Bizarro Wide World of Sports Lin Championship

[King Baller]

After all Kings Fans have been through I seriously doubt winning these games with the Young Players will cause an exodus.

I was pretty sure the Young Players would win enough to upset some folks. The starting rotation we have been seeing was 3 Rookies, Willie and a Guy on a two way contract!

 

[sactowndog]

Jazz did not take that route and they are in the same (better?) position than the Sixers. The other teams are just bad right now with them becoming the next Sixers not a certainty. It is questionable whether sitting your draft picks will produce a playoff team without unintended consequences unless everyone gets lucky and have their future stars injured for first several seasons. We will see what happens.

It’s all a matter of odds. Granted your best case might work out like your claim the Memphis win wouldn’t matter. But if you play against the odds too long you insure you will be a long time loser.

Lastly the Jazz are one of the best drafting orgs in the league while the Kings are one of the worst. Not sure using the Jazz as a model it can be done is helpful because the Jazz draft Gobert and we draft PappaG.

 

[burekijogurt]

Jazz are not in a better position long term than the sixers and it's not close. We will see separation over the next few years, unless injuries come back to bite the Sixers.

With that said, the argument for the Jazz isn't actually an argument against tanking. They did an incredible job drafting, getting two all-star level talents in Mitchell and Gobert at positions you wouldn't expect them to. If the argument is to draft two all star talents at those positions, well good luck trying to replicate that. You're much more likely to get players at that level at the top of the lottery, hence why teams tank.

If you can draft stars at any point in the draft, then sure, tanking is unnecessary. But you're really not playing the odds at that point and you're more likely to end up in constant mediocrity. There are many more examples of teams like us, than there are of teams like the Jazz who drafted about as well as they could have recently.

I understand the math. I understand that if we had a better draft position we would be more likely to acquire a star and become a better team. no argument there.

All Im saying is that its not a certainty that all these tankers are on their way to playoff success while we are stuck in mud. Jazz success is not easy to replicate, but neither is Philadelphia's, albeit it probides a more likely path. but the odds of that more likely path are still low.

 

[sactowndog]

After all Kings Fans have been through I seriously doubt winning these games with the Young Players will cause an exodus.

I was pretty sure the Young Players would win enough to upset some folks. The starting rotation we have been seeing was 3 Rookies, Willie and a Guy on a two way contract!

The won because other teams let them win. Let see how they do at the start of the year next year. My guess is we will see a repeat of last year where those “promising players” didn’t look so promising facing other top players.

 

[Dime Dropper]

I understand the math. I understand that if we had a better draft position we would be more likely to acquire a star and become a better team. no argument there.

All Im saying is that its not a certainty that all these tankers are on their way to playoff success while we are stuck in mud. Jazz success is not easy to replicate, but neither is Philadelphia's, albeit it probides a more likely path. but the odds of that more likely path are still low.

I don't disagree with you, but you have to play the odds. Especially when you're not a FA destination. Otherwise you're basically packing in the day job and hoping to win the lottery. Which is ironic in a way, if that's the right word to use.

 

[burekijogurt]

It’s all a matter of odds. Granted your best case might work out like your claim the Memphis win wouldn’t matter. But if you play against the odds to long you insure you will be a long time loser.

Lastly the Jazz are one of the best drafting orgs in the league while the Kings are one of the worst. Not sure using the Jazz as a model it can be done is helpful because the Jazz draft Gobert and we draft PappaG.

we posted at the same time about the odds, as I said I understand the odds and the effect of playing the right hand has over a long term.

point about Jazz drafting success/record well taken.

 

[burekijogurt]

I don't disagree with you, but you have to play the odds. Especially when you're not a FA destination. Otherwise you're basically packing in the day job and hoping to win the lottery. Which is ironic in a way, if that's the right word to use.

the word is the same but implied odds are way different

but yes, I see your guyses point. its what it is now, but we still have avenues to success.

 

[ovrush]

You're welcome to do that, but not at KF.com. Mocking fans who think differently than you do is a violation of rule #1 and rule #2.

That is of course unless you're agreeing with one point of view (the one held by most of the mods, not necessarily Cpt. who is generally very fair). In which case you can feel free to deride other posters, call them unethical, have a full thread about them being cheaters, or as seen in a post still up in last night's game thread, call them nerds. Then rule 1 and 2 are more like guidelines to be loosely and subjectively interpreted and enforced.

For the record, I'm generally not in favor of deleting any posts, but it has to be noted only one side is getting moderated in this debate. Sorry, that's the last I'll say on it. I swore I was done with this board based on how the last issue was moderated but old habits die hard...

