[Grades] Bricklayer's Midseason Grades

[Bricklayer]

Oft requested, finally delivered:

FRONTCOURT

Samuel Dalembert ( C+ ) -- has provided pretty much what he always has through his career, and what we traded for: his career numbers are 25.9min 7.9pts 8.2rebs and 1.9blks; his numbers this year, adjusted to match the same minutes, would be 6.6pts 8.5reb 2.1blks. The problem simply being that with DeMarcus on the roster he is only getting 19.6min a night instead of his customary 25-30. His rebs/40 of 15.6 is tied with Tyson Chandler for 13th in the league (just behind Duncan at 15.7). His blocks/48 of 3.96 is 8th in the league, and 3rd amongst major players (behind Darko and Javale McGee). His shooting percentage has been off for most of the season, but a recent offensive hot streak has bounced it back to a semi-respectable .444, although its still off his career .523. He is kind of what he is -- the epitome of a defensive/rebounding roleplayer. A player BTW that virtually every elite team has on their roster, whether it be Dwight or Perkins or Chandler/Haywood, or Bynum or Duncan or whoever. He has also surprised with flashes of a good passing touch -- good enough we actualy call plays using him as a passer out of timeouts. Seems like a good guy, but as his agent's arrival during the holidays to discuss minutes displayed, his future here depends on the viabilty of he and Cousins sharing time together out on the court. We have only used that combo in short stretches, but its looked pretty good. With Cousins growing into a major center in future years, the only way for Dalembert to get more than 10-12 minutes of mopup action will be if he and Cousins can play together for maybe 10-15 minutes a night.

DeMarcus Cousins ( B- ) -- the kid's gonna be a star...unless he has anything to say about it. And that's the yin and the yang of Boogie's season so far. We complain abou this, we complain about that, but the fact is that DeMarcus Cousins looks like he might well the the most talented player to put on a Kings uniform since CWebb left town. And yes I am aware of the names I am slighting with that possiblity. His skillset is just special, and he's displayed some amazing stuff -- a power post game, the ability to face people up and drive past them, or through them. A midrange jumper. Incredible passing touch for a big man. So many good juicy things with promise for the future. But its all been masked beneath a raw mentally sloppy approach. His defense upon arriving was a bad joke, and its already clear he'll never be that interior intimidator the great centers of years past have always been. He has led the league in fouls for most of the year, and for the early part of the season could not play even half te game because of it. He came in not in the best of shape, has argued with officals and coaches, his shot selection sometims sucks, and his lack of verticality makes consistent finishing inside a problem. But over all of that, the talent wins out. He's been our most productive big, and I'm not realy convinced he is a bad guy so much as just a very vey young one maturity wise. BUt he's getting better and better all the time. He not only has talent, he is blessed with an off the charts basketball I.Q.. You can see him learnign game to game. The defense has come miles in just half a season, the rampant fouling has slowed to a pace letting him play full starter's minutes for the last month. And his month to month numbers have continued to climb, from 10.3pts 6.6rebs 0.8ast on .389 shooting in Nov., to 12.2pts 8.8reb 2.0ast on .422 shooting in Dec., to 16.7pts 7.6reb 2.3ast on .442 shooting in Jan.. He's coming on strong and is clearly the #3 rookie at this point. In fact given how much Wall has struggled with injuries and whatnot after the fast start, if DeMarcus's upward trend continues he could be the #2 rook before the end of the year. Its been messy, but oh so promising.

Jason Thompson ( C- ) -- its been a rough year for Jason, a year of stagnation and doubts about his future. But if you look at his numbers, his per minute numbers are right there with what they have been his whole career, and this in the face of being benched to start the season, beign played out of position at SF, and being yanked in and out of the linuep in a season long platoon with Carl Landry. Of course that is the problem too. He's never really gotten any better, perhaps not a surprise given that he was an old school 4yr college player that you expect to come into the league further along their development curves than today's one and doners. And so he's still got shaky hands, still plays too fast, still has poor touch around the rim, argues far too much with the refs while committing careless fouls, is still wildly inconsistent from game to game, and the odds are increasing he always will be. Of course he also stilll gives you excellent hustle and rebounding, great size, and a good locker room presence. The problem for him is that just hasn't been enough this year to keep a coach with a wandering eye from finding reasons to replace him with everyone from Carl Landry to Darnell Jackson, to our SFs at times. He's still modestly productive, still consideably helps in many games, but the career arc is beginning to tilt toward Nick Collison. The numbers (8.5pts 6.0reb in 21.6min) say its been alright, but its hard to see either he or anybody else calling this anything but a disappointing season so far.

