash.

Thing is, even if say Lisch and Sobery are asking for hypothetically the same money, and you would rather Sobey, so will other teams. SEM would rather get Sobey, Adelaide would rather keep him, etc.

So realistically you're only going to upgrade if you have more money to spend. (Or I suppose if you have guys with delusional salary expectations.)

There's always at least one... because we're not allowed to talk about what the Kings actually need until there's a coach... or a GM... or, well, anyways, we can do what we want...

Chuckles DOES have a point though, in that a coach needs to be signed asap, because player FA decisions really need to be made yesterday about who they want to stay and then if the feeling is mutual or not if that's where they put their efforts in...

I don't think Kings fans can take the "well, his wife is from here" approach with Lisch... He's got a couple of years left in him you'd think and while it's not always nice to shift the family around, they're young enough that you don't need to worry about school stuff, so moving them for 8-12 months for the right money isn't as big an issue... If they kids were older and more settled, I'd be more confident of the desire to not move, but no-one should just assume...

Another reason it needs to be coach ASAP is that even if the money IS there, which big name/quality player is going to lock in multiple years (potentially, if people are looking at players like Sobey) without knowing which coach will be in charge?

I'm 120% bias against Kickert, but I'm still not confident that any coach can make use of him as he spent most of his time outside this past season and he did bugger all... When the chips were down, he didn't do squat... That's more an indication of where he's at now and I think his pay cheque could have been put to better use for someone like Long and had some left over...

You only need to look at Cairns taking so long to appoint a new coach at this time last year to see what can happen if you don't have a coach in place when you need to be retaining players and recruiting. Obviously Sydney have more money to splash around and Bogut is locked in but, as you say WookieE, it's not very helpful not having a coach in place at this point in time.
By the way WookieE, I sent you a message a while back.

Yes, one of the things to remember with guys like Lisch and Newley is that at this point in their life things start to look very uncertain. Yes, they've been on great coin and made out like bandits, but their careers are really very short, and they have the rest of their lives to get through.
I'm honestly not sure how Redhage landed a commentary role, but there just aren't that many jobs for ex-ballers.
So if another club offers a bit more money, an extra year, or ever a bit more certainty, its a tempting offer.

And yeah, its all very well to celebrate the departure of Gaze and JVG, but without a Coach or GM, Sydney are in hot water when it comes to signing players.

Tt - you did? Through the "other place"? I haven't been there for ages, will check in and get back to you :)

And you're right, Cairns are a perfect example of what can happen when they don't have the coach in place early on... Granted, it's a bit tough in the NBL, especially if you're wanting a current Head Coach (although one of the anons will have an "I told you so" ready to fire if they do indeed hire someone who hasn't been a head coach before, etc) but best case scenario, you deal with them before any contracts are done (I don't know if they're subject to the same rules like players are?) so they can plan ahead and jump in with the ball rolling already... I think someone like Bevo would be able to be professional enough that they can jump in straight away but have been planning ahead even before the end of the season?

TL;DR cliff notes: Twinkletoes and WookieE are sexting one another.

Please Kickert, Defensive Player of the Year (Pineau), and Kikert v2.0 (Wear) must also leave.