 

[ockingsfan]

Considering the injury situations at their positions not really.

That is why Joeger should had started Bruno at point guard and jack Cooley at shooting guard last night!

 

[sactowndog]

we posted at the same time about the odds, as I said I understand the odds and the effect of playing the right hand has over a long term.

point about Jazz drafting success/record well taken.

Yeah we did. And your correct the story isn’t over until the coin flip and lottery balls but we are swimming against the odds.

 

[dude12]

Geez, good thing for some of the members on the forum here that the season is over. Criticizing mods, teeth gnashing over the tanking process, the future is bleak, Golden One is going to be empty in 2 years, this forum is losing membership because of made up reasons, mods taking one side over the other...irregardless of requests for game threads, the youngsters are not playing well enough in our rebuilding......maybe take a deep breath and decompress Kings fans.

Lots of good things have happened this year, you just have to want to see it.

 

[Tetsujin]

That is why Joeger should had started Bruno at point guard and jack Cooley at shooting guard last night!

Except we needed Cooley to play center because the entire big man depth chart at the start of the year was inactive aside from Willie.

 

[KingsFanSince85]

I’m

Yeah or Thomas Robinson. He was in the league for quite some time.

Lol. You really want to go back and forth on this?

Of course you can cite players that didn’t work out. They are certainly far more players that don’t make it than do, even those that have tremendous size and length. The point was, someone being undersized doesn’t automatically mean they can’t make it and be productive.

 

[Kingster]

Who the hell were we suppposed to tank with? The only vet who saw any action was Vinsanity. Fox was our only true point guard. The Kings only had nine active players (I’m assuming that if Bruno was healthy he’d have seen some time). Jack effing Cooley played nearly twenty minutes for Christsake. Aside from actually forfeiting the game, what else could the Kings have possibly done to appease some of you?

The "tanking" should have occurred immediately after the All-Star break. The vacillation of vets vs. youngins after the break determined the season's outcome, and that vacillation goes to directly to management. The only way that the Kings lose this game against Houston would be to put Caboclo and Sampson at the guard positions.

 

[KingsFanSince85]

I’m saying Greens wingspan allows him to play out of position. Bridges wingspan is small now add that to his height and it’s trouble

According to you. And you might very well be wrong about that. I’m not claiming that you most definitely are wrong because nobody can know that just yet. But you certainly aren’t right yet either.

 

[John Galt]

I really hope we win 20 games next year and watch as we lose the top pick to the celtics. We have no idea as a franchise what we are doing.

that's the spirit! see ... it is totally unfair and inappropriate to judge who is a "real fan" and who isn't. It's so nuanced.

 

[Kingster]

Could you give an example of just one poster who has posted something like this? Sorry Mac, but your posts regularly jump out at me because you counter points that haven't been made. Unless I'm wrong and simply missed it, which is quite possible, I haven't seen a single person say they haven't watched many games and followed that up with this draft being make or break for the next 5 years. It's a genuine question, could you give an example of who has this position?

As for the discussion in this thread at the moment, there's a lot of hard truths being told. We have been bottom feeders for a decade and a half. Putting fingers in your ears and screaming that everything will be fine, does not make it true. We've been plagued by incompetence and I haven't seen anything this season to change that opinion.

I was never on the Fire Vlade bandwagon and wanted to give him time. I'm still not calling for his head but you can be certain that time is running out. He'd better hope we get lucky in the lottery, which is even less likely now since we unnecessarily gave Chicago some of our extra lottery balls last night. If he doesn't turn this ship around next year, he'll have us in a pretty horrific long term situation and will undoubtedly be packing his bags. If none of our young guys emerge as an all star level talent next year, and we don't even have a lottery pick, well that's absolutely fireable after multiple years at the helm, and nobody will convince me otherwise.

The bolded part are my sentiments exactly.

 

[Kingster]

Let's start with this draft. If Divac gets the luck of the ping pong balls, it's all good. Everything regarding the Kings' tanking strategy goes out the window and all the people (like me) who were concerned with the non-strategy of the Kings to get a high ping pong ball percentage looks moot, and maybe even foolish. We can all rejoice then in a top three pick. If the Kings would get the sixth pick, it's possible some other team does something stupid and a player that has high potential drops to the Kings. Again, all is good.