Carl Landry ( C- ) -- in some ways there's a "well what did you expect" element here. Carl Landry's career numbers: 24.8min 12.2pts (.544FG .772FT) 5.2reb 0.7ast 0.5stl 0.5blk, Carl Landry's first half of this season: 27.0min 12.3pts (.490FG .716FT) 4.8reb 0.9ast 0.6stl 0.5blk. The percentages are down a little, but its in the same general range. But its hard not to consider this one a real disappointment too. Advertised as a potential starter by both himself and the Kings front office, or at the very least a top dynamic 6th man as he was in Houston, he has been neither really. The rebounding, already suspected of being poor, has been just terrible. The defense, generously advertised as "adequate" has not been close to that. And the size has been an ongoing issue. Offensively he has had big games, and terrible games, and overall has relied too much on his jumper, and too inconsistently on his scrap around the hoop. He can still be productive in his own way (as a scorer), but overall is neither more or less productive than the other guys at his positon. Far from establishing himself as an NBA starter going into free agency this summer, he had now thrown into question whether he provides enough defense or rebounding to even be a top 6th man (although Rodney Rogers won that award once, as did Corliss, so its still possible). In any case the coach still has on and off flashes of confidence in him, but you can tell the organization's love affair with him died somewhere back around November and he will probably be moved now.

Darnell Jackson ( B- ) -- these grades are relative as I have often noted, and Darnell has not done poorly given that he is Darnell Jackson. He began the season with a rush, IMO actually damaging us by mucking up our already mucked up frontcourt rotations, but playing his way into those minutes with aggression and energy. For a few short weeks it looked like Darnell Jackson had arrived and was gonig to carve out a solid niche for himself in the NBA. But then he came down to Earth, you began to notice the poor rebounding, lack of shotblocking, there were too many long jumpers, and he slowly receded back to marginal status. When he get sin though he still pays hard, is still a guy willing to get physical, and a guy with some offensive talent. He may not have carved out that solid spot in the NBA for himself, but he's shown enoguh to get somebody to invite him to more camps next year at the very least.

Hassan Whiteside ( INC ) -- there can be no ohher grade for a guy who got into all of 1 game before being sent into exile, then to the NBDL. I liked what I saw in summer league though, and like the look of his new body after he got pumped up. Here's hoping that we free enough minutes in the frontcourt to at least get a look at him in garbagetime down the second half of the season. Kid like this maybe just needs to get his feet wet, get a taste for the league, to give him something to shoot for next season. In particular with DeMarcus's limitations as a shotblocker, a PF who can protect that rim may well be an important piece for this team moving forward.

OVERALL( C)
Its been a real mess this year, with confused rotations and nobody really stepping forward to seize anything. There is no rock or steady goto guy, although DeMarcus is certainly moving toward that rapidly now. Yet as a messy amalgamation they have gotten some things accomplished. Landry aside, its a very big frontcourt, and we are outrebounding our opponents (+1.1 a game) for the first time in forever. We also nearly break even as shotblockers thx to Dalembert. Moves to consolidate the talent here, hopefully while retiaining our size advantage, and finding the longterm solution next to DeMarcus will be key. But it hasn't been a complete disaster, and its been a considerable step up from the frontcourts of recent seasons.

 

[Bricklayer]

SMALL FORWARDS

Francisco Garcia ( C+ ) -- and another of our vets with a "well what did you expect statline. Cisco career: 23.3min 9.1pts (.444 .371 .805) 2.9reb 1.6ast 0.8stl 0.7blk. Cisco this season: 23.3min 9.3pts (.449 .379 .837) 2.5reb 1.2ast 0.7stl 0.9blk. Its just been Cisco. Sometimes a bencher, sometimes a starter. Sometimes good, sometimes not. Prone to clutch shots, and dumb plays. He hasn't really stepped forward and seized a position so much as just inherited it by the failure of anybody else to seize it. Perhaps the biggest problem of late is the fact I am listing him as a SF with Westphal now stubbornly refusing to play him in the backcourt despite our lack of depth there. He's better as a SG anyway, as the lousy rebounding and big SFs overpowering him in recent weeks have shown. Still, while you can't quite call him dependable, you can call him a solid contributor. And maybe his best play of the season was stepping forward to provide a little veteran leadership -- backing Tyreke in his worst period, counseling Cousins throughout. Doing the same for Casspi last year. There has been some value there, although whether it is enough to justify his contract is yet to be seen.

