[Grades] Kings v. Nets 3/01/17

"Play" of the game?

  • Kings muster up effort in the last minute

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  • Total voters
    35

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#61
Over/Under 10.5 wins next year, Who takes the over?
Nobody at all is stepping up on this? 10 wins is historically bad. The NBA instituted the 80-game season in 1961 (and bumped to 81 then 82 games later in the decade). Since the advent of the 80 game season, in 55 seasons, the under on 10.5 wins has been done TWICE.

Without even knowing who is going to be on the team, I'll take the over.
 
#62
Nobody at all is stepping up on this? 10 wins is historically bad. The NBA instituted the 80-game season in 1961 (and bumped to 81 then 82 games later in the decade). Since the advent of the 80 game season, in 55 seasons, the under on 10.5 wins has been done TWICE.

Without even knowing who is going to be on the team, I'll take the over.
Same. Over.
 
#63
Some mics picked up Joerger saying "lets just get this sh** over with" when he was about to meet with the media. Joerger's been a winner for a long long time in this league, He is not Brett Brown where this is his first coaching gig. He is a competitor and losing effects him personally, I'm sure he does not like the losses piling up under his watch regardless of personnel.

I think it was assumed that Joerger was 100% on board with dumping Cousins, but with this organization we have learned that you can't even assume common sense. Joergers the last nice piece we have left it would be shame if we lost him in all of this. I really really hope for this teams sake that he is in the loop and has a strong voice in all personnel matters to boot.
 
#64
Nobody at all is stepping up on this? 10 wins is historically bad. The NBA instituted the 80-game season in 1961 (and bumped to 81 then 82 games later in the decade). Since the advent of the 80 game season, in 55 seasons, the under on 10.5 wins has been done TWICE.

Without even knowing who is going to be on the team, I'll take the over.
I think some of the Vet guys might be gone and it will be all youth. The Nets just hit 10 last night they might get to 12 by the end of the year. They have had a healthy Brook Lopez and earlier on had Bogdan Bodonovich playing decent that helped them to some wins, those two guys alone are more talented than any of the guys we may have next year. The Nets also play in a weaker eastern conference.

10.5 is a low number but assuming its a full on youth movement ala sixers I would still go under on that.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#65
Well as I said it's all about probability. They have a clean slate building a winning team from scratch. They have 7 years of losing with DeMarcus. That's 7 years of ineptitude that you're counting on to magically turn into a winning team. If I need to place my faith somewhere it's going to the unknown rather than the known failure. Again, it's also about the situation, where I don't see a feasible way for the team to improve enough when we are winning around 35-40 wins a season. I was personally less inclined to trade Cousins once there was a higher likelihood that we would/could extend him, as that would buy us more time.

But beyond a simple matter of proven vs unproven, I am more inclined to believe that this FO will hopefully mess around less if they finally get to play the style that Vivek dreams of. We were never going to be a team that played the way the owner wanted with Cousins. That sucks, but it is what it is. As I've said, I also think it's just easier to win in today's league when your star is a guard rather than a big man with ref issues. Put it this way, the FO clearly didn't want to build around Cousins, so rather than extending him, having two more years of 8th seed appearances at best and hence lower draft picks, you bite the bullet now and at least have 2-3 years of assets to show for it. I am making a lot of assumptions about FAs and whatnot, but I think they are reasonable assumptions and no less likely than us finding the magic formula to becoming a good team without actually adding any high level talent. Even if Cousins goes on to actually make the playoffs it's not a reflection of what we could have done, because we couldn't have gotten Anthony Davis, or John Wall or whoever it is. At this point KingsfanGER will come in and say "what a lazy excuse, if you can't sign good FAs then your GM must be bad!", to which my response is, yeah, so do you want to fire the GM again or do you consider the hand that you're dealt and try to play your cards as best as you can?

We now have to turn our hopes to the draft. We have drafted some gems before, so we just have to hope that we will do so again. As Baja says, most of the top players were drafted, so we shouldn't be looking down on it. We've drafted Cousins, Tyreke, IT, Whiteside, and could have drafted Klay, Kawhi etc. Could have, as in we mechanically, feasibly could have done so, but simply chose not to (much to the FO's discredit). Meanwhile, what has free agency brought us?
So, instead of believing that the team was going to "magically" turn itself around, you believe that it is more likely that whatever Unobtanium we receive in the draft will "magically" make the Kings better in the long run? Boy, that Unobtanium must be something else!

