LMM
Starter
sacbee
Chris, we hardly knew you
The departure of the great man of contradiction allows the Kings an opportunity to build a more cohesive unit
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, March 27, 2005
They won't know what to do with Chris Webber around Arco Arena on Monday night, but, really, when did they? When was the last time the thought of Webber, erstwhile King of Kings, produced a single, clear image?
Nope, it's just not that clean anymore. There is nothing about Webber's tenure in Sacramento that evokes one solitary emotion. And unless some truly amazing revisionist history someday takes root, there never will be.
Webber was the man who often professed his love for the city, yet he vaguely insulted and threatened to leave it from time to time - once for so much as troubling him over a traffic ticket.
Webber was the guy who adored playing with his teammates, yet he managed to group-slime them - including beloved, fan-friendly teddy bear Vlade Divac - with his parting-shot words of frustration after last year's playoff elimination.
Webber was the man who used Divac's subsequent departure from Sacramento as an opportunity to declare the Kings "my team," yet, by the accounts of several of his teammates, he grew more quiet and distant as this up-and-down season chugged along.
And, significantly, Webber was the player upon whom the Maloof family and the franchise built their success - only to become the player whom they feared might finally prove their undoing.
What can you say? Among his many attributes, the most striking, for Chris Webber, may well be his sense of direction: Pretty much every which way at once.
So it remains. As Webber returns Monday night to the floor of the building that he and Divac and Jason Williams first made truly famous, even the circumstances surrounding his stunning trade to the Philadelphia 76ers last month are cloaked in contradiction.
To hear some in the organization tell it, Webber's departure was an occasion for unbridled glee around the executive suites, where the folks in charge had almost assumed that his massive contract (with three years and $66 million remaining), declining efficiency and high-maintenance persona would prevent the post-surgical power forward from ever being dealt.
Even team owner Joe Maloof, who repeatedly praised Webber's contributions to the team and the community in an interview last week, won't look back on the subject of the trade.
"What this gave us was more flexibility on the court and more flexibility regarding our salaries," Maloof said. "Anytime you have a player making $20 million, $22 million (per year), that's a huge, huge commitment. And if you look at our team, it's a young team now - a young, athletic team."
By the time of his dispatch, Webber no longer fit the model. He wasn't practicing. He often left coach Rick Adelman and his assistants wondering until the final hour before game time whether his knee would allow him to play. On the court, he improved his mid-range jumper and his free-throw percentage, but he was bizarrely transforming himself into a sort of swingman trapped in a 6-10 forward's body. He required the ball more and more, and farther and farther outside the lane, in order to maintain his standing as a double-double regular.
"The fear was basically this: You don't trade him, this franchise is going back to the old days," said one source within the organization. "A huge contract for an injured player would be holding us back, and we wouldn't be able to keep up" in the ever-competitive Western Conference.
For Kings fans of a certain age, that kind of talk evokes memories of Ralph Sampson's corroded knee joints and the concurrent salary constraints that effectively prevented the franchise from even attempting to make outside moves and get better in the early '90s.
Of course, that was before Geoff Petrie arrived, revamped the way the Kings did business with regard to personnel, hired Adelman and installed the holy triumvirate of the New Age - Webber, Williams and Divac.
And, let's be clear, Webber was no Ralph Sampson. He was an athletic, up-tempo, full-court force whose best years were enough to propel Sacramento to the brink of the NBA Finals - and to affix him as a superstar in the minds of some of his close teammates.
"I would have Webb on my team any day. Any day," guard Bobby Jackson said last week, Jackson himself still healing from a wrist injury. "You can't teach toughness, you can't teach heart, and you can't teach competitiveness - and those are three things he has."
But wait: Wasn't Jackson one of the players most offended by Webber's comments about the Kings lacking desire and toughness last season, offended to the point of confronting Webber and demanding to know whether the forward was talking about him?
"Oh, of course," Jackson replied, matter-of-factly.
And that's your Webber update: Contradictory to the end.
At the finish, it was a great confluence of events that sent Webber to Philadelphia and brought Kenny Thomas, Corliss Williamson and Brian Skinner to the Kings - the second-biggest trade in the new history of the franchise, the biggest being the 1998 deal that brought Webber here in the first place.
This confluence included a sobering look at the numbers, which showed unmistakably that the Webber who returned from his devastating May 2003 knee injury had slowly but surely become the least efficient player among the Kings' regulars, the person who needed the most touches and the most shots to get his numbers.
"For the first time, the game got hard for Chris," said a Western Conference executive. "He used to be able to get 25 (points) and 12 (rebounds) without really trying. But he's not that player anymore, and that's a tough reality for any athlete."
The confluence included a weird behind-the-scenes vibe - Webber pretending to leadership he simply did not possess in the Kings' versatile, different-star-
every-day system - and some very practical concerns, chief among them the fact that, according to several sources, Webber had actually practiced with the team only three or four times all season.
"His knee wouldn't let him," Jackson said. "He knows he can't move laterally, can't guard as well, can't run, can't jump as much. You can't go 100 percent all the time on a bad knee. He had to pick his spots."
The confluence included game video, early-season copies of which showed Webber getting decimated on defense by the fleet forwards of Phoenix and Seattle - of themselves, newer versions of the player Webber used to be. One coach estimated that half of Brad Miller's fouls were the result of "him having to switch over after Chris lost his man."
"It's something I told Joe and Gavin (Maloof) over the years, because they were so focused on beating the Lakers: Other teams can get better, too," Petrie said recently. "You're seeing that now up and down the conference with teams like Seattle and Phoenix."
It included the Peja question, though not in the way most people wanted to pose it. Away from the court, by almost every account, Webber and Peja Stojakovic had forged a fairly easy relationship after last summer's strain. On it, it was clear Stojakovic no longer trusted Webber to get him the ball for open looks. In the end, Petrie chose his younger scorer over his older one.
And the confluence, of course, included the 76ers, one of the only teams in the NBA with the interest and the wherewithal to pull off a Webber trade - and maybe the only organization either brazen or nutty enough to actually go for it.
The Maloofs overpaid dramatically when they signed Webber to a $123 million contract in 2001 ("We were young in our ownership and felt we needed to show the community that we were committed to bringing a title," Joe says), one reason so many Kings front-office members were shocked by Philadelphia's willingness to take it on. To say the least, Philly's offer, which came about very quickly and with very little notice, left people thunderstruck at Arco.
Still, by the time the offer was made, according to several people within the Kings' organization, Petrie and Adelman already had discussed a range of possibilities with regard to Webber - and Adelman had grown accustomed to the idea of life without the forward through whom (along with Divac and Miller) so much of his offensive system had flowed over the years. He also confided to Petrie that he liked the players coming back from the Sixers, the kinds of athletes who often find a fit with Adelman's open approach.
Lambasted nationally at the time it was made, the trade was considered a no-brainer within the Kings' offices. Any team willing to take on Webber's salary represented a chance for Petrie and the Maloofs to reload financially.
One member of the staff on the road with the team remembers hunkering down in a cafe in Dallas the day of the trade, constantly making phone calls to see if it was done - fearing that there might be a league hurdle or that Philly would reconsider.
At the same time, Adelman was calling Webber to his hotel room in order to put him on the phone with Petrie, who needed Webber to sign off on a league document and allow the trade to go through. It fell to Adelman to tell Webber why the phone call was coming.
It is said that Webber took the news gracefully. Webber took out a huge advertisement in the paper to thank the Sacramento area fans for his time in town. He'll be cheered for that on Monday night at Arco Arena, as he should be, and cheered for the years of making the Kings a franchise worth watching. And here's the other thing: Chris Webber may just have given Sacramento a future by becoming a part of its past. Contradictory, perhaps. And it fits.
