Evans to veterans to expansion draft...

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

It's a lot easier to look great next to Dwight Howard (and good coaching) than next to Emeka Okafor (and ****ty coaching). I'd like to see what Turkoglu's development would have looked like if he were the one in Charlotte... I think that Wallace is a better player: Turkoglu is more polished offensively, but Wallace is plenty good enough on that end, and is clearly the better two-way player. Plus, if you're determined to play them out of position, I think that Wallace is much better suited to holding his ground against SG or PF than Turkoglu.

I've always liked Wallace and Turkoglu way better than Stojakovic, and would like to have kept both of them. But, if you had asked me in 2003 which guy I would have wanted to keep between the three of them, my answer would have been the same then as it is now.

 

[VF21]

You have never waivered in your support of Gerald Wallace, or your faith in his eventual ability to shine, so I would have been truly surprised if your answer had been anything other than what it was.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

1) we had 8 players definitely under contract: Webber, Miller, Christie, Bibby, BJax, Peja, Songaila and Wallace

Songaila was a restricted free agent, not under contract. Here's the link to the ESPN archive story of his resigning in summer 2004.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

It's a lot easier to look great next to Dwight Howard (and good coaching) than next to Emeka Okafor (and ****ty coaching).

This statement confuses me a bit. Do you not think that being a "good player on a bad team" should be taken into consideration when comparing the relative value of different players?

There's been a lot of speculation on why Wallace wasn't developed in Sacramento, and no definitive answer. It was obvious to us fans from watching the few minutes that he was getting that he was going to be a tremendous NBA player; so either the coaching and front office was incompetent, or there was some mysterious flaw behind the scenes.

The best guess I can come up with is that Wallace takes ( or took) a cowboy, lone-wolf, do what you think is right approach to basketball, rather than following the coach's plan. In a place with poor coaching, this might be a positive, but maybe not for a team very close to getting a ring.

 

[beb0p]

When a guy doesn't want to be here, have said thru his agent that he's leaving the first chance he gets, and said after the trade how glad he is to leave his old team. The only question I have is: WHY on earth do you still insist on keeping him here?

There was no way in hell Gerald Wallace would have stayed in Sacramento. Sure, we could have kept him for one more year but ultimately he's a goner. As far as I know GP let go of a guy who didn't want to stay, had very little trade value at the time, was injury prone, and had questions about his work ethic.

As far as I remember, out of all the guys who wanted to leave, only Billy Owens managed to fetch us someone useful in return and it's largely because Owens was a #3 pick and considered a can't-miss player. GW was neither. Perhaps he could have netted us a 2nd round pick but nothing to get too work up over it.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

This statement confuses me a bit. Do you not think that being a "good player on a bad team" should be taken into consideration when comparing the relative value of different players?

That statement is a direct response to VF21's implication that Turkoglu is a better player than Wallace, an implication that I disagree with. The statement was me offering a theory of why Turkoglu looks like a better player than Wallace.

 

[Oprostaj]

They are completely different players. Turkoglu is offensive minded with a good shot, a semi-clutch mentality, and a very good passing ability. Wallace plays with reckless abandon, crashes the boards, goes to the hoop, and plays good defense (when he's on the court). They fit two different styles, and would fit two different teams... I do agree with everybody talking about his work ethic. Didn't he take himself out of that Dallas game when he was destroying them in the first half of the playoffs?

 

[AriesMar27]

They are completely different players. Turkoglu is offensive minded with a good shot, a semi-clutch mentality, and a very good passing ability. Wallace plays with reckless abandon, crashes the boards, goes to the hoop, and plays good defense (when he's on the court). They fit two different styles, and would fit two different teams... I do agree with everybody talking about his work ethic. Didn't he take himself out of that Dallas game when he was destroying them in the first half of the playoffs?

it was a regular season game... i love wallace but hedo is a better player. if you watched hedo in the playoffs he was amazing. he was less effective in the finals because dwight couldnt make his freethrows but in those first 3 rounds he was arguably the best player on the magic. though i blame mike brown for putting west on hedo instead of lebron but thats another story.

wallace is good but he couldnt and wouldnt do what hedo did in the playoffs. hedo had so much swag it was off the charts, he earned his title as the michael jordan of turkey...

 

[bajaden]

Okay, I am a professional at explaining that whole debacle at this point:

The two expansion draft rules were:
1) Each team could protect up to 8 players
2) But each team HAD to expose at least 1 player even if they had 8 or fewer
-- so, if you had 10 guys under contract, you could protect 8 of the 10; but if you only had 8 guys (or 7 or 6 or whatever) under contract, you would still always have to expose 1 of them.

Those rules were known years beforehand -- nobody was surprised, everybody should have been prepared.