One thing that I will stipulate: Ranadivé's Warriors fetish is indeed detrimental to the success of the Kings. Where my mileage may vary from yours is that I think that Ranadivé's obsession with them and their style of play is idiotic, partially because I find their style of play itself to be repugnant to watch, but mostly because I don't think that Golden State's success can be duplicated by anybody else. Even if the Kings manage to find the next Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson (which they won't), what makes the Warriors' system work is that they have those two guys, and Draymond Green. There isn't another Draymond Green out there.

And let me come back to this, for a minute:

As I've said, I also think it's just easier to win in today's league when your star is a guard rather than a big man with ref issues.
I don't**. And this is why, in the past, I have accused analytics guys of being lazy and unimaginative. Every time I listen to guys like Daryl Morey talk about basketball, I keep thinking of that line that Ultron had in the second Avengers movie: "The most versatile substance on the planet, and they use it to make a frisbee..." Advanced analytics may be the most powerful, most versatile tool in the history of sports science. You mean to tell me that some of the most intelligent minds in the business have had access to this resource for a decade and a half, and the only thing that they've managed to use it for is to figure out that three is worth more than two? Really?

It's hard for me to believe that most analytics guys don't have an inherent bias against big men, because it seems to me that, you should be able to use analytics to figure out how to build a winning team around any kind of player. This is what a player can do, this is what he can't do. This is what kind of system you need to play in order to win with this guy, these are the kind of players we need to win in that system. Am I expected to believe that that wouldn't work? I certainly hope that I'm not expected to believe that it had already been tried?


** Well, maybe not so much the ref issues.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#66
I think some of the Vet guys might be gone and it will be all youth. The Nets just hit 10 last night they might get to 12 by the end of the year. They have had a healthy Brook Lopez and earlier on had Bogdan Bodonovich playing decent that helped them to some wins, those two guys alone are more talented than any of the guys we may have next year. The Nets also play in a weaker eastern conference.

10.5 is a low number but assuming its a full on youth movement ala sixers I would still go under on that.
Even I don't think that the Kings would be that bad; I'd put the over/under at 17.5, and take the under.
 
#67
It's not so much that I don't care. Of course there's a distinction, but at the end of the day losses are losses if you aren't going anywhere year after year. Teams don't edge their way up 2 games by 2 games until they're contenders. They usually make pretty significant jumps. What I cannot understand is how fans here are ok with rooting for a 30 win team year after year. We might have sneaked into the playoffs this year, but it would be more about every other team sucking than us being promising. Like I said, we lost to Philly before in previous years and that was with Cousins on the team when we weren't trying to rebuild, so I don't see why a loss to the Nets when we are tanking/rebuilding should be that much of a disaster. We're throwing a bunch of guys out who have never been more than 5th options, not having had much practice together, and people are being snide that we aren't as good now as we were with Cousins (and again, that was a 35 win team, not even a .500 team). Maybe that is in response to some silly fans who conveyed the idea that trading Cousins would make us a contender overnight, but I have never personally held such an absurd stance. Simply put, I don't see a point in crying over spilt milk, particularly when the milk wasn't even good to begin with. We might have had a goose that would lay a golden egg, but for 6+ years all we got was rotten eggs.

As to whether I truly believe that we will be better, I can tell you that I don't know if we have potential stars. The sample size is too small and it's too early to say. I mock Vlade for saying Papa is gonna be an all star, but only time will tell. Do I trust in the FO to draft and develop a young team? Not exactly, there's no real evidence to base my opinion on. What I do know is that I definitely DON'T trust them to build a winner around Cousins. I don't trust top FAs to sign here, and I don't trust our odds of drafting a ready to play second star when we are drafting around 13-16 every year, which is where we would be for the next few years. I am inclined to believe that Cousins would simply implode at that point from the lack of winning. I am also inclined to believe that the ownership and therefore the FO is more inclined towards playing up tempo, and I am also inclined to believe that it is easier to win in the league today doing so than playing through a a temperamental big (who they will not give the benefit of the whistle as often). Given all of that, I think that the best way forward was to trade Cousins and rebuild, so that we would at least have a potential path forward. I'm no draft expert, so I can only hope they don't screw it up.

