I'm totally in, in fact I can barely restrain myself from pointing out the logic of tanking for the lottery.
The Kings had a nice little run of being in the elite. It was tons of fun even if we didn't get the prize. But then the fans get used to being good and get spoiled and they aren't good fans anymore, its like every loss or failure to get KG is just unacceptable now! Frankly, when I see a fan complain because GP can't trade bibby for joe johnson or something, I assume the worst about their brain or assume they must be like 12. Does that mean we should complain that Bibby is overpaid? Come on people, we're the ones yelling about how important it is to resign EVERY single player.
We're a small-market team, not terribly attractive to free agents. The Maloofs stick to the salary cap. Which is fine, they spend as much as the Lakers at least, just not as much as the Knicks. Seems reasonable, the league is set up that way. How much revenue do you think the Lakers generate compare to the Kings? I really don't know but it must be like triple or 6x or something.
GP does his GM thing and I personally think he's quite good at it. But people don't have reasonable expectations about what he has to work with, he's got x cap dollars and a bunch of trade bait that nobody really wants much. You kind of have to overpay to keep guys in a small market, thus some fat contracts.
The way I see it, every move hasn't been perfect but there's an honest effort to put a good team out there. Could be much much worse, look around the league.
I just see the same people complaining about our big contracts, then complaining when we don't sign a say, Bonzi Wells to a new big contract. I don't mind people having an opinion but come on, the complain card gets old when you use it for everything. Use some brilliant hindsight to say woohoo, we're not stuck with Bonzi so we can maybe re-sign Martin now.
It's like after a few decent years our fanbase and bandwagon fans (and bee writers) decided this is Boston now and if we don't win every year it must be some horrible mismanagement and we should fuss and rant about it.
Despite attempts to balance the equation, the NBA and most sports favor the big market team. More money + big endorsement market = better players. You know, like the yankees. Not much sense crying about it, thats just how it works most years, and maybe some years the underdog gets lucky. The underdog attitude was more fun though. I think I peaked in my watching fun back in the 'early years of goodness' when it was like YEAH! Have some of THAT Utah, you guys been grinding us down for ten years!
Well anyway, I like this thread, totally agree. Maybe a lot of the "new" style fans are from outside the area, I don't know. I live in Redding now so its not quite the same, but lets be real: if the kings end up leaving you'll all be complaining about major league soccer instead. And it'll be sad, like Sac dropped right off the sports map. Nothing against Sac, but without the kings it wouldn't feel the same or even get mentioned on national TV. Do we still have some eurofans around to explain soccer to me?