Our Situation:
1) we had 8 players definitely under contract: Webber, Miller, Christie, Bibby, BJax, Peja, Songaila and Wallace
2) we had one player under contract who we gave an opt out provision to (Peeler)
3) Vlade was a FA and so did not count

-- if Peeler did not opt out, then we could have exposed Peeler, and protected the other 8 players
-- when Peeler opted out, we were forced to expose one of the other 8, we chose Wallace, and lost him


The mistake was 100% in giving Peeler an opt out in his contract. If he was signed to a straight two year contract without an opt out, we could have protected everybody else. By giving him an opt out, it let him screw us. And at the time we signed him to the contract, we already knew what the rules of the expansion draft were going to be. Maybe Geoff just wasn't expecting Songaila to work out, and planned on exposing him. But of course if that were the case, why even sign him (that was his rookie year). But regardless, all we had to do was sign somebody, anybody, whether Peeler or somebody else, to a 2 year deal in the offseason in order to be expansion draft bait. When we failed to do so by giving Peeler the option to opt out of his second year, it meant we had to give up a core guy.

This is the point I was trying to make. Not that we should have exposed Webb, but that we knew the expansion draft was coming and it wouldn't have taken much creative thinking to make sure you were able to protect all the players you wanted to protect.

To me that means that the Kings wanted to expose Wallace. If so, that turned out to be a mistake, and if this case I have to point the finger at Petire.

 

[bajaden]

Seems like CWebb and any 12 CBAers would have been as good as that expansion team anyway.

I think they would have taken CWebb.

KB

You can't honestly believe that. One player eating up 60% of the entire teams salary. Maybe the GM might have been stupid enough to do it, but I doubt the ownership would have been on board. The main reason for that rule was to keep new teams from doing something stupid like that.

 

[bajaden]

I think the point is, regardless of how good Peja actually was (or wasn't), he was THE small forward for the foreseeable future. Wallace wouldn't have developed behind him, nor would Hedo. I personally regret the loss of Hedo in hindsight more than Wallace, but then I was never sold on just how great Gerald Wallace might be anyway... Hedo, on the other hand, has truly grown into a caliber player. Petrie picked him; I just wish we'd been able to find a way to keep him around and get rid of Pookie Princess.

I think the thing to remember is that Wallace was change of direction for Petrie who normally only drafted players with developed skills. Wallace was young and immature, but extremely gifted with athleticism. History tells us that he was going to take time, and Patience. We also had a coach at the time that liked to give his players license to play. That worked well with players like Vlade, Webb etc, but not for a player like Wallace. So he didn't fit any immediate needs of the team. Thus the powers that be must have thought him expendable.

I liked the long range potential of Wallace, and I lked the idea of a very athletic player on the team. Something I thought the team was lacking in. Therefore I fall into the camp that thinks it was a mistake on Petrie's part. But hey, he may well think so now too. Its water under the bridge at this point, but I still wish we had him...

 

[NME]

This is the point I was trying to make. Not that we should have exposed Webb, but that we knew the expansion draft was coming and it wouldn't have taken much creative thinking to make sure you were able to protect all the players you wanted to protect.

To me that means that the Kings wanted to expose Wallace. If so, that turned out to be a mistake, and if this case I have to point the finger at Petire.

If only Peeler's deal had been a team option rather than a player option for the second year, he would have been eligible to be the exposed player.

 

[Kingster]

This site amazes me sometimes. Not only would no franchise in the NBA ever expose their best and star player in an expansion draft, this has to be the only fan base where there's more than an infinitesimal percentage of fans who would even consider it.

Blaming Petrie for not protecting Wallace is reasonable. Blaming Petrie for not exposing Webber in order to protect Wallace is ****ing insane.

Problem is, Webber wasn't our best player. He was a bottom 25% player after his injury (certainly bottom 50%). You seem to be confusing before injury Webber with after injury Webber.

 

[Kingster]

Again, a lot of you are assuming the Kings wanted to keep Gerald Wallace. At that time, he was not the player he is now. There were a lot of rumors floating around about his complete lack of work ethic, his failure to take things seriously, etc. The Gerald Wallace we see today might well never have developed as such here in Sacramento. Going to Charlotte, he grew up and flourished. That easily might not have happened here...

And I wonder why he couldn't "grow up" in Sacto? I really think the rumors were the excuse for not keeping Wallace, and not a valid excuse. Typical CYA.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Problem is, Webber wasn't our best player. He was a bottom 25% player after his injury (certainly bottom 50%)...

I'll keep "beating the equine," so to speak, with Wallace, because he's my favorite player in the league right now, but I'm not re-hashing this nonsense with Webber again, and I don't feel the need to defend an opinion I've already argued here a hundred times. If you really care what I have to say about it, feel free to look in the archives.