But if the Kings get the 7th or 8th pick, it doesn't look good. Vlade then probably drafts a guy who has so-so ability who is either a decent role player or a flat out bust, not exactly what most Kings fans had in mind. That's the situation where the pressure starts to build. Then Vlade has to do something very good in FA, which is highly unlikely, or a trade, which is scary. For the most part, the only players he has to trade are developing young prospects in which there is very little certainty of their ultimate potential. The two "developed" young players that could possibly be traded would be Hield or Bogs. (If he really likes Young in the draft at the 7th or 8th position, he could make a deal at or prior to the draft sending one of the above to a team in a trade to obtain a small forward, power forward, or center). Barring that, he has to trade undeveloped youngins who could either be extremely good, or not, just depending. It's like selling a seedling when you don't know whether it's going to turn into a redwood tree or weed. As a rule of thumb, you don't get top dollar for undeveloped seedlings in the NBA. It's the equivalent of "selling low." All in all, if Divac doesn't get lucky with the ping pong balls, he's going to have a much more difficult challenge, imo. Other than the ping pong ball gods, the other wildcard is Harry Giles. If Vlade gets unlucky with the ping pong balls and Giles looks like a future All Star, Divac's reputation will have been saved. If not, or if Giles gets injured, the monopoly board just doesn't look very good for Vlade Divac.

 

[Tetsujin]

The "tanking" should have occurred immediately after the All-Star break. The vacillation of vets vs. youngins after the break determined the season's outcome, and that vacillation goes to directly to management. The only way that the Kings lose this game against Houston would be to put Caboclo and Sampson at the guard positions.

Yeah cool, but the post I was responding to wasn't talking about that but was rather focusing on having the Kings tank one quarter in a game in which there were only nine guys suited up for action.

Should also be noted that the Kings lost their first four games after the all-star break, beat the Nets on the back of De'Aaron turning into MJ in the clutch (the only vets that saw time that night were Kosta and GT), losing to the Jazz, and then barely beating a very bad Knicks team because Skal decided it was his turn to hit a game winner. So the Kings could have started the post-All Star Break with a seven game winning streak but didn't sheerly based on our young kids displaying the killing instinct that you'd generally be happy to see your young guys have.

 

[Larry David]

Counterpoint - The notion of "Some of you and the national media are unreasonably negative. Things are much better than they appear and this is going to go great" has been a common refrain here a decade running. And, that argument has consistently looked unreasonable at the time and proved wrong later.

The Kings have operated at the bottom edge of the treadmill of mediocrity for a decade and made poor moves on top of it. There are some prospects here, but not a clear path out of the dumpster.

We don't want a perfect plan, we want modest competence and reasonable plan going forward. 12 years running some of us have wanted that from a franchise that is essntially the 80s Clippers at this point.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

That is of course unless you're agreeing with one point of view (the one held by most of the mods, not necessarily Cpt. who is generally very fair). In which case you can feel free to deride other posters, call them unethical, have a full thread about them being cheaters, or as seen in a post still up in last night's game thread, call them nerds. Then rule 1 and 2 are more like guidelines to be loosely and subjectively interpreted and enforced.

For the record, I'm generally not in favor of deleting any posts, but it has to be noted only one side is getting moderated in this debate. Sorry, that's the last I'll say on it. I swore I was done with this board based on how the last issue was moderated but old habits die hard...

I also lean towards not deleting posts. But the game thread wasn't locked last night because it had become a model of decorum and civilized discussion. There's a balance to be found, and I personally lean toward letting the balance find itself, but that isn't always the right move.

Heat-of-the-moment frustrations are going to happen, and I try to let them go as long nothing crosses the line. But the sort of thing that I cautioned against here, the "I'm waiting to be proven right and then I'm going to unleash on those who were wrong" just simply isn't healthy for a message board in my opinion. It encourages people to go "tribal" and keep lists...these are the good people...these are the bad people...fight the bad people at all costs... I'm sure you see how that can go really wrong, and how it can cause problems even well before the anticipated comeuppance.

The key, really, is to forget what people's positions are. I'm really good at that (not exactly on purpose, it just happens that way) and that way it's much easier to treat everything that any poster says as just a raw statement rather than viewing it through the lens of friend/enemy. My two cents.

 

[Kingster]

Yeah cool, but the post I was responding to wasn't talking about that but was rather focusing on having the Kings tank one quarter in a game in which there were only nine guys suited up for action.

Should also be noted that the Kings lost their first four games after the all-star break, beat the Nets on the back of De'Aaron turning into MJ in the clutch (the only vets that saw time that night were Kosta and GT), losing to the Jazz, and then barely beating a very bad Knicks team because Skal decided it was his turn to hit a game winner. So the Kings could have started the post-All Star Break with a seven game winning streak but didn't sheerly based on our young kids displaying the killing instinct that you'd generally be happy to see your young guys have.

