Reading Reggie's Bobby Jackson quote convinces me that I should remain firmly in the camp of the Reggie skeptics.  Reggie has probably forgotten more about basketball than I’ll ever know, but I’m still not sold on Theus, based largely on his public persona and in-game management. That doesn’t mean he can’t coach, and it doesn’t mean that he won’t continue to learn (if we take him at his word that he spent last season learning from his mistakes).  Oh, and he just can’t help himself from offending his players. So, for the last three or four minutes, I’ve been dwelling on the possibility for Reggie getting fired at some point during this season.  So, here are a few questions for the community to ponder. (And yes, I could have just made them questions 1 through 4, but it felt better to have a multi-part question.)

1) What will the locker room tell us about Reggie’s hold on his team? Now that Artest is away in Houston ready to step on Yao’s foot and smack T-Mac on the back, Reggie has to be held accountable for any locker room divisiveness. You can no longer cite the (un)necessary Ron Artest double standard when guys like Kmart, Salmons, and others get upset with coaching staff.  With Bibby and Artest out the door and K-9 neutered, the locker room doesn’t have any established problem children of which I’m aware.

2a) Can the Kings afford to fire Reggie? Having a coaching carousel is never a good thing. There’s no consistent system for the players to learn. That scenario is a problem in general, but even more pressing when you are trying to develop talent. Also, in-season coaching changes rarely do anything to spark a team to victory. I know this is often because the coach takes the fall for a poorly constructed team or one without a great deal of talent. That said, there has to a be a point at which one considers a club to be under achieving, so...

2b) How many losses have to pile up for Reggie to get the axe? Would a team that starts out 5 and 20, do it? How about 10 and 30? Or, does it matter how the team wins or loses? As long as players are competing and playing hard does it matter if the team wins only twenty games? Thirty games?

2c) If you do fire Reggie during the season or after, who’s out there that could step in and make the team better? The Rifleman? BJax as player-coach? Avery Johnson might take the job, though would he be any better than Reggie at player development? (Now that I think about it, do we even know how good Reggie is at developing talent?) Mark Jackson perhaps? Let’s face it, until Gregg Popovich decides to trade in the Riverwalk for Old Sac or (gulp) Phil Jackson prefers the slower pace of a cow-town to the glitz of L.A., there aren’t a lot of proven winners out there.

Overlooked in all of the Jason Thompson projections is what our new power forward will have to do in order to crack the line up of the ALL-TIME SACRAMENTO-ERA KINGS FROM NEW JERSEY!

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