Omri Casspi ( C- ) -- while Donte has undoubtedly had the more disappointing season, things have not exactly gone Omri's way this year either. Rather than building on a solid rookie year, he has like many of our players, stagnated. Last year he averaged 25.1min 10.3pts (.446 .369 .672) 4.5reb 1.2ast 0.7stl 0.2blk. This year its down to 23.5min 9.0pts (.397 .396 .717) 4.3reb 0.9ast 0.8stl 0.2blk. Along the way he has struggled to hold down the starting position, and often looked more comfortable coming off the bench. He can helps on the boards, has a penchant for hitting big shots, and is one of the few long range shooters on the team, but this season in particular has struggled anywhere inside the arc. And of course the bigger problem for him has become defense, where he was just horrid at the start of the year, and still gets explosed on a regular basis. He said at the beginning of camp that the best player would win the starting role. Well our problem has been that none of our players has won the starting role. It will be an improtant second half of the season for Omri, as we look to have another high lottery pick and have a huge load of cash to spend in free agency, and an itch to use it. If he does not establish himself now, SF is an obvious position where we could go looking for a young star or veteran upgrade to stablize the situation and give Reke/Cousins a reliable third option.

Donte Greene ( D ) -- and here especially there is no way to sugarcoat what has gone past a disappointing season for Donte and entered the disastrous stage. Some of that has been him -- somehow in this most important of seasons for him he came into camp out of shape -- and some of that has to go on a coach who has treated his playing time in often bizarre ways, yanking him in and out of the starting lineup, starting him one night, dumping him to 12th man status the next. Not using him as a defensive roleplayer even when one is called for, then abruptly dusting him off and starting him a few nights later. The long and the short of it is that Donte, after a promising second year, has regressed almost across the board. The "almost" of that statement applies to his defense, which despite some attempts by what I am going to call "Donte Denialists" to dismiss, has been routinely good, and occasionally great. On that front he has continued to contribute and proven the flashes last year were no fluke, and despite his lack of offense his presence on the floor has ofttimes inspired us to our best defensive efforts. But that offense...its just gone backward across the board, and even more than Omri he has perhaps chafed at the strangely heavy hand Coach Westphal decided to govern the SFs with this year. Critically, his 3pt shooting has collapsed again this season, and on a team planning to be built around the close to the rim games of Tyreke Evans and DeMarcus Cousins, you just have to be able to shoot that shot. In a bit of chicken and egg syndrome, his confidence is shot by his coach's use of him, and of course his coach's use of him is presumably because his confidence is shot. Along the way an already shaky FT stroke has fallen apart into a mental issue. With Westphal as the coach its not clear Donte is really going to get a good shot at it, but like Omri the second half of the year is critical for his future, with us at least. If nobody steps forward at the position, you can be almost guaranteed of seeing a new starter there next year. Donte has the sort of game that he could more easily slip into a short minute backup role than could Casspi, but that is the path to career long benchdom an likely many changes of address.

OVERALL ( D+)
In a league where teams routinely trot out SFs capable of scoring in the high teens, and where a number of them trot out SFs who are flat out stars, nobody has stepped forward for the Kings and we can't even find one consistent 10pt scorer to put out there. Everybody has their nights, their moments. Nobody is dependable. On a team struggling to patch holes, the lack of dependable production here has been especially problematic. To what degree the issue has been exasperated by the constantly shifting roles mandated byt the coach I will let you dedide.

 

[Bricklayer]

BACKCOURT

Beno Udrih ( B+ ) -- in a disappointing season, Beno at least has held up his end of the bargain. One of only 7 guards in the NBA shooting over 50% from the field, the overall numbers have been a bump over what we have seen since he has been with the Kings, and as I detailed in a stats thread a month or so ago, they are very much in line with the sorts of stats that the "other guard" next to star guards of Reke's ilk have put up over the years. After a very poor start from 3pt land that contributed to our our early offensive struggles -- nobody was shooting, so we had no spacing -- he has stabilized and then some and the season .365 is nearly identical with his career long .369. In recent weeks, and especially with Reke out for a few games at the begining of the month, he stepped it up even further, scoring 20 a night and shooting a ridiculous 60% from the floor over a 6 game stretch. The grade is held back however by the other side of the ball. Hidden on the opposing team's weakest backcourt player as often as possible, he began the season getting burned on an almsot nightly basis with teams seeking out his matchup like radar, making it hard for us to take the step forward defensively we are going to need to in order to get this thing turned around. At one point in fact he was even benched over the defense, wiht Luther Head stepping into the starting roel and keying a several week span of top flight defense by actually getting into a defensive stance and challenging ballhandlers. After returning as a starter Beno has remained a liability there, but in the last month or so his effort on defense has gone way up, and while he may still not be much of a man stopper, he has been making numerous hustle plays getting to loose balls and steals out in the open court. One thing that has not improved has been the late game play, as it is not only our kids who keep on screwing up and losing games for us. A strange syndrome that.

