Well, it was fun while it lasted.

After eight years of wildly entertaining basketball, the Rick Adelman era is over in Sacramento. Despite a season-closing push that included 26 wins in the final 40 regular-season games and a competitive playoff series against the defending champion Spurs, Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof announced Tuesday that they would not renew Adelman’s contract.

It seems Adelman’s undoing was that he never acquired the reputation of some other top coaches, even though he can match virtually all of them in terms of wins and losses. Adelman put together five straight 50-win seasons in Sacramento, a decade after stringing together four straight in Portland. Both teams came within a whisker of winning a championship, with Adelman’s Blazers losing a competitive 1992 Finals to the Bulls, and his Kings falling short in a Game 7 overtime to the eventual champion Lakers in the 2002 conference finals.

Instead of the winning, that’s the thing that most people remember about Adelman: The near misses. In the Blazers’ first trip to the Finals, they had a seven-point lead in the final two minutes before Detroit rallied to win the clinching Game 5.A year later, the Blazers lost to the Lakers in the conference finals when they were almost certainly the superior team, in part because they couldn’t’ convert a 3-on-1 break in the final minute. The following season, Portland held a 12-point, fourth-quarter lead that withered away in the deciding Game 6 against Chicago.

It was more of the same in Sacramento. The heartbreaking Game 7 loss to the Lakers, when the Kings choked away a win at the free-throw line, was bad enough. But it wouldn’t have been necessary had the Kings preserved a 24-point lead in Game 4. Then there was the Chris Webber fiasco in 2004, when the Kings seemed to have the league’s best team until Webber returned from injury and threw their offense completely out of whack. That led to another Game 7 playoff heartbreaker, this time with a Webber 3-point rimming out at the buzzer in Minnesota.

The final straw, it seems, was Sacramento’s inability to preserve a lead in the final seconds in Game 2 against the Spurs two weeks ago. The Kings were duped by a Spurs misdirection play that left Brent Barry wide open in the corner for a game-tying 3-pointer, and couldn’t rally in overtime.

But in piling on Adelman for these failures, we have to remember the situation. His Portland teams were almost certain to lose even if they had pulled out those individual games – in each case, they would have needed to win a clincher on the road. He couldn’t shoot the free throws for his Kings in Game 7 in 2002,nor he could he direct Vlade Divac’s knockaway attempt away from Robert Horry at the end of Game 4. And certainly, expecting him to knock off the Spurs in Round 1 this year was unrealistic.

Adelman is a low-key, behind-the-scenes guy, however, so the press has struggled to give him the praise that he deserves. Our image of a great coach is a fire-and-brimstone type like Bobby Knight or Scott Skiles, but Adelman’s success stemmed from a very simple approach: He let his guys play. Instead of shuffling players and lineups, he stuck with a seven- or eight-man rotation and made sure those key players got their minutes (and shots). He didn’t criticize players in the press, he always had their backs with the officials, and his teams respected him for it.

That’s why, even as a lame duck in his final year in Sacramento, he was able to steer the Kings to the postseason. In fact, viewing his track record in terms of the franchise’s history makes it alarming that Sacramento would even consider this move. The Kings hadn’t had a winning season in Sacramento before he arrived; they haven’t had a losing season since.

All that said, one could start seeing the cracks in the facade this season. Eight years is an awfully long time for any coach to be in charge of any team, and watching the Kings this year, one got the sense it might help to hear the same message from a different voice. In addition, management had one complaint that sticks: The Kings were a poor defensive team the past two seasons, and they won’t win big unless they get better.

As far as next steps go, the Maloof brothers have repeatedly emphasized the need for a defensive coach, which has made the early list of candidates a strange one. The first three names to surface were former Mavs coach Don Nelson, former Bucks coach Terry Porter, and current Wizards coach Eddie Jordan. All three have connections to the Kings – Porter was an assistant, Jordan was the coach before Adelman, and Nelson is in a film production company with the Maloofs. But all three have overseen teams that couldn’t guard my keyboard.

If the Kings’ owners are true to their word, then expect a different name to emerge. I’ll throw two out there for consideration: Stan Van Gundy and Jim O’Brien.

Van Gundy, who left the Heat bench early this season, may not want the job, but it’s worth it for the Kings to at least ask if he’s grown sick of his family yet. O’Brien may be the more realistic candidate. His coaching style emphasizes defense and 3-point shooting, and he’s had his best success with a nimble, undersized frontcourt in Boston. The Kings have lots of 3-point shooters and a nimble, undersized frontcourt, so this could be a match made in heaven.

But a more interesting question may be where Adelman ends up. Having been on the sideline for so long without a break, I would think he’d want to take a breather this year before jumping back in the fray. But whenever he’s ready, he’ll move right to the top of the coaching candidate pile. He may not fit our stereotype of what a coaching legend is supposed to be, but there’s no question that he’s been a great coach for the past two decades. While it may have been time for a change, that shouldn’t stop us from making sure to give Adelman his due for a job well done.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.