We gave Cousins 6 years to win 35 games. You can be mad at the FO for making us have to wait even longer, but to that I would ask why be angry now and not 5 years ago? These young guys are probably going to be here for awhile, so I'm going to root for them.
Thank you for detailed response. I think I understand where you are coming from.

I agree that losing to the Nets by itself is not a big deal and it is too soon to tell what we have in the youngster department. If you just look at the w/l it looks the same as the last year and getting top FA to sign here is a big challenge.
I agree with the style of game being encouraged by the NBA (as of now) not being friendly to the Cuz related teams.

I guess that the main difference are expectations.

If one is looking at the contender, I agree that it would be difficult with Cuz to build that over the next 5-6 years including some of the reasons you listed.

I am not looking for contender. I would be happy for the next 5-6 years if Kings are just your average 2nd tier playoff team without realistic chance to win it all and reaching conference finals being the realistic peak (Wizards, Hawks, Pacers, Bulls, Pistions, Grizzlies, Thunder, maybe Jazz level).

There was a clear cut at the beginning of this season between what was going on for 5 previous years from the stability point of view.
I strongly think that while culture is important, without stability you cannot have culture or any success in NBA.
I think that with Cuz and what appeared FO stability in Joerger and Divac we are on the track. That stability was not there until 6 months ago and I truly believe that Karl-Cuz would never work. Right before All-star, we were 4-2 in February and 8-6 after the quite difficult start of January.
Mid-February to mid-March was the period that some of us were pointing since the beginning of this season as a stretch that will show whether we are on the right track to be basketball relevant or not.
Now we will never know.

What is maddening is that this is not the first time we hit the reset button when I saw that stars might be aligning.

I had exactly 3 times feeling we are on the right track to the relevance (not contender necessary, just NBA relevance) and intrigued by the future.
How will Cuz and Reke fit together when Cuz was drafted, can Malone's success in his second year be sustainable, and this year when there was something that looked like a long term plan to me.
All three have in common that they were squished right at the moment when we could have gotten the definite answer, and there was absolutely no need to do it nor the moves made us better.

I can root for 30 win team when almost every game is exciting and outcome is unpredictable. That is fun, W/L be damned.
How can you root for the team that does not even provide the fighting fun?

On the rebuild front and hopes.
Hoping that Buddy and one extra pick from this draft will somehow make us better than with Cuz is something I do not see happening.
T-Pups have Wiggins/LaVinne/Dieng playing together for almost 3 seasons and with KAT for almost 2 seasons.
We do not need a competent draft, we need now a miracle and a ton of luck just to have T-Pups level talent, and three years later T-Pups are not at the level we were with Cuz two weeks ago.
 
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#68
Some mics picked up Joerger saying "lets just get this sh** over with" when he was about to meet with the media. Joerger's been a winner for a long long time in this league, He is not Brett Brown where this is his first coaching gig. He is a competitor and losing effects him personally, I'm sure he does not like the losses piling up under his watch regardless of personnel.

I think it was assumed that Joerger was 100% on board with dumping Cousins, but with this organization we have learned that you can't even assume common sense. Joergers the last nice piece we have left it would be shame if we lost him in all of this. I really really hope for this teams sake that he is in the loop and has a strong voice in all personnel matters to boot.
If Joerger is on board with all personell decisions, why did we waive his leader?
In his Interview he insisted that talent wins not culture.
I think we have to consider the possibility that Joerger is not that involved into the personell decisions.
Of course barring an epic meltdown by Joerger we will never know.

But if Vlade gives himself a 2 year deadline, it's very likely that Joerger has only 1 year of job security left. If we arent successful in a way Vlade needs it to keep his job, he might use every option he has left to turn the team around and one option is to hire a new Coach.

Shots have already been fired by media guys, I assume that's who this Koz is, and when the losses keep piling up Joerger's support within the media and the organisation might crumble.

We have to remember that Vlade Sold the team to Joerger as a team with the major pieces already in place....
 