Just in case you feel disinclined to do so, though, I'll summarize for you: I disagree with the above quoted remarks.

 

[kennadog]

And I wonder why he couldn't "grow up" in Sacto? I really think the rumors were the excuse for not keeping Wallace, and not a valid excuse. Typical CYA.

No, his own teammates made veiled references to Wallace's lack of work ethic. I can remember a reference to the idea that rookies should be the last ones to leave the practice gym. They would have no need for an excuse to get rid of Wallace.

 

[VF21]

And I wonder why he couldn't "grow up" in Sacto? I really think the rumors were the excuse for not keeping Wallace, and not a valid excuse. Typical CYA.

They weren't just rumors. Just because things don't hit the Bee doesn't mean they didn't happen.

My personal opinion is that he was put into a totally different situation in Charlotte than he experienced here. He wasn't lost behind Peja on the depth chart, his athleticism was much more valued on a new, young and exciting team than it was (whether right or wrong) on a team that was still hoping to go deep into the playoffs AND I think the whole process of being taken in an expansion draft made him wake up and smell the coffee.

The team didn't need any excuses for not keeping Gerald Wallace. It's a business, remember? If they had wanted to keep him badly enough, they would have found a way. The excuses come from the fans, not the front office.

 

[Kingster]

They weren't just rumors. Just because things don't hit the Bee doesn't mean they didn't happen.

My personal opinion is that he was put into a totally different situation in Charlotte than he experienced here. He wasn't lost behind Peja on the depth chart, his athleticism was much more valued on a new, young and exciting team than it was (whether right or wrong) on a team that was still hoping to go deep into the playoffs AND I think the whole process of being taken in an expansion draft made him wake up and smell the coffee.

The team didn't need any excuses for not keeping Gerald Wallace. It's a business, remember? If they had wanted to keep him badly enough, they would have found a way. The excuses come from the fans, not the front office.

I think you used the word, "rumor". In any case, Wallace was a young player, immature, like a lot of young players. So what's so earth-shatteringly new about that? Isn't that where coaching and the front office not only use persuasion, but patience? I don't buy the excuse. Weak, weak, weak. In fact, if the FO has the same attitude with some of our young players now, then they'll be discarded again, only to find "greener pastures" and all of a sudden become mature good players. Our loss.

 

[kennadog]

I think you used the word, "rumor". In any case, Wallace was a young player, immature, like a lot of young players. So what's so earth-shatteringly new about that? Isn't that where coaching and the front office not only use persuasion, but patience? I don't buy the excuse. Weak, weak, weak. In fact, if the FO has the same attitude with some of our young players now, then they'll be discarded again, only to find "greener pastures" and all of a sudden become mature good players. Our loss.

So just how were his teammates comments an excuse and for what? Considering how little I ever heard any of the Kings back then say anything remotely negative about a teammate publicly, I don't buy your idea that it was all a FO "excuse" ro get rid of Wallace.

 

[Section 101]

They weren't just rumors. Just because things don't hit the Bee doesn't mean they didn't happen.

My personal opinion is that he was put into a totally different situation in Charlotte than he experienced here. He wasn't lost behind Peja on the depth chart, his athleticism was much more valued on a new, young and exciting team than it was (whether right or wrong) on a team that was still hoping to go deep into the playoffs AND I think the whole process of being taken in an expansion draft made him wake up and smell the coffee.

The team didn't need any excuses for not keeping Gerald Wallace. It's a business, remember? If they had wanted to keep him badly enough, they would have found a way. The excuses come from the fans, not the front office.

He had plans to work out with Bobby Jackson over that summer before the expansion draft. He still worked out with him and learned what it took to make it in the league.

 

[bajaden]

This will be my last word on this, because whats done is done. I've stood behind Petrie more times than I've criticized him. But on this one I'm disappointed. If Wallace were a 30 year old player with a bad work ethic, I can see letting his go his own way. But with a young 19/20 year old you have to expect some immaturity. Thats what your there for. To teach him the right work ethic. To teach him what it takes to make it in the NBA. If your a teacher, or a mentor on an NBA team, and you give up on a young person, and that person goes elsewhere and becomes a sucess, then the failure is yours, not his. Because that was your job.

Obviously I was a big fan of Wallace. As I said, he brought something to the team that was lacking. Athleticism! It was easy to look the other way then because of the sucess of the team. If we were to do the same thing today, there would probably be a lynch mob headed for the arena. Talent today is no different than talent then. To just discard it makes no sense to me...

 

[King Baller]

You can't honestly believe that. One player eating up 60% of the entire teams salary. Maybe the GM might have been stupid enough to do it, but I doubt the ownership would have been on board. The main reason for that rule was to keep new teams from doing something stupid like that.

The cap limit would have just been the first season right?

They won 18 games that year. They would have had Emeka Okafor, CWebb and anyone else they could have squeezed under that limited cap. From their 2nd season onward the cap would be like the other teams, right?

I'm just saying its plausible they would take CWebb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Charlotte_Bobcats_seasons

KB

 

[King Baller]

After further research I think I am wrong, heres why

Charlotte would have a Salary Cap in its first season equal to 66% of the Salary Cap applicable to the rest of the league and a Salary Cap in its second season equal to 75% of the Salary Cap applicable to the rest of the league.

Got it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NBA_Expansion_Draft

KB

 

[King Baller]

The story of "Crash"

Charlotte Bobcats
In 2004, Wallace was drafted by the Charlotte Bobcats in their expansion draft. Wallace started immediately for the club, and went on to have an impressive season, averaging 11.1 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.7 steals and 1.3 blocks a game. He continued to improve in 2005–06, before getting injured in January, averaging 14.5 points and 7 rebounds, and ranking in the top 10 in the NBA in field goal percentage (54.142), blocks (2.19), and steals per game (2.44). Since the NBA began counting blocks as a statistic in 1973, only two other players (David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon) in league history have averaged over 2.0 blocks and 2.0 steals per game in a single season.
Wallace is known for his somewhat reckless style of play that leads to his frequent injuries.[1] For this, he has earned the nickname "Crash".[2] He missed a total of 39 games in his first two years with the Bobcats, but his energetic and sometimes dangerous behavior that may have caused his injuries was also what contributed to his gaudy defensive stats. Coach Bernie Bickerstaff said of Wallace "Gerald can only play one way and be effective. Energy -- that's his game." In 2006, Wallace attempted to refine his game in order to avoid being injured, and as a result his numbers suffered. The first month of the season, Wallace had only five total blocks (an average of 0.3 per game) and his averages were down across the statline from 2005. Wallace improved his play in the second month of the season, but he went down with a separated shoulder in a December game against the Indiana Pacers. When he returned, Wallace continued his fine play finishing the season averaging 18.1 points, 7.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block in 72 games.
Wallace appeared opposite Tim Duncan in the March 2008 "SLAM-UP" centerfold for SLAM Magazine.
Wallace suffered a Grade 3 concussion on February 23, 2008 after taking an unintentional elbow to the face from Sacramento's Mikki Moore.[2] It was his fourth concussion in as many seasons with the Bobcats.[2] It was not clear when he would return,[2] although Grade 3 concussions are defined by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons as ones that "involve post-traumatic amnesia for more than 24 hours or unconsciousness for more than five minutes. Players who sustain this grade of brain injury should be sidelined for at least one month, after which they can return to play if they are asymptomatic for one week."[3] He returned later on in the season, finishing the year with a new career high in points, assists, and minutes.
He suffered a partially collapsed lung and a fractured rib after being flagrantly fouled while driving for a layup by Los Angeles Lakers' Andrew Bynum on January 27, 2009 and was forced to miss seven games. He also was unable to fly and instead crossed the United States en route back to Charlotte by bus.[4]

Got it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Wallace

You gotta like the young mans game

KB

 

[bajaden]

After further research I think I am wrong, heres why

Charlotte would have a Salary Cap in its first season equal to 66% of the Salary Cap applicable to the rest of the league and a Salary Cap in its second season equal to 75% of the Salary Cap applicable to the rest of the league.

Got it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NBA_Expansion_Draft

KB

Glad you finally figured it out. Taking Webb would have been finanical sucide.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Financial suicide or not, exposing Webber to the expansion draft would have set a horrible precedent, and pretty much ensured that nobody worthwhile would ever want to sign here ever again. A team like Sacramento is playing "with one hand tied behind their backs," relative to large market teams, to begin with, and can't afford the sort of bad press that would have come with exposing the face of your franchise to expansion.

 

[Arby's Roast Beef]

I'm a huge proponent of athletic players, so my stance on this is obvious. At that age, when he has yet to reach his athletic peak, we should have kept him.

 

[Prince_XY]

This statement confuses me a bit. Do you not think that being a "good player on a bad team" should be taken into consideration when comparing the relative value of different players?

That only applies when we talk about our current good players.

 

[Kingster]

Financial suicide or not, exposing Webber to the expansion draft would have set a horrible precedent, and pretty much ensured that nobody worthwhile would ever want to sign here ever again. A team like Sacramento is playing "with one hand tied behind their backs," relative to large market teams, to begin with, and can't afford the sort of bad press that would have come with exposing the face of your franchise to expansion.

Starting from that proposition is just like negotiating against yourself. I'd prefer to test that thesis rather than accept it as a fait accompli.

 

[bajaden]

Starting from that proposition is just like negotiating against yourself. I'd prefer to test that thesis rather than accept it as a fait accompli.

What did you call me?