Sacramento Kings Reportedly Hiring BJ Armstrong as Assistant GM

Sacramento Kings Reportedly Hiring BJ Armstrong as Assistant GM

George Pickkins going to the Cowboys and how it relates to the Sacramento Kings. We’ll have that for you as well. Uh James Ham, BJ Armstrong was hired yesterday as the Kings assistant GM or at least it was reported yesterday that he was hired or will be hired as the Kings assistant general manager. Of course, he played for the Bulls. Uh he’s spent time with uh in various front offices. Um he’s been an agent and he was Scott Perry’s podcast partner. Yeah, I think I think all good relationships start with a podcast partner. I mean, that seems to be the deal, right? Um, that’s why I expect to join Doug Christiey’s coaching staff since we were podcast partners at one point, even though I have no idea what I would do as a NBA assistant coach. Congratulations, man. No, I’m not joining his staff, but I I really do like the the BJ Armstrong edition. I think it’s uh you know, anytime you’re building out a staff, you want to have guys from all kinds of walks of life. And not only does BJ Armstrong have experience as a player, uh but experience in a front office. And then he’s been an agent for like 19 years. So, he’s got ties all around the league. And I think if there’s one thing that we know over the last, you know, most of the last uh like 15 years is that the Kings, they haven’t had a lot of good relationships around the league. And that’s usually a problem. It it makes it very difficult to get major deals done when there there isn’t trust between you and an opposing front office. And I think this is another one of those moves where you’re adding someone who knows the league well, that has friends around the league um that can help facilitate a major trade and and like look, I I think if Scott Perry is comfortable with BJ Armstrong as one of his his leading, you know, guys on in the front office, then that’s a good thing. Yeah. I think is as much synergy and what’s the what’s the word I’m looking for? Like their ability to work together. Yeah. is going to be so important because it felt like and again I wasn’t in the building obviously but based on everything we knew about the previous Kings Front office is it felt like there was some level of friction or disconnect maybe between Wes Wilcox and Monty McNair like they were operating as separate entities within the same front office and I don’t get the idea that that’s where the BJ Armstrong edition comes in. It feels like he’s more It felt like it and and correct me if I’m wrong, please. From from where I sit and and from what I read in here, it felt like Wes Wilcox was there to do the stuff Monty McNair didn’t want to do as a GM or maybe didn’t excel at as a GM whereas whereas where where it blurred the line between who was running the show and this seems very much more like a healthier general manager assistant general manager relationship. Yeah. that and I I don’t think that that Scott Perry is going to concede uh large portions of the job like Monty McNair did. And like look, I don’t think that there’s there’s anything wrong with the structure that that the Kings had with Monty and Wes as people, they got along really well, right? And even though um you know it was a very odd pairing where you had two guys interview for a job, you gave one of them the job and then ask the guy you gave the job to hire the other guy as his assistant without even knowing each other at all. That’s strange and that’s that’s not that’s not good business. Just to be honest with you, it’s not. Um, but you know, like I I had a conversation with Wes Wilcox one time and he said, um, you know, like a third of the league really likes me, a third of the league were fine, and another third of the league probably has a little apprehension um, just from dealings in the past. And he said he thinks that that’s healthy. And and I, you know, to a certain degree, I understand that because you don’t want to be just the person that everybody wants to go to for a trade because that probably means you’re giving away too much every time, right? So, um I think the the new structure that they’re going to have here is is going to be people who do similar roles but, you know, just break things up a little a little bit differently. Like Wes Wilcox had a lot of power in the building. A lot. did and you know argue too much. Yeah. Yeah. And I I think that that argument could be made that it was too much. I I think that you know it’s one thing to have somebody who’s overseeing stuff and who who is the direct contact. So you’re not dealing with every single one of these departments all the time. And we’ve talked about this in the past. You know, it’s more than just like going out and trading for players. That’s not just the job of the GM, right? Right. The GM has has to control. They have to deal with hiring and firing of, you know, medical staff, training staff, coaching staff, um PR staff