#FireVlade / #FireWalton
- Thread starter SLAB
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You say rebuild by the deadline but other than Bogie I think it would be hard to move almost everyone outside of Bagley and Fox. Almost no chance Buddy gets moved. Because of him signing the extension it makes the contract less likely to be moved this season, I believe there is some kind of “poison pill” that deters teams to trade guys that resign early off theie rookies contract. Maybe he gets moved in the offseason but IMO it wouldn’t be at the deadline. Some consider Barnes a bad contract, I can’t see teams lining for the opportunity to trade anything worthwhile for him. Deadmon, Cojo, Ariza? Maybe Ariza but contracts have to match, I guess you could get a bad contract in return for him and a young player? Harry is toast now. Kings know best about his knees and didn’t pick up his option, teams aren't going to gamble on him.
That only really leaves us Bogi. I think Bogi has some value but if a team is going to give up anything good for him they risk a team outbidding them during RFA. The team that trades for him can only give him a 4 year 52 million dollar deal. Does a team risk giving up good young pieces or picks for the chance of getting out bid?
The reality is IMO this is basically the team until the draft next year
That only really leaves us Bogi. I think Bogi has some value but if a team is going to give up anything good for him they risk a team outbidding them during RFA. The team that trades for him can only give him a 4 year 52 million dollar deal. Does a team risk giving up good young pieces or picks for the chance of getting out bid?
The reality is IMO this is basically the team until the draft next year
Vlade made the trade you are referring to on July 1 2015. But Vlade's quote in question:
was made following the Cousins trade on Feb. 25, 2017. So the pick swap trade has nothing to do with it.
On Feb. 15, 2017, the last game before the Cousins trade, the Kings started DeMarcus Cousins, who had failed to get the Kings to the playoffs for six and a half years. Cousins was surrounded by notable world-beaters Darren Collison, Ben McLemore, Arron Afflalo, and Kosta Koufos in the starting lineup, and Matt Barnes, Anthony Tolliver, Malachi Richardson, and Cauley-Stein off the bench (with a dose of Skal and PapaG to boot - Ty Lawson didn't play). The Kings lost that game on 2/15/17 to go to 24-33 heading into the All-Star Break, and had no hope of the playoffs. No player on that team surrounding Cousins (arguably not even Cousins himself) had anything resembling a star future in the NBA. The team was dreadful, it was going nowhere, and Cousins was not only an anchor on the franchise but unbeknownst to us a ticking time bomb as well.
On the morning of February 25, 2019, two years after Vlade's challenge to hear from those who hated the Cousins trade at the two-year mark, the Kings had a young and upcoming roster including Fox, Bagley, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Bjelica, a Harry Giles whose knee was apparently healthy, and, despite the disdain of seemingly every fan a starting center in Cauley-Stein who led the team in Win Shares. They were 31-28, in playoff contention and over .500 after the All-Star Break for the first time in 13 years - and they hadn't even been CLOSE to .500 after the break in 11 years.
If you honestly believe that the 24-33 Cousins/Collison/McLemore/Afflalo/Koufos/MBarnes/Tolliver/Richardson/Cauley-Stein Kings were in a better position than the 31-28 Fox/Hield/HBarnes/Bagley/Cauley-Stein/Bogdanovic/Bjelica/Giles Kings, you're deluded.
So my point stands. There is zero doubt that the Kings were in a better position on Feb. 25 2019 than they were prior to the Cousins trade. Anybody calling out Vlade for not resigning is being disingenuous. Vlade didn't step down because he fulfilled his own conditions, and put the team in a better position in two years. And five bad games to start the next season doesn't change that.
But hey, congratulations on allowing your anger to remain at the boiling point for four years. I'm sure it's great for your blood pressure.
was made following the Cousins trade on Feb. 25, 2017. So the pick swap trade has nothing to do with it.