#69
If Joerger is on board with all personell decisions, why did we waive his leader?
In his Interview he insisted that talent wins not culture.
I think we have to consider the possibility that Joerger is not that involved into the personell decisions.
Of course barring an epic meltdown by Joerger we will never know.

But if Vlade gives himself a 2 year deadline, it's very likely that Joerger has only 1 year of job security left. If we arent successful in a way Vlade needs it to keep his job, he might use every option he has left to turn the team around and one option is to hire a new Coach.

Shots have already been fired by media guys, I assume that's who this Koz is, and when the losses keep piling up Joerger's support within the media and the organisation might crumble.

We have to remember that Vlade Sold the team to Joerger as a team with the major pieces already in place....
Jim kozamor. Use to work for KHTK. Now works for Comcast sports net. Does the pre and post game shows with Doug Christie.
 
#70
If Joerger is on board with all personell decisions, why did we waive his leader?
In his Interview he insisted that talent wins not culture.
I think we have to consider the possibility that Joerger is not that involved into the personell decisions.
Of course barring an epic meltdown by Joerger we will never know.

But if Vlade gives himself a 2 year deadline, it's very likely that Joerger has only 1 year of job security left. If we arent successful in a way Vlade needs it to keep his job, he might use every option he has left to turn the team around and one option is to hire a new Coach.

Shots have already been fired by media guys, I assume that's who this Koz is, and when the losses keep piling up Joerger's support within the media and the organisation might crumble.

We have to remember that Vlade Sold the team to Joerger as a team with the major pieces already in place....
Hmm sounds familiar. Kings gm sells some bs story about what the kings are, what direction they're going, and who will take them there. After "person x" signs, gm then gets rid of an important piece of the selling point and the Kings spiral downward piling up losses.
 
#71
Hmm sounds familiar. Kings gm sells some bs story about what the kings are, what direction they're going, and who will take them there. After "person x" signs, gm then gets rid of an important piece of the selling point and the Kings spiral downward piling up losses.
exactly. The kings have a track record of doing this so it is definitely a worry.
 
#72
Actually, the Kings have a much stronger SG corps than they did before they traded Demarcus & Omri (but Omri had been out basically the whole season, so there's zero difference in recent games).
Which means, the Kings added Tyreke Evans (who this board has slobbered over for years, wishing they had him over our interminably-unproductive and unreliable SG's), and one of the top-ranked SG's of the draft, and only lost Boogie and cranky punk Matt Barnes who was supposedly so useless and damaging that they waived him.... and they instantly became the worst team in the league........ by a LONG SHOT.

And it's not even close.
They were playing at home..... with rest.... shot 50% from 3, and the Nets didn't even have to try that hard to beat them.
The Nets (losers of 16 straight games!) rested Brook Lopez (29 minutes) AND Jeremy Lin (19 minutes) and won going away!
There were more missed layups (by both teams) that I can remember seeing in an NBA game.

Someone needs to make a meme about Grant Napear's proclamation that he would seriously trade Demarcus for nothing, and bring it up to him every single game that the reality of the Kings situation proves him wrong.
Can I assume then that you didn't like the trade? Trade's done, so let's move on.
 
#73
Nobody at all is stepping up on this? 10 wins is historically bad. The NBA instituted the 80-game season in 1961 (and bumped to 81 then 82 games later in the decade). Since the advent of the 80 game season, in 55 seasons, the under on 10.5 wins has been done TWICE.

Without even knowing who is going to be on the team, I'll take the over.
Remember Airball 1

Motta

1-40?
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#74
... What is maddening is that this is not the first time we hit the reset button when I saw that stars might be aligning.

I had exactly 3 times feeling we are on the right track to the relevance (not contender necessary, just NBA relevance) and intrigued by the future.
How will Cuz and Reke fit together when Cuz was drafted, can Malone's success in his second year be sustainable, and this year when there was something that looked like a long term plan to me.
All three have in common that they were squished right at the moment when we could have gotten the definite answer, and there was absolutely no need to do it nor the moves made us better...
And that's the Hield™ of it all, to me. All the aborted attempts: every time it looks like we may be headed in the right direction, the ownership and/or management get cold feet, and rage quit in mid-game, without letting it play out long enough to be able to say definitively whether it would have worked or not, just because they didn't get the immediate turnaround that they were expecting. And then, they turn around and cite their own rage quit behavior as evidence for why the player hasn't made the team a winner.
 

dude12

Hall of Famer
#75
Koz dropping straight fire on Carmichael daves show this morning.