with the the media relations staff, not the PR for the for the franchise, but the the media relations staff. All of these pieces fall under one person. And you know, travel, like what who are you going to play in preeason? There are a lot of things that go into this job. And so it is good to have somebody that you feel comfortable with and that’s sort of your uh your partner in doing all of these things and also sort of that bridge. So you know if you do have somebody at the media relations staff that has some sort of issue they go to their you know they’ll go to a guy like BJ BJ Armstrong and then he’ll have the discussion with Scott Perry as opposed to Scott having to deal with so many things all the time. And I think it’s the same thing with the coaching staff. That’s why, you know, going out there and getting a really, really good frontline um former NBA head coach uh lead assistant is a big deal for Doug Christie. He needs a buffer between him and everything that’s going on. So, everything kind of gets uh funneled into one area and then disseminated to Doug in a way that doesn’t overwhelm because he has other things on his plate. And that takes trust and everything else. But that’s what I I think that Scott Perry’s trying to build here. And we still don’t know what’s going on with Phil Jabbor. If Phil Jabbor is going to be back in Sacramento, who’s I have a question. Yep. Why do I care about Phil Jabore? Uh Phil Jabbor, well, to be honest with you, this offseason, maybe you don’t care that much because the Kings don’t have a draft pick. Um but uh he What does What does he do? Like why why is that why why is that name significant to me? He heads up the scouting department. And that’s why that that’s why it’s a big deal. like whether he’s back or not because, you know, you’ve got to have a scouting director who and he doesn’t just deal with like college scouting, right? It’s not like he’s just going to every game that he can possibly go to on the college scene and then reporting back. A guy like Phil Jabor um deals with all kinds of scouting, including advanced scouting. And you know, like when you’re sending a a scout out to go check out four teams that you’re going to face on a four game road trip that you don’t typically play and then they can feed back to the coaching staff who’s who’s got someone on the coaching staff side who’s also creating something, right? So, it means a lot when you go into a game against like say a team like I don’t know like Philadelphia and you don’t play Philadelphia, you play them twice a year so you don’t really know them. But if they’re in a major turmoil and everyone knows that um and you walk into the building understanding that there’s a lot going on there, those are games that are getable in a different way. and and so having scouts all over the place, having people who are reporting back on news that they’re hearing and all that stuff, it actually matters. So So Phil Jabbor, like again, I I think he’s done a he’s done a fine job in Sacramento. I don’t know what his fate is, though. He’s got a lot of experience from the Houston Rockets, also Philadelphia. He was a director of scouting for the 76ers before he came to the Kings. Um we don’t know about him, but Paul Johnson, uh from what we hear, will be back. And then um you know I like I heard Paul Johnson Paul Johnson was a GM of the Stockton Kings. Okay. And so yeah so he he was a GM but then he got elevated um when they made some moves there and he’s been I think director of player personnel. Got it. So like sort of creating a pathway and a game plan for each individual player and and their development and and sort of being there to to be a sounding board. I mean, you need bodies in the front office. That’s that’s one thing. You don’t want, you know, a group of players or or even one or two players sort of falling by the wayside because a general manager doesn’t have time to talk to everybody all the time, right? And and so this is a you have these layers in the front office that matter. And it’s also we talked about this the other day that um you know these things don’t count against the salary cap. you know, you want to have the best support staff possible, and that’s for every level. That means that if you have a a spectacular trainer that you want to bring in, you know, that that you do that, that you have the money to go do that or or you know, a frontline assistant, but also like when we start getting down to like the fifth and sixth and seventh assistants on the on the depth chart, like that matters. like somebody can come up with a really good idea that changes the course of a season and so you’re hoping that that they have like the bandwidth and the the financial bandwidth to go out and get the the coaches that they really really need. Zach James, I’m Kyle Mads and we’re the insiders. We’re sponsored by Jify Lube. Joe Brazil behind the glass. You had some you

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