On Feb. 15, 2017, the last game before the Cousins trade, the Kings started DeMarcus Cousins, who had failed to get the Kings to the playoffs for six and a half years. Cousins was surrounded by notable world-beaters Darren Collison, Ben McLemore, Arron Afflalo, and Kosta Koufos in the starting lineup, and Matt Barnes, Anthony Tolliver, Malachi Richardson, and Cauley-Stein off the bench (with a dose of Skal and PapaG to boot - Ty Lawson didn't play). The Kings lost that game on 2/15/17 to go to 24-33 heading into the All-Star Break, and had no hope of the playoffs. No player on that team surrounding Cousins (arguably not even Cousins himself) had anything resembling a star future in the NBA. The team was dreadful, it was going nowhere, and Cousins was not only an anchor on the franchise but unbeknownst to us a ticking time bomb as well.
On the morning of February 25, 2019, two years after Vlade's challenge to hear from those who hated the Cousins trade at the two-year mark, the Kings had a young and upcoming roster including Fox, Bagley, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Bjelica, a Harry Giles whose knee was apparently healthy, and, despite the disdain of seemingly every fan a starting center in Cauley-Stein who led the team in Win Shares. They were 31-28, in playoff contention and over .500 after the All-Star Break for the first time in 13 years - and they hadn't even been CLOSE to .500 after the break in 11 years.
If you honestly believe that the 24-33 Cousins/Collison/McLemore/Afflalo/Koufos/MBarnes/Tolliver/Richardson/Cauley-Stein Kings were in a better position than the 31-28 Fox/Hield/HBarnes/Bagley/Cauley-Stein/Bogdanovic/Bjelica/Giles Kings, you're deluded.
So my point stands. There is zero doubt that the Kings were in a better position on Feb. 25 2019 than they were prior to the Cousins trade. Anybody calling out Vlade for not resigning is being disingenuous. Vlade didn't step down because he fulfilled his own conditions, and put the team in a better position in two years. And five bad games to start the next season doesn't change that.
But hey, congratulations on allowing your anger to remain at the boiling point for four years. I'm sure it's great for your blood pressure.
Sure if we take Vlade's pronouncement to apply only to a brief window of time which begins and ends on 2/25/19 then it appears he lived up to his goal of making the team better. Since then we saw the team go a disappointing 8-14 to finish out the season without a playoff berth, fire the coach (and the assistant GM for related reasons), and commit $84 million and $94 million respectively to Barnes and Hield. We didn't re-sign Cauley-Stein even though his market value was apparently much lower than any of us predicted and we instead gave $40 million to a guy who can't get off the bench. We've seen that Giles' knee is not healthy and the team has declined to pick up the last year of his rookie contract. Bogdanovic has turned down an extension and will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year and is playing like a guy we don't want to re-sign anyway and we're currently the only team in the league without a win this season...
Granted those extensions for Hield and Barnes aren't necessarily negatives but if we win less than 39 games this year it appears that our young up-and-coming core is rapidly turning into a bunch of well-paid veterans who aren't winning. If you're going to argue that technically Vlade was right I suppose I'll give you that one but take a quick look at the topics currently headlining this forum (Is there a win on the horizon?, Soul Searching, What can the Kings do to fix this thing, Fire Vlade, Fire Walton) and it should be pretty obvious that things are anything but okay right now. Not to mention, if 39 wins and imminent implosion is ultimately the high point of the last 13 years of nonsense, I wouldn't be talking down at any fan for being angry about it. That just means they have a pulse!
Granted those extensions for Hield and Barnes aren't necessarily negatives but if we win less than 39 games this year it appears that our young up-and-coming core is rapidly turning into a bunch of well-paid veterans who aren't winning. If you're going to argue that technically Vlade was right I suppose I'll give you that one but take a quick look at the topics currently headlining this forum (Is there a win on the horizon?, Soul Searching, What can the Kings do to fix this thing, Fire Vlade, Fire Walton) and it should be pretty obvious that things are anything but okay right now. Not to mention, if 39 wins and imminent implosion is ultimately the high point of the last 13 years of nonsense, I wouldn't be talking down at any fan for being angry about it. That just means they have a pulse!
I'm not talking down at fans for being angry. Hell, *I'm* angry. I'm talking down at fans for being ridiculous. The whole "Vlade said he would resign so why hasn't he?" line is ridiculous. Vlade set conditions, which, if he didn't meet them, he would step down. He met those conditions. The offer to step down is no longer in force. (And, by the way, even with this 0-5 start I will gladly say we are still in *much* better position than we were before the Cousins trade. What a ghastly roster we had!)
