Excuse my ignorance but I never pay attention to the coach staff of other teams aside from the head coach. Does he come in to help out or is he actually there for every game?
Not sure how much you saw Bibby prior to suiting up to the Kings but Pete really must have helped him tons because he looks like a different player. Went from a solid player on a crappy team to a leader in the playoffs who hits big shots.
Pete Carill earned his creds as the coach at Princeton, which he took to NCAA finals routinely. I believe his team won it all at least once. It is why he is in the Hall of Fame.
Then he retired and found he had all this knowledge and little to do with it. In comes his old student/athelete Geoff Petrie, who suggests to Rich Adelman that his contributions to his passing offense might be handy. This was....oh... maybe 5 or six years ago - about the time the Kings started to turn things around. His status was originally as an adviser and a guy to work with the younger and younger kids coming into the league. That soon changed. Today, he sits next to Adelman just about every game, unless his health problems flair up. He is his most valuable assistant coach now.
Needless to say, his pro students did not take kindly at first to his insistance on passing and ball and player movement, to hit the cutter going to the basket and to always be looking for the extra pass. NBA players are notoriously selfish once they get paid to be "the Show".
But that first year, Vlade Divac, of all people, already known to be a terrific passer, was suggested by Carill to be the instigator of the offense. Vlade was not so sure this would work in the pros, but Carill can be persuasive and Adelman was already seeing the benefits.
Then, in one game, Vlade starts running what eventually would be called the Princeton Offense, maybe just to shut the old man up, who knows. What Vlade found were these wide open teammates cutting into the lane and he starts looking like a passing wizard more then ever. Divac is shown often later that year running back up the court after an easy layin by Webber, pointing at his coach in recognition.
Soon the entire team starts to see how they all can share the ball and still get plenty of looks and plenty of shots, just not all glued to one player (except for Webber, this makes everyone just so happy they are clearly seen peeing in glee on the court). Players come to Sacramento realyze right away they are expected to be passers, shooters, ballmovers, and cutters. All of them, not just the known shooters and passers. They all buy into it because they all are a part of it.
Pete is no longer a young man. He has no family out in Sacramento, and having lived his whole life in New Jersey, he had fewer connections at first. So when Boston offered him an assistant coaching gig back east, with a handsome raise, you would have figured he would jump at the chance to return to his home and live out his basketball days close to his known world. But he turned them down.
When asked why on earth would he decide against going back home, since his health is shaky and his family is back there, his answer was: "Two words. Geoff Petrie".
Sometimes, the worth of a really good General Manager does not just show up in the free agent signings and trades he makes.
