the kings just aren't very talented. vlade did a fair job with limited tools to "make lemonade" of an impossibly difficult situation during the offseason, but it's been obvious all season long that this roster was going to have a very small margin for error. in order to make the playoffs, dave joerger was going to need to work quite a bit of magic, the team was going to need to quickly form above-average defensive chemistry, ty lawson and aaron afflalo were going to have to rediscover their peak form, ben mclemore was going to need to discover that he's an nba player, and willie cauley-stein was going to need to start developing into something reasonably substantial, among many other individual and team-wide factors. none of that has happened, sadly.
demarcus has been about as stellar as he can be while carrying an entire team on his back, but there's just not enough firepower on either side of the ball for the kings to legitimately contend for a playoff spot in the contemporary nba. there are only a few teams across the league that stand out as less talented than the kings overall, and that the kings lost twice to one of them in the miami heat is pretty telling. there's some fight in this dave joerger-coached squad, as you'd expect. they do scrap until the final buzzer. but the talent gap is too wide on too many nights, and that margin for error shrinks even further with every defensive lapse, missed open shot, first quarter deficit, mclemore and cauley-stein regression, rudy gay injury, omri casspi DNP, and the occasional off-night from boogie.
put demarcus on a team with more talent and greater stability, and just squeaking into the playoffs isn't going to seem like a monumental task. the formula for winning in the nba isn't too complex. though priorities shift as the game evolves, a winning squad always needs talent on both sides of the ball, and requires a team-wide effort on both sides of the ball. it's possible to win when one guy does a lot of the heavy lifting on either or both sides of the ball, but it's damn near impossible to win with any consistency when one guy has to do just about all of the heavy lifting on both sides of the ball.