Payton felt at ease.
But peace was not to be found within the SuperSonics, as scandals arose during training camp involving fistfights between McDaniel and Ellis, shaking the team atmosphere to its core.
The previously successful coach Bickerstaff was fired because he couldn't make further progress, and the management brought in KC-Jones, the championship coach from the Boston Celtics, hoping to turn things around.
However, coaches nurtured by the Celtics have often struggled to adapt to other teams, and KC-Jones was no exception, like Bill Russell before him.
KC-Jones still played basketball with a traditional system from the 70s and 80s, where a major responsibility for point guards, in his opinion, was to hit perimeter shots.
And this was exactly Payton's greatest weakness, as he was not a good shooter despite being a point guard.
