Why are all of the teams (Lakers, Mavs, Suns, Jazz) that the Kings battled with in the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 playoffs still in the upper echelon of the NBA? Is it because of bad luck?
No, it's an easy answer. They still have their superstars. This is a superstar league, you don't win with a collection of good players. Although not all of the team's you mention really battled us back then. Quickly going team by team though:
Lakers - Still have Kobe. End of story, he has bridged the gap between the old and new Lakers. Easier to rebuild when you have a Top 10 all time player in his prime on your roster.
Spurs - Still have Duncan. Perhaps the top PF of all time. End of story.
Mavs - Still have Dirk. One of the top, elite players this decade. End of story.
Jazz - Their last year battling was 2000 and that ended in a second round exit, then they had some bad seasons. They rebuilt by drafting Deron and signing Boozer. Still have not gotten back to the elite level, as they would have been hard pressed to win a championship any of the last few seasons, but are very good again.
Suns - They were never elite during the 2000-2003 seasons. They lost to us in the first round, lost to the Spurs with Starbury, and missed the playoffs. They had their own elite run, as Coangelo made a great move and hit an absolute HR with Steve Nash. However, for the last two seasons they have been a borderline playoff team and are at a crossroads right now.
Pistons - They peaked as we were fading and are now stuck in a pretty hopeless situation. Bad contracts. No promising youth. I'll take our core over theirs any day of the week.
Nets - Do we really need to go over this one?
Pacers - See Pistons, but with more upside as they have Granger and Hibbert.
Celtics - Rode Pierce and Walker in the EC as long as they could. Were miserable for a few years and then had the ultimate "Supernova team" trading their youth and picks for a collection of available all stars. Give Ainge credit, but they are about to go through another rebuild.
So that's it. The contending team's from that time frame who are still contending on any level (a stretch to say the Spurs at this point) still have the same, healthy superstars they did back then.
The other team's who lost their superstars are all mediocre right now.
The team's who peaked after us are all in the same descent we went through.
This is not to absolve us. The Webber trade backfired. Some part of our organization wanted to follow the Knicks' blueprint and chase the 8th seed for too long (we can argue all day if it was Petrie or the Maloofs). However, the difference between us and the Lakers, Spurs and Mavs is our superstar absolutely wrecked his knee taking that element off of our team and robbing him of any trade value.
So the key is starting 1-2 seasons ago when the Kings started to go into rebuilding mode, and asking how have we been doing? Well so far we have a budding superstar, a promising young nucleus, ample cap room, and a plethora of assets.
I for one applaud Morey and the Rockets for being willing to spend and getting a nice haul from the Knicks. Maybe we could have done better. Overall though, our team has gotten good grades from analysts on this trade and I think we did well.
Bricklayer laid out an argument before the trade that he would be willing to trade KMart for pure cap room for a variety of reasons and we got a good, young big as well. Could we have done better? Maybe. Did we get taken? Not at all. We got a nice haul back and are still moving in the right direction.