What a blessing this current version of the Kings has been after almost 20 years of perpetual suck! We cycled through a dozen coaches and punted on just as many lottery picks. We had an entire locker room declare war on a Hall of Fame coach and run him out of town (remember the George Karl debacle?!). We had a rookie of the year winner essentially get frozen out of the offense by a man with the last name Smart (you can't make this stuff up). We had a franchise player (and our only All-Star for almost 20 years) traded during an All-Star game. And of course, worst of all, we very nearly lost our team completely to a family of buffoons looking to cash out so they could bankrupt another casino.
I just made my 10,000th post in this thread so I can't help but reflect on how far we've come since the Webber trade in 2005 when I joined this forum. That's enough looking back though -- here's what we have to look forward to...
Fox is not just an All-Star, he's rubbing elbows with league MVPs.
Domas has been an absolute revelation -- almost single-handily transforming one of the worst offenses in the league into one of the best.
Malik is a human highlight reel and should be one of the top vote getters for 6th man of the year.
Keegan is just starting to put it together but if he keeps having performances like this he'll be an All-Star too before long.
Coach Brown, last year's unanimous Coach of the Year award winner, has actually got a Kings team playing suffocating defense at least some of the time.
Thanks for all the memories and here's to another 18 years of Kings fandom!