I think that if the Kings were serious after the All Star break in the youngins/G League emphasis there is no question they could have at least added one or two in the "L" column. After the break, it seemed like the Kings were "reacting" to what the rest of the tanking contenders were doing, rather than having a proactive plan from the get-go. It was if they collectively said to themselves: "Whoa, these tanking guys are serious; I guess we better get serious too!" By that time it was too late.

 

[Joshoua]

Tired of hearing about ****ing Philadelphia

 

[ockingsfan]

Personally, I was never a pro Lin guy all year.

BUT, when your draft position and lottery odds can be improved (or NOT worsened) with one last loss in an meaningless game, your coaching staff and FO should plan accordingly.

Meaning, if you know the other team is going to put out "crap" out on the floor, you plan ahead and rest your starters and play the players you need to "evaluate" to insure the most beneficial outcome, which is a Lin.

My lineup would had been along the line of:

PG: Justin Jackson
SG: Bruno Cabucolo
C: Jack Cooley
SF: Nigel Hayes
PF Jakarr Sampson

 

[Tetsujin]

Personally, I was never a pro Lin guy all year.

BUT, when your draft position and lottery odds can be improved (or NOT worsened) with one last loss in an meaningless game, your coaching staff and FO should plan accordingly.

Meaning, if you know the other team is going to put out "crap" out on the floor, you rest your starters and play the players you need to "evaluate" to insure the most beneficial outcome, which is a Lin.

My lineup would had been along the line of:

PG: Justin Jackson
SG: Bruno Cabucolo
C: Jack Cooley
SF: Nigel Hayes
PF Jakarr Sampson

For what it's worth, I don't think Bruno was available to play last night so you'd still be forced to play at least one of the other young guys, which would probably have still been more than adequate to beat the guys with Rockets jerseys.

 

[Joshoua]

Bulls GM just said they’ll be looking for a wing position do more than likely we get Bamba. But if Bamba shoots well in workouts I think he’ll rise

 

[kingsfan1984]

Considering the injury situations at their positions not really.

Rockets found a way fairly fast and easy to rest half their team? Why could we not have resoonded in kind? Neither team had nothing to win for, but we had something to loose for.

 

[kingsfan1984]

Except we needed Cooley to play center because the entire big man depth chart at the start of the year was inactive aside from Willie.

Why do you keep making the argument that basically Joegers hands were tied and he had no choice but to play all of Bogs Fox Hield WCS against Houston?

Thats simply false.

You seem happy Kings beat Houston. Ok Great. The draft slot movement doesn't matter to you. Fine. But that doesn't allow you to fantasize that Joeger had no choice but to field a winning lineup against tje Rockets or these other teams down the stretch. You agree that Kings should keep Bogs playing 30+ mins and let the chips fall as they may. Thats fine, might be the best thjng to do anyways...but shutting him down has always been an option and would instantly make the Kings less competitive.

A number of easy examples have been given of lineup changes thatbwould have nade it easy to "get a look" at young guys and in different roles and all but guarantee we loose.

Can get through a game with just 5 guys if needed... have 2 guys active if an injury or foul trouble hits.

Fox
Jackson
Nigel
Sampson
Cooley.

Bam, 48 mins apiece. Let Fox and Jackson get as many shots as they can.

Carter can sub in for injury foul trouble etc

 

[kingsfan1984]

I think that if the Kings were serious after the All Star break in the youngins/G League emphasis there is no question they could have at least added one or two in the "L" column. After the break, it seemed like the Kings were "reacting" to what the rest of the tanking contenders were doing, rather than having a proactive plan from the get-go. It was if they collectively said to themselves: "Whoa, these tanking guys are serious; I guess we better get serious too!" By that time it was too late.

The frustrating thing is the Kings were the first to signal they were going to start tanking by announcing "2 vets will be rested each game" then promptly abandoned that plan and waffled back and forth with tanking while the other tanking teams heard that and committed hard to the tank cause. If we never made that announcement, we very well could be in a top 5 spot right now.

 

[John Galt]

Personally, I was never a pro Lin guy all year.

BUT, when your draft position and lottery odds can be improved (or NOT worsened) with one last loss in an meaningless game, your coaching staff and FO should plan accordingly.

Meaning, if you know the other team is going to put out "crap" out on the floor, you plan ahead and rest your starters and play the players you need to "evaluate" to insure the most beneficial outcome, which is a Lin.

My lineup would had been along the line of:

PG: Justin Jackson
SG: Bruno Cabucolo
C: Jack Cooley
SF: Nigel Hayes
PF Jakarr Sampson

I doubt they would have lost