He called out joeger for being "snippy" and having a bad attitude during press conferences. Said he's seen it at multiple PC (I concur with koz) and compared it to Demarcus scowling and sulking his way through this entire season with the exception of 2 times that koz can remember. He said that a bad franchise, this franchise, cannot afford to come out with attitude toward the press or fans. Popovich can afford it. He's won championships and has built up the good will. The kings haven't. He said locally and nationally, the kings don't have a good rep at all.
Koz also said if the Kings need a reality check, walk around downtown. Koz said he sees an alarming amount of warrior shirts and hats all over town. This isn't a warriors town. This is a Kings town.

I call BS. Media wants people to behave a certain way. I think a coach or player has the right to be himself within boundaries. Joerger has not crossed any boundary. I don't know if I'm more disappointed in the local media or the team. Bottom line is that Koz needs to pull his head out of his arse. Dump him along with Napear.
 

dude12

Hall of Famer
#76
Nobody at all is stepping up on this? 10 wins is historically bad. The NBA instituted the 80-game season in 1961 (and bumped to 81 then 82 games later in the decade). Since the advent of the 80 game season, in 55 seasons, the under on 10.5 wins has been done TWICE.

Without even knowing who is going to be on the team, I'll take the over.
Does it really matter? It will suck no matter what.
 
#77
Some mics picked up Joerger saying "lets just get this sh** over with" when he was about to meet with the media. Joerger's been a winner for a long long time in this league, He is not Brett Brown where this is his first coaching gig. He is a competitor and losing effects him personally, I'm sure he does not like the losses piling up under his watch regardless of personnel.

I think it was assumed that Joerger was 100% on board with dumping Cousins, but with this organization we have learned that you can't even assume common sense. Joergers the last nice piece we have left it would be shame if we lost him in all of this. I really really hope for this teams sake that he is in the loop and has a strong voice in all personnel matters to boot.
He said that on the sideline when there was a foul with 3 seconds remaining. Not when he was sitting down with the press.
 

dude12

Hall of Famer
#78
The likelihood is that those currently in charge...Joerger, Vlade, Catanella, etc...will not be here when we "turn" the corner. The odds are great they will be gone. This is what happened when you traded Cousins, 40 something games into the Joerger stint. They just can't get it right....seemingly ever.
 
#79
If Joerger is on board with all personell decisions, why did we waive his leader?
In his Interview he insisted that talent wins not culture.
I think we have to consider the possibility that Joerger is not that involved into the personell decisions.
Of course barring an epic meltdown by Joerger we will never know.

But if Vlade gives himself a 2 year deadline, it's very likely that Joerger has only 1 year of job security left. If we arent successful in a way Vlade needs it to keep his job, he might use every option he has left to turn the team around and one option is to hire a new Coach.

Shots have already been fired by media guys, I assume that's who this Koz is, and when the losses keep piling up Joerger's support within the media and the organisation might crumble.

We have to remember that Vlade Sold the team to Joerger as a team with the major pieces already in place....
I didn't even consider this a possibility because when you have a good coach in this league you give him whatever he wants as GM, well thats what competent teams do.
 
#82
So to summarize you're okay with losing your just not OK with the way the kings are losing. And you would prefer the coach have a positive attitude about losing. Because it's important that we lose the right way. Have I got this right?
Yes. If they are going to lose, and they will, no point wasting those minutes on sub par veterans instead of developing the youth. That should be known to the coach. If it's not I expect the FO to step in
 
#83
This paragraph intrigues me: why should anyone who doesn't believe that an organization can build a winning team around a player with Top-10 talent believe that the same organization will do any better building a winning team without one?
Do better with possibly two top ten picks, Hield, and possibly a top three pick next year than a Cousins making 40 mil who is becoming a perimeter oriented 270 pounder keeping the team treadmil (possibly no picks this year and a treadmill pick next)?

It's not something that can be judged now but in 4 years

Team will suck now as the earth is round, might need to get used to it instead of banging your heads
 
#84
kingjatt - is there any video somewhere of the mics picking him up saying that? That'd be interesting to see....

