Sydney Kings co-owner Andrew Bogut has opened up on the franchise’s decision to part ways with coach Chase Buford.
While Buford is no doubt one of the league’s best coaches in recent years having led the Kings to back-to-back championships in the last two NBL seasons, Bogut says the decision to let Buford go came about as he fields job offers in the NBA.
Even though the Kings would have liked to have kept Buford, they simply couldn’t wait for the American to make a call on his future with the 2023/24 NBL season starting in September.
With Buford departing, Bogut says the next few weeks with be busy for those in charge of the franchise including himself as they go on a coaching search.
“Our coach is actually just moving on,” Bogut explained on the Your Home Podcast.
“We had an American coach Chase Buford and we just won back-to-back championships with him.
“We’ve won the last three seasons in a row and our coach, is now kind of gorging offers from the US.
“He's an American and he's from basketball royalty himself, he’s the son of the President of the San Antonio Spurs R.C Buford.
“So, he's interviewing for a bunch of jobs, and we unfortunately couldn't bring him back.
“We couldn't wait for him to see whether he'd get a job or not.
“He wanted a lot more time and our season starts in three months here.
“So, he's going to be moving on, that just happened at the start of this week.
“We're on a lot of board calls and a lot of meetings to try and put together a coaching application group, a shortlist per se, and going through all that now.
“The next couple of weeks will be very, very busy.”
Another big NBL news item that’s recently been revealed is that NBA veteran and Boomers guard Matthew Dellavedova was officially returning home to play for Melbourne United.
Bogut believes Dellavedova’s decision to come home was the right one as he needs time on court ahead of a critical pair of years for the Boomers.
“He (Dellavedova) played for Melbourne United one season ago,” Bogut said.
“He went back to the US Sacramento Kings, played there for a season and didn't really play a lot.
“He got the gig as more of a veteran role, he knew the coach very well.
“They (Sacramento) had a really good year and now I think he's coming back to Melbourne United for two more seasons.
“I think the story goes, that he wants to play minutes going into the 2023 World Cup, which is this season and then the 2024 Olympics.
“He knows that he needs to play and he wouldn’t play a lot in the NBA.
“If he was in the NBA next season, there's not a lot of minutes there for him.
“So, I think he's made the right decision to be back on the court and probably playing 30 minutes a night for Melbourne United.”
Listen to the full chat with Bogut on the Your Home Podcast below: