Our Remaining Schedule, George Karl's History, And the Fate of Our Draft Pick

What do you think? Are we going to keep the pick, or win enough to lose it?

  • Lose it, and it won't be close

    Votes: 9 12.0%
  • Barely lose it

    Votes: 38 50.7%
  • Barely keep it

    Votes: 23 30.7%
  • Keep it easily

    Votes: 5 6.7%

  • Total voters
    75
  • Poll closed .
Point is, they didn't get Kevin Love for free. They traded an asset to get him. If the season ended today, we currently have an asset we can use to obtain a veteran player (the #6 pick in the draft). Wiggins is a solid prospect with a lot of potential. So are Jahlil Okafor, Karl Towns, Emmanuel Mudiay, D'Angelo Russell, Stanley Johnson, Myles Turner, Justise Winslow, and a few others depending on who you ask. Obviously the decision was already made to hire George Karl and win now so this argument is already moot, but perhaps we would have been better served keeping that valuable asset and hiring George Karl immediately after the season ends. Can we get Kevin Love for our pick? Probably not. But I think we can get a player who would help us a lot.

Is the pick already a sunk cost? In a way it is. However, that pick could be anywhere from 11-30 or nothing at all depending on what happens the next 3 years. No I don't think we need to lose the next two seasons too to keep the pick. Yes I think we should keep this year's pick after PDA already blew up the season anyway and give Chicago a future pick in the 16-25 range instead -- a pick we're going to miss a whole lot less than a 6-8 pick in this year's draft.
Yeah, PDA needed to stick to a plan one way or the other. Win or tank.
 

hrdboild

Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Staff member
Winning is always more important than draft picks.
That's not the point. If PDA wanted to win, he needed to hire George Karl two months ago. After he already threw away the season is when he started looking for ways to improve. Too little, too late. If you screw up that badly (to the point where winning all 30 of our remaining games won't even guarantee us the last playoff spot), just keep the draft pick and start fresh next year. Failing to do either is equivalent to not knowing what you're doing.
 

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
That's not the point. If PDA wanted to win, he needed to hire George Karl two months ago. After he already threw away the season is when he started looking for ways to improve. Too little, too late. If you screw up that badly (to the point where winning all 30 of our remaining games won't even guarantee us the last playoff spot), just keep the draft pick and start fresh next year. Failing to do either is equivalent to not knowing what you're doing.
Well that's no doubt true, there were MASSIVE countervailing factors in this case, starting with Boogie and Rudy's entire attitude about this franchise, and running to the more practical question of not having an entirely empty arena next season with no season ticket holder base.

If our team currently consisted of an injured Kevin Martin and aging Brad Millers, Mikki Moores and John Salmonses, then sure. But we are simply not there. The past few months have been some of the ugliest in Sac Kings history, and that's a pretty ugly history to begin with. Beginning a healing process and establishing a winning culture so the entire franchise from players to fans can enter the offseason with hope is at least as important as scoring another lottery pick, where ever since the back to back Reke/Cuz hits we have now flat blown 3 of 4 picks, and the 4th may never be more than ok starter.

Malone had these guys playing .600 ball in the early season. An old master like Karl has to be a serious threat to reestablish .500 ball at least. And doing so would make a simple world of difference around this board, around the arena, in the lockerroom. When we hit the FA market we'll have something to pitch. Even if we lose the pick, the day we do we suddenly can trade 2017 and forwards. Winning is a half remembered dream in these parts, but it is the ultimate balm. In fact I would have thought that's precisely why there was so much fury and dismay when the morons threw it away back in December. Winning makes everything better.
 
Just saw that Bosh could be out for the rest of the season with blood clots in his lung. With him fine they will go way down hill
 
You know what?
Why not do our best to get to the Playoffs?
:eek:
With 23-4 or better in the rest of the season - we still stand some chance...
:D
I like it much better than trying to get that fools' gold of a pick.

Like it or not (I do) - that's our true team spirit.
We are built to scrap and fight till the very end.
 
You know what?
Why not do our best to get to the Playoffs?
:eek:
With 23-4 or better in the rest of the season - we still stand some chance...
:D
I like it much better than trying to get that fools' gold of a pick.

Like it or not (I do) - that's our true team spirit.
We are built to scrap and fight till the very end.
I thought about that too. When we lost to LA I thought forget about it. I also see OKC coming up on a nine game win streak. The 8th seed looks out of reach unless someone starts going down hill real quick. It would be more fun for the rest of the season to win though. Let some of the players rest on the road. Protect the home court though.
 
You know what?
Why not do our best to get to the Playoffs?
:eek:
With 23-4 or better in the rest of the season - we still stand some chance...
Did you hear the news where Collison is out for the year?
DMC is out against the Spurs?

KF's is known for its reasonable fans when compared to the absurdity other team's fans commonly demonstrate -
please don't talk playoffs this year.
 

bajaden

Hall of Famer
You know what?
Why not do our best to get to the Playoffs?
:eek:
With 23-4 or better in the rest of the season - we still stand some chance...
:D
I like it much better than trying to get that fools' gold of a pick.

Like it or not (I do) - that's our true team spirit.
We are built to scrap and fight till the very end.
While I admire your fighting spirit, I think one has to also be realistic. We have 26 games left. If we won all of them we would end up with 46 wins, and the likelyhood of 46 wins getting us into the 8th spot of the playoffs is slim and none. Now I grant you that it would be fun to watch the team reel off 26 wins in a row, but you and I know that's not going to happen. I'm not saying that the team should tank the games. I think the rest of the season should be dedicated to implementing Karl's system, and to finding out who fits that system, and who doesn't. And let the chips fall where they may as far as wins and losses go.

What I don't understand, is how little value some of you put on our draft pick. Might I remind you that Cousins was drafted, and every great player in the NBA today was drafted. The draft should be, and can be the life blood of a team. Yeah, you can screw it up, and it's far from an exact science, but there's talent to be mined, and if you do your homework, and have a bit of luck to go along, you'll have a very good player on a very cheap salary for four years. And if you build properly, and develop that player properly, you should be able to keep him, or at worse, have a trading chip for the future. Now I realize that's a lot of ifs, but if you make a mistake in the draft, at least it's a cheap mistake financially. When you make a mistake in free agency, it can be a very expensive mistake. So personally, I'd rather guess in the draft, than guess in free agency. From a financial point of view, there's far less risk with a chance of a high reward in the draft.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not against free agency. My point is that a draft pick has value, and some of you treat it as a stone you found in the road that should be discarded. Might I add, that all draft picks need to be given three years before evaluating them. I realize that we live in an instant gratification society, but it just doesn't work that way with draft picks not named Lebron James. You have to be patient with them. In the one and done world we now live in, very few are ready to step onto an NBA floor and instantly compete. It takes a year for most to adjust to the speed and physicality of the NBA. But in general, talent will win out. It just takes some time.
 

Kingster

Hall of Famer
It still looks like the 6th-8th ping pong ball slot is doable. Collison is out, which depletes the bench even further. A grueling road trip awaits which will tire the starters. I'm not too worried about losing that pick, even with the HOFer coach we have.