Rick Adelman revolutionized the NBA

Every generation thinks that they've reinvented the wheel, so when I hear current NBA fans talk about the pace of the game today and how players from previous generations wouldn't be able to hang with today's crop of players because the game is faster, I just know they've never heard of Rick Adelman.

Or as the kids like to say today, they don't know ball.

Rick Adelman passed away on June 1, 2026, at the age of 79. Adelman, a 2021 NBA Hall of Fame inductee, is what you call an NBA lifer. He spent nine seasons as a player, and 29 seasons as a coach, including 23 as a head coach for the Portland Trailblazers, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Sacramento Kings.

The Kings is how I'll remember him.

With the Washington Wizards/Bullets being terrible for the majority of my life, I've always needed a backup team, and as a fan in this era, you almost couldn't go wrong with the Sacramento Kings as a backup team.

Before the Kings hired Adelman in 1998, they hadn't made consecutive playoff appearances since the 1979-1981 season. During his eight seasons in Sacramento, the team never missed the playoffs and was one half of the Los Angeles Lakers/Sacramento Kings rivalry that came to define his time in the city.

Coincidentally, the Kings traded Mitch Richmond to Washington for Chris Webber in 1998, and the combination of Adelman and Webber was pure magic on the court.

Webber was a prototypical point forward at a time when if your name wasn't Magic Johnson, you had absolutely no business bringing the ball up the floor if you were 6'10".

But Webber was the fulcrum for the whole operation. His passing ability from the low and high posts, ability to bring the ball up the court and start fast breaks off of the rebound, his work in the low block and ability to stretch the floor with outside jumpers made him the perfect centerpiece for what Adelman wanted to do.

I won't fall into the same trap that I accused younger basketball fans of being in by saying Rick Adelman showed us something we had never seen before (after all, he learned at the feet of the great Jack Ramsey, another offensive genius from a bygone era), but the style of play he brought, mixed with the athletes he had on the team was truly something to behold.

At the time, Sports Illustrated dubbed the Kings "The Greatest Show on Court," and former league commissioner David Stern said he wanted all NBA teams to play like them and the Dallas Mavericks, who were also pushing the pace at the time.

The team achieved early success with dynamic point guard Jason Williams, dead-eye three-point shooter Peja Stojakovic, defensive enforcer Doug Christie, and Vlade Divac, whose passing ability out of the post and ability to shoot set jumpers added to the team's offensive prowess.

But here's where my dreams of a Kings championship, and the idea that NBA players pushing the pace today would bowl over teams of the past, falls apart.

Phil Jackson, Los Angeles Lakers, solved Rick Adelman's pace and space offense

The Sacramento Kings and their great offense never won a championship because they kept running into the Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs.

The Lakers, led by Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and, perhaps most importantly, Phil Jackson, ran the triangle offense that was popularized by Tex Winter. In a nutshell, the strong side of the court has a back-to-the-basket big man in the middle who has two wing options on either side of him.

The idea is to get the ball down low, have the defense sink, then kick out to talented wing players who now have more room to operate. It's the same offense Jackson ran with Michael Jordan and the Bulls during their dynasty. Since the whole thing revolves around a big in the middle, it slows down the pace of the game immensely.

What Jackson knew was that to play the pacing game the Kings wanted, they had to have willing participants. You can't push the pace if your opponent is methodical with their offense. So if you don't take bad jump shots, allow the Kings to rebound the ball and get out in transition, then you have them right where you want them.

Unfortunately for Adelman and Kings fans everywhere, the Lakers had Shaq, the most dominant big man of all time, playing for them. If there were ever a player who could slow down the pace of a game, it was him. Whether it was by drawing fouls or by methodically backing down his opponents for high-percentage field goal attempts, Shaq and the Lakers had the antidote for the pace at which the Kings forced nearly all their other opponents to play.

The Kings lost to the Lakers in the playoffs three years in a row, including in the controversial 2002 Western Conference Finals, when the Lakers shot an inexplicable 27 free throws in the fourth quarter of a tight game 7 to once again squeak by their rivals. The NY Post at the time even went as far as to suggest the game was rigged.

Injuries, attrition and a changing of the guard decimated the team after their initial run, and Adelman's contract wasn't renewed after the end of the 2006 season in a rather acrimonious exit. He went on to coach the Rockets the next season, leading another high-powered offense to the playoffs while the Kings didn't make the playoffs again until 2023.

I'll always remember Rick Adelman for the exciting offensive style of play he brought to the modern NBA, a style nearly every team today mimics. He is a reminder to younger fans who don't know who he is that there is nothing new under the sun, especially on a basketball court.

Related: Knicks, Spurs NBA Finals tickets reach shocking $107,000 at MSG

Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 5:09 PM.