Tyreke Evans ( D+ ) -- well, its been too notorious a struggle for Reke all season for this to be anythgin but a poor grade. This was not the way it was supposed to be -- a young star guard going into his second season was supposed to grow, expand his game, and carry the rest of the young roster over its growing pains. But that really never happened, and effectively bereft of that young star guard for much of the first half of the season for whatever reason -- and the various possibilities have spanned eveything from plantar fasciaitis to fast food -- the rest of the roster has been exposed as just not ready. And Reke himself has appeared sluggish and painful to watch at times, lacking lift on his layups, seeing whatever progress he made with the jumper in the offseason fade in and out, and routinely disappearing after half. There have been signs Reke has turned it aorund though. In the month of January he is averaging a very respectable 19.4pts (.444FG) 4.7reb 6.7ast 2.9stl 0.8blk. And even during the worst of his offensive struggles -- and they were extreme, pulling his shooting percentage all the way down toward 35% -- he retained the ability to help on the boards and on defense, where those long arms and big hands have him 6th in the league in steals at 1.9 a game. His turnaround, culminating in a career high 35pt night against Golden State last game which raised his season shooting % back to 40% for the first time in months, seemed to have started with none other than mom, who came banging on his door one ngiht around Chrsitmas and had a sitdown with her son where she told him that he was playing like crap and he had to just get over it. Ever since that night he's looked a lot more like the Reke of old, if not every night, then most of them. Next up, if this holds, is a much needed boost in late game play, as he has been hitting some clutch shots but making even more big mistakes that have been part of the story of why we have so routinely been turned away right on the brink of victory.

Luther Head ( D+ ) -- it was quite difficult to settle on a grade for Luther Head. Quite simply he has not been who I thought he was, and on what standard do you grade him on anyway? A 5 year NBA vet? Or a scrub who barely made the roster as a camp invite. A practice squad player? Or a guy who started 10 games for us? Whatever he is, he kind of had his moment there back in late November, and since then has been increasingly marginalized to the point of being forgotten now. By rep a small SG who was a pretty good shooter, could play a little PG, and was a solid defender, he established a toehold in our starting linuep as a defensive stopper of a PG who's offense was so ugly it actually struck part of the Kings fanbase blind. His best moment may have been giving CP3 absolute hell as the inspiration for the best defensive game this franchise has played since the glory days, with the highlight being when he dove full out on his belly to steal a ball from CP3 when he was trying to do the roll the ball upcourt to save clock tactic. But offensively it was just a wreck. He never did get his shooting in gear, the decisionmaking was just nerve wracking, and he displayed perhaps the ugliest shotfake in the post Dwight Eisenhower era NBA. The defense was absolutely commendable, and actually revelatory, not only for Head, but for us as well -- we actually CAN play great defense. We just need to put defenders on the floor. Unfortunately that surprising ability cannot trump actually striking people blind and causing the rest to wish they had been, and you get the distinct feeling that his 15 minutes is up, at least with us.

Pooh Jeter ( B- ) -- probably more celebrated than he should be just on the little guy principle -- people always root for David, never Golaith -- Pooh has nonetheless managed to carve himself out a semi-solid position in our rotation over the past couple of months. What he can add on his best ngihts is speed and passing ability as maybe the purest PG we have, and he can dart up and down the court and whip nifty passes tht get the crowd into the game. What can go wrong on his worst nights is that he turns into a undersized gunner who's shooting this year (.396FG .176 from 3pt land) does not justify it, and other teams notice his size and use that against him on defense (whihc has been happending more since teams started scouting him). Overall though, with Cisco's rather stupid exile to pure SF duty, Pooh has been about the third best guard we have. That's not a good thing when that guard is at 4pts 3ast, but from Pooh's perspective it has to be called a modestly sucessful first half of the season.

Jermaine Taylor ( INC ) -- its too early to tell much yet, and Taylor may well just have the makeup of that exciting athletic garbagetime guard who will throw in a few dunks to entertain the dwindling late game crowd. But he has shown some ability off the bounce, and a willingness at least to try on defense, and given the lack of full sized SG options on the Kings roster, he may continue to get occasional looks as a spot player.