Chris, we hardly knew you
The departure of the great man of contradiction allows the Kings an opportunity to build a more cohesive unit
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, March 27, 2005
They won't know what to do with Chris Webber around Arco Arena on Monday night, but, really, when did they? When was the last time the thought of Webber, erstwhile King of Kings, produced a single, clear image?
Nope, it's just not that clean anymore. There is nothing about Webber's tenure in Sacramento that evokes one solitary emotion. And unless some truly amazing revisionist history someday takes root, there never will be.
Webber was the man who often professed his love for the city, yet he vaguely insulted and threatened to leave it from time to time - once for so much as troubling him over a traffic ticket.
Webber was the guy who adored playing with his teammates, yet he managed to group-slime them - including beloved, fan-friendly teddy bear Vlade Divac - with his parting-shot words of frustration after last year's playoff elimination.
Webber was the man who used Divac's subsequent departure from Sacramento as an opportunity to declare the Kings "my team," yet, by the accounts of several of his teammates, he grew more quiet and distant as this up-and-down season chugged along.
And, significantly, Webber was the player upon whom the Maloof family and the franchise built their success - only to become the player whom they feared might finally prove their undoing.
What can you say? Among his many attributes, the most striking, for Chris Webber, may well be his sense of direction: Pretty much every which way at once.
So it remains. As Webber returns Monday night to the floor of the building that he and Divac and Jason Williams first made truly famous, even the circumstances surrounding his stunning trade to the Philadelphia 76ers last month are cloaked in contradiction.
To hear some in the organization tell it, Webber's departure was an occasion for unbridled glee around the executive suites, where the folks in charge had almost assumed that his massive contract (with three years and $66 million remaining), declining efficiency and high-maintenance persona would prevent the post-surgical power forward from ever being dealt.
Even team owner Joe Maloof, who repeatedly praised Webber's contributions to the team and the community in an interview last week, won't look back on the subject of the trade.
"What this gave us was more flexibility on the court and more flexibility regarding our salaries," Maloof said. "Anytime you have a player making $20 million, $22 million (per year), that's a huge, huge commitment. And if you look at our team, it's a young team now - a young, athletic team."
By the time of his dispatch, Webber no longer fit the model. He wasn't practicing. He often left coach Rick Adelman and his assistants wondering until the final hour before game time whether his knee would allow him to play. On the court, he improved his mid-range jumper and his free-throw percentage, but he was bizarrely transforming himself into a sort of swingman trapped in a 6-10 forward's body. He required the ball more and more, and farther and farther outside the lane, in order to maintain his standing as a double-double regular.
"The fear was basically this: You don't trade him, this franchise is going back to the old days," said one source within the organization. "A huge contract for an injured player would be holding us back, and we wouldn't be able to keep up" in the ever-competitive Western Conference.
For Kings fans of a certain age, that kind of talk evokes memories of Ralph Sampson's corroded knee joints and the concurrent salary constraints that effectively prevented the franchise from even attempting to make outside moves and get better in the early '90s.
Of course, that was before Geoff Petrie arrived, revamped the way the Kings did business with regard to personnel, hired Adelman and installed the holy triumvirate of the New Age - Webber, Williams and Divac.
And, let's be clear, Webber was no Ralph Sampson. He was an athletic, up-tempo, full-court force whose best years were enough to propel Sacramento to the brink of the NBA Finals - and to affix him as a superstar in the minds of some of his close teammates.
"I would have Webb on my team any day. Any day," guard Bobby Jackson said last week, Jackson himself still healing from a wrist injury. "You can't teach toughness, you can't teach heart, and you can't teach competitiveness - and those are three things he has."
But wait: Wasn't Jackson one of the players most offended by Webber's comments about the Kings lacking desire and toughness last season, offended to the point of confronting Webber and demanding to know whether the forward was talking about him?
"Oh, of course," Jackson replied, matter-of-factly.
