I do think that what you exposed indeed are all very good reasons.
But I somehow can’t be that exited as you. In terms of team projection.
On talent lvl.we prob only have fox and Bagley as potential top 10 best players in their respective positions and neither should be top 5 ever. They just not that good.
And when you don’t have super stars in your team you do need other players that can step up. At most this team reminds me of the best trio in sac town when DMC, Gay and I Thomas played together. For whatever reason that team did not have competitive spirit. And I have a feeling that this current core lack it too.
Just to said it strike they are a bunch of losers or payers that don’t have winner mentality.
As a team we don’t have the mamba mentality.
Like I said many of ur points just try to explain why we r 8 games under the 8 sheed by using the injury and bad coaching as an excuse. Winners don’t need any kind of excuse u just need to be better even if ur team is trash.
Also in the locker room we also lack leadership. Another sign of loser mentality, in a locker room people don’t just come out tot the media and talk crap. Imagine LeBron playing in Sacramento, the first moment Buddy came out and said that he should play more and he feels like he is not respected. He prob will get traded the next morning.
At the end you base ur optimism by expecting the team will do better IF there is no injuries and IF the coaching staff do their job properly.
My point is I’m stating some common issue in losing teams such like:
Lack of leadership in the locker room
Lack of competitive spirit. Many guys asked to be traded.
Lack of talent since we indeed with this roster will hardly have any starter that will be projected to be top 10 in their position at best.
If you didn’t noticed none of those things that worries me can be explained by injuries.
It’s intangibles. That’s what concerns me.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve seen enough basketball to know that I have legit reasons to say this.
You should take it as a constructive criticism.
With Bagley is the same. Someone said that he can be a 20-10 player.
I’m sure he can be, but i still have my concerns that if those 20-10 can make an impact. It sounds weird right? 20-10 is great when you are decent interior defender. If not Rudy Gobert is much better with his 15 points per game.
Well, I could write a book trying to respond to everything you posted, and that would bore everyone, including you to death. But first, I wouldn't use the word excited to describe how I feel about the team. I think the word I would use is disappointed. But when I look at a team, any team, I try to remove emotion from the equation. Which I admit is harder to do with your home team. I'm a person who operates on logic, and if I let my emotions, like when I threw something at my TV during the Dallas game get involved in my appraisals, I would sound entirely different.
So, lack of leadership in the locker room. Since I'm not privy to what goes on in the locker room, I have no idea if that's true or not. You've made an assumption. Assumptions aren't facts..
Lack of competitive spirit, and, many players asked to be traded. To the best of my memory, only Dedmon publicly asked to be traded. Everything else is a rumor. When you talk about competitive spirit, you almost have to take it player by player. Does that apply to Fox? How about Holmes. Buddy has plenty of competitive spirit even if it's directed in the wrong place at times. Do you think Giles isn't a competitor? On the whole, I think most of the players on the team have competitive spirit. That doesn't mean they don't lose faith from time to time. Losing is like a disease.
One thing I try to never do is speak in absolutes. Because first, only God can speak in absolutes. We as mere humans are incapable of predicting the future. So to say that this player or that player will never reach a certain level, you have to either be God, or have some connections with him that I would love to know about. We can make educated guesses, but that's the best we can do. My educated guess with Bagley, if healthy, would be that he's either a future all star, or one of those players that flirts with it every year. I also think he has the potential to be a superstar, but as Vince Lombardi once said, the word potential means you haven't done anything yet.
I've been watching NBA basketball for close to 60 years, and yet I'm still surprised by the accomplishments of some players who far exceeded expectations. At the same time, the NBA graveyard is littered with the bones of projected superstar material. As a result, It's folly to speak in absolutes.
I think where you and I tend to disagree is on how things are interconnected. You point out all the deficiencies, but leave them as stand alone reasons for the current results. You seem to believe that the injuries have no overall effect on those individual deficiencies. Everything is connected! A good team is like a good engine. But remove one of the spark plug cables, and the engine doesn't run nearly as well. It's the same with a team. Everything has to be in sync, and that can't happen when some of the parts keep getting interchanged.
Here is my current problem with this team, injuries aside. If Fox and Bagley are the two top pieces of this team going forward, then I have no idea what that team looks like. I can guess, but I haven't seen them on the floor with everyone else for more than a few games. To me, that's what makes this a lost season. We've learned very little from it when talking about how Fox and Bagley work together on the floor. I would love to blame someone for that, and would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.
If you have a great coach, and give him a team full of average NBA players with no superstar, I can guarantee you that his team will overachieve in the eye's of most people. Give that coach a team full of above average players with at least one superstar, and he's probably contending for a championship. By the same token, give a bad coach a good team with one superstar, and he'll find a way to underachieve. The coach matters. The talent matters, and how that talent fits together matters. Just acquiring 3 superstars doesn't guarantee you a championship team if they don't compliment each other.
The Kings are unique in that their projected two best players, are very young, similar to Memphis. Adding Fox and Bagley to any team, regardless of future projections about how good they will be, isn't close to the same as adding a Lowery and a Kahwi Leonard because of their experience. The difference between Memphis and the Kings is basically health. Do I think that if Fox, Bagley, and Bogie had been healthy all year we'd be competing for that 8th spot? Yes, I do. But make no mistake, even if the Kings were to grab the 8th spot, they're still a long way from a championship. It's only a start.
That means the Kings have to strike gold with both Fox and Bagley, then add one more impact player. Then they have to stay healthy. But in my humble opinion, none of that matters if Walton is the coach. Players like coaches, like consistency. They want to know their role, and when they're going to play. Familiarity breeds success. There's nothing more frustrating for a player than a coach that flies by the seat of his pants.
One final thing. Judging a players potential on his first or even second year results can make you look foolish. There have been superstars that were almost booed off their teams in their first year, like Dirk Nowitzki. But here are a few examples that sometimes, it just take a little time.
Nowitzki: 1st year - 20.4 mpg - 8.2 ppg - 3.4 rpg: 2nd year - 35.8 mpg - 17.5 ppg - 6.5 rpg
Garnett: 1st year - 28.7 mpg - 10.4 ppg - 6.3 rpg: 2nd year - 38.9 mpg - 17.0 ppg - 8.0 rpg
Antetokounmpo: 1st year - 24.6 mpg - 6.8 ppg - 4.4 rpg: 2nd year - 31.4 mpg - 12.7 ppg - 6.7 rpg
Anthony Davis: 1st year - 28.8 mpg - 13.5 ppg - 8.2 rpg: 2nd year - 35.2 mpg - 20.8 ppg - 10.0 rpg
Marvin Bagley: 1st year - 25.3 mpg - 14.9 ppg - 7.6 rpg: 2nd year - 25.7 mpg - 14.2 ppg - 7.5 rpg
Just looking at first years, it would appear that Bagley is on track to a good career, and ahead of a couple of the players listed. Its the second year that's wasted. So to me, it's not a question of talent. It's a question of how does all that talent fit together. That's something we were supposed to find out this year, and haven't. This was supposed to be a growth year, and it was wasted.