Antoine Wright ( F ) -- a veteran low level defensive stopper with poor offensive skills, Wright never showed anything on the court to justify his signing, went out and gave the organization another blackeye with a DUI, and then got cut after playing all of 30 minutes for us over the course of the season.

OVERALL ( C- ) -- I pondered going slightly higher here, letting the grade get pulled upward by Beno, and with even a sluggish Tyreke still putting up bigger all around numbers than most guards. But I couldn't quite do it. Things are turning now, and this is once again becoming one of our areas of strength, with the only 2 Kings playing more than 30 minutes a night holding down the interchangeable PG/SG spots. But for much of the year Reke's struggles defined the backcourt, and with him going so badly it was a mess. Furthermore the recent shift of Cisco up to SF, combined with Reke missing a few games because of the ankle, has really highlighted how shallow a Ciscoless backcourt is for us. You get past Reke and Beno and you are fresh out of guys who you know will be in the NBA next year. So, this is improving, and if Reke stays healthy its a dangerous combo, but since these grades are for the first half of the season, its hard to look at it as any kind of strength in November/December.

 

[Superman]

I think overall we have a bunch of players that are not meeting expectations. We have guys that were expected to at least play as well as they did last year, and many of them have played worse. Two of the three players that you grade higher than C+ weren't here last year; the other is a combo guard who would be coming off the bench for a playoff contender, but has to start for us because no one else can score consistently. The guy we were hoping would be our leading reserve has been largely average (and why do other teams' announcers keep calling Landry a great rebounder?) And then the coaching has been ... troubling, to say the least.

One word to describe this team right now, and the season so far, would be "underachieving". And I suppose that's not the worst thing in the world. If we got a couple of players to play closer to how we expected them to play this season, we'd be a lot better than we are right now. And even with the lackluster player, we've been in close contests for the last month and a half, with a few exceptions. I think our record is a lot worse than our team is, and that's both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, it sucks, because you would have liked to have seen upward momentum from the jump, but on the other hand, there's at least something to look forward to, assuming we get our act together. It's much more promising than it was two seasons ago, when our best player might have been John Salmons and we were hoping that he, Nocioni and Spencer Hawes could do something worth mentioning.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Good Grades, I wouldn't change any of them asides from a +/- here or there.

 

[Glenn]

I certainly agree and perhaps on a team with a record like ours, it might even be generous. To think that one of the worst teams in the league averages about a C means that Brick is being a kind grader. I wish he had been one of my professors. Despite this, I have a lot of hope for this team. Perhaps I tend to see sunshine when it is partly cloudy but given the age of these guys, especially the guys we really hope will become genuine stars, I don't think being totally negative is fair at all.

They are what they are and perhaps at this stage in all of their careers, this is all they can be. They are young and learning the fundamentals of the game at the time the REAL vets on other teams are learning the subtleties of handling each specific team and each individual opponent. This may be a simplified way of comparing a rookie to a vet. Maybe finally the average Kings Fan has learned that vets are more than overpriced basketball players. Experience is difficult to put a value on.

Last year was a year dominated by Reke and this artificially constructed statistical goal that was designed to hype him so much that we thought we had one of the top 4 players in the history of the NBA. It was fun; it kept our interest, we thought we had something outrageously good. It served its purpose.

Then we drafted someone who probably will be better. The organization couldn't concoct a goal for him so I think we all prayed he would make it through a game without a technical or better yet, make it through a game, period. He's a guy with CWebb's skills except he is bigger. He has also learned everything at an astounding rate. Remember Spencer? Many thought he would become a fair to good center in a few more years. Boogie makes advances on a bi-weekly basis that Spencer made yearly.

The future can't be bad unless Reke or Boogie hurt themselves badly.

The value of an individual star is huge in comparison with the role players. We need another star and I suspect that will have to come by trade. Then there's the mint available for the Maloofs to spend (intelligently, I hope) this summer and this team could be pretty darn good in a few years. I beg the Maloofs not to spend it just because they said they would. There is always next year and I fear the line of people wanting to come to Sacramento isn't very long.

I haven't been happy with the direction this team has taken since Webber's injury and the resultant trade. Finally, I can watch these losses and see what the future can bring.

Watch the Kings play and look beyond the won-loss record. Picture them with a third all-star quality player plus a couple 25-28 year old vets acquired in free agency and they look pretty darn good. It helps also to be incredibly nuts to see this but we are Kings Fans, right?

Thanks Brick. Your devotion to the basketball side of this forum is awesome.