If people want to call for Vlade to be fired? Fine. For those who weren't calling for him to be fired when we were 0-0, it's an overreaction, but fine. But if people want to call out Vlade to resign for not fulfilling his promise when he damn well fulfilled his promise, then that's gonna get pushback.
If people want to call for Vlade to be fired? Fine. For those who weren't calling for him to be fired when we were 0-0, it's an overreaction, but fine. But if people want to call out Vlade to resign for not fulfilling his promise when he damn well fulfilled his promise, then that's gonna get pushback.
I was going to say something similar. its perfectly ok to be angry, to maintain that the FO is incompetent and to demand they resign. all of that is fine. but claiming that Vlade did not fulfill his better-or-quit promise somehow offends my brain. there is something logically incosistent about it that bothers me.
We're getting more into an argument about language than basketball at this point (not that I'm against that...) but I would argue that he hasn't actually fulfilled the promise if whatever hope we had last February has already evaporated. There's an implicit assumption when a GM of a team makes any kind of statement about the team "improving" that the improvement can be sustained for more than half a season. Maybe the 59 game sample from 10/17/18 to 2/25/19 was smoke and mirrors and the 27 game sample since where the same core group of players (minus Willie for the last 5) has gone 8-19 is reversion to the mean. Maybe we're just a .300 - .400 team that punched above it's weight for a few months. If that's the case, not much has changed.
I don't think this is wrong, but I also have to think that the current play of Buddy is more a fluke than a regression to the mean, and his inability to make baskets he has made before has cost us dearly. Dedmon can't possibly be as bad as he's shown so far. So some of this may just be a matter of getting the new pieces to fit right. Bagley is hurting us by being hurt and at this point there may be legitimate questions if this guy is an 82-game per year player or if he's just had some bad luck thus far. And Bogi is the biggest question mark of all.
Either way we're at a major crossroads right now because the team has a history of making panic moves that devastate the franchise for years to come.
Either way we're at a major crossroads right now because the team has a history of making panic moves that devastate the franchise for years to come.
Can't wait for the Greek Freak or Leonard to arrive at Golden 1.
The issue is what rebuild will it be and how do they get there? Vlade just busted his cap for at least a little bit and no teams are going to give you much value at the moment for the pieces that don't fit a rebuild. This is the problem with the all eggs in one basket approach. He went 110% in this offseason, didn't save any space to work with like he did last year, and he didn't do much in the draft to acquire any higher level young talent to replenish the drought created by watching a few of the lotto picks and first rounders he gathered in his early tenure move on elsewhere. Also they are so late in the game with the young players they do have they already had to pay the piper on Buddy, next is Fox, and in short order it will be Bagley. It won't be much of a rebuild because of impending cap issues and condensing in a rebuild sense will probably be necessary sooner than later.
I just read an interesting SactownRoyalty article on Walton by TJ Macias. Hes obviously not impressed, and I certainly don't know what to think especially after only 5 games. I wanted to give Walton the benifit of doubt when hired even though his sucess with the Warriors proved little IMO considering the talant on that team. I have yet to watch a game this year but does anyone here that has believe he's got what it takes to succeed with the Kings?
It’s ok, it’s ok. Was listening to the Napear show for a bit as I was in the car at an unusual time so got to listen for first time in awhile. He was calling it an embarrassment that fans wanted Walton fired. So guys, it’s all ok because Napear said so. All we have to do is ignore the Firing of Joerger after the best season in a decade or so because apparently that’s not embarrassing......ignore the Malone firing and the fact he’s now head coach of one of the best teams in the NBA, that wasn’t embarrassing either I guess.
But Luke Walton gets a pass for leading us to its worst start in a very, very long time and for this franchise, that is saying something. So it’s an embarrassment by fans to want this crap show on the court fixed and fireWalton. I feel so much better now.
But Luke Walton gets a pass for leading us to its worst start in a very, very long time and for this franchise, that is saying something. So it’s an embarrassment by fans to want this crap show on the court fixed and fireWalton. I feel so much better now.
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