And that's your Webber update: Contradictory to the end.
At the finish, it was a great confluence of events that sent Webber to Philadelphia and brought Kenny Thomas, Corliss Williamson and Brian Skinner to the Kings - the second-biggest trade in the new history of the franchise, the biggest being the 1998 deal that brought Webber here in the first place.
This confluence included a sobering look at the numbers, which showed unmistakably that the Webber who returned from his devastating May 2003 knee injury had slowly but surely become the least efficient player among the Kings' regulars, the person who needed the most touches and the most shots to get his numbers.
"For the first time, the game got hard for Chris," said a Western Conference executive. "He used to be able to get 25 (points) and 12 (rebounds) without really trying. But he's not that player anymore, and that's a tough reality for any athlete."
The confluence included a weird behind-the-scenes vibe - Webber pretending to leadership he simply did not possess in the Kings' versatile, different-star-
every-day system - and some very practical concerns, chief among them the fact that, according to several sources, Webber had actually practiced with the team only three or four times all season.
"His knee wouldn't let him," Jackson said. "He knows he can't move laterally, can't guard as well, can't run, can't jump as much. You can't go 100 percent all the time on a bad knee. He had to pick his spots."
The confluence included game video, early-season copies of which showed Webber getting decimated on defense by the fleet forwards of Phoenix and Seattle - of themselves, newer versions of the player Webber used to be. One coach estimated that half of Brad Miller's fouls were the result of "him having to switch over after Chris lost his man."
"It's something I told Joe and Gavin (Maloof) over the years, because they were so focused on beating the Lakers: Other teams can get better, too," Petrie said recently. "You're seeing that now up and down the conference with teams like Seattle and Phoenix."
It included the Peja question, though not in the way most people wanted to pose it. Away from the court, by almost every account, Webber and Peja Stojakovic had forged a fairly easy relationship after last summer's strain. On it, it was clear Stojakovic no longer trusted Webber to get him the ball for open looks. In the end, Petrie chose his younger scorer over his older one.
And the confluence, of course, included the 76ers, one of the only teams in the NBA with the interest and the wherewithal to pull off a Webber trade - and maybe the only organization either brazen or nutty enough to actually go for it.
The Maloofs overpaid dramatically when they signed Webber to a $123 million contract in 2001 ("We were young in our ownership and felt we needed to show the community that we were committed to bringing a title," Joe says), one reason so many Kings front-office members were shocked by Philadelphia's willingness to take it on. To say the least, Philly's offer, which came about very quickly and with very little notice, left people thunderstruck at Arco.
Still, by the time the offer was made, according to several people within the Kings' organization, Petrie and Adelman already had discussed a range of possibilities with regard to Webber - and Adelman had grown accustomed to the idea of life without the forward through whom (along with Divac and Miller) so much of his offensive system had flowed over the years. He also confided to Petrie that he liked the players coming back from the Sixers, the kinds of athletes who often find a fit with Adelman's open approach.
Lambasted nationally at the time it was made, the trade was considered a no-brainer within the Kings' offices. Any team willing to take on Webber's salary represented a chance for Petrie and the Maloofs to reload financially.
One member of the staff on the road with the team remembers hunkering down in a cafe in Dallas the day of the trade, constantly making phone calls to see if it was done - fearing that there might be a league hurdle or that Philly would reconsider.
At the same time, Adelman was calling Webber to his hotel room in order to put him on the phone with Petrie, who needed Webber to sign off on a league document and allow the trade to go through. It fell to Adelman to tell Webber why the phone call was coming.
It is said that Webber took the news gracefully. Webber took out a huge advertisement in the paper to thank the Sacramento area fans for his time in town. He'll be cheered for that on Monday night at Arco Arena, as he should be, and cheered for the years of making the Kings a franchise worth watching. And here's the other thing: Chris Webber may just have given Sacramento a future by becoming a part of its past. Contradictory, perhaps. And it fits.