Slim Citrus - totally agreed on your points, especially how Vivek's Dubs obsession is damaging.
Great Avengers 2 reference, too.

andjel - I am with you.
I don't need a contender to root for them. Simply being competitive in the league and not being a laughingstock would be a HUGE step up for this franchise. Furthermore, I think making personnel and planning decisions based on the target of a championship is counterproductive to getting there. In fact, any KF's who has uttered anything close to the phrase "We can't win a championship with X" needs to realize that kind of thinking is damaging. You can't realistically build a championship contender without first having a consistent winner and playoff team.

KingsfanGER - In hindsight, I guess it's obvious that Joerger wouldn't be on-board with trading Demarcus, especially since jettisoning Barnes was the next obvious step.
So I guess it's only a matter of time before Vlade and Vivek push out Joerger.
Wow - I really hope they are ready to take the full brunt of KF's wrath, because there will be noone else for people to take out their frustrations on and no way to hide, and with all the losing that's coming their way, there will be lots of frustrations to vent.
 
#85
I call BS. Media wants people to behave a certain way. I think a coach or player has the right to be himself within boundaries. Joerger has not crossed any boundary. I don't know if I'm more disappointed in the local media or the team. Bottom line is that Koz needs to pull his head out of his arse. Dump him along with Napear.
Can't compare koz to grant. I've watched almost all of joegers post game conferences and sometimes I've thought he's downright hostile. Even after good wins. All koz's point was the kings can't afford to show attitude to either the fans or the press. They don't have any good will. The franchise is in turmoil and they need to realize who they are. A poor franchise that needs to right the ship before the fans begins to bail on the team. Again, look to Santa Clara (49ers) to see how quick it can go very bad. Before you know it your playing in front of a half empty brand new stadium and you are the laughing stock of the sporting world.
 
#86
Joerger being pushed out or leaving would be a nightmare but Im hopeful that it does not come to that. His rotations and plays don't suggest a youth movement but again it may be for sake of lockerroom stability or him not wanting to throw the guys into the fire. Has he come out and been adament in his support for the recent moves?
 
#87
Can't compare koz to grant. I've watched almost all of joegers post game conferences and sometimes I've thought he's downright hostile. Even after good wins. All koz's point was the kings can't afford to show attitude to either the fans or the press. They don't have any good will. The franchise is in turmoil and they need to realize who they are. A poor franchise that needs to right the ship before the fans begins to bail on the team. Again, look to Santa Clara (49ers) to see how quick it can go very bad. Before you know it your playing in front of a half empty brand new stadium and you are the laughing stock of the sporting world.
Pretty close to that already.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#88
Do better with possibly two top ten picks, Hield, and possibly a top three pick next year than a Cousins making 40 mil who is becoming a perimeter oriented 270 pounder keeping the team treadmil (possibly no picks this year and a treadmill pick next)?

It's not something that can be judged now but in 4 years
That strikes me as entirely too convenient: what if the Kings are winning in four years for reasons that have nothing to do with the picks that they acquired from the Cousins trade? And what if they're still as bad as they are now? What if they're worse?

I kind of have a twofold objection to this line of thinking: first, as I think I've well established, I don't really believe in the "magic beans" draft gambit. And second, if it doesn't work (as I suspect that it won't), I don't have a high enough opinion of the proponents of this way of thinking to make the correlation between the trade, and the continued lack of success; I fully expect them to try and attribute the failure to something else. And, frankly, even if the Kings do become successful, are people really going to have the audacity to say that the trade worked out, if it takes another seven years?

That's why I feel like a timetable needs to be explicitly stated, whenever a blockbuster trade is made: I think that, when you trade a player with star talent, there should be a concrete window in which you are allowed to say that any post-trade success can reasonably be attributed to the trade itself. Mileage probably varies as to how many years that window should be, but I'm inclined to say no more than three.
 
#89
O

Oh we have found plenty of diamonds in the past few years, Cousins, Whiteside, IT and Seth Curry come to mind immediately. But when it came time for the organization to pull the trigger on keeping them, they either let them slip through their fingers or traded them for magic beans.

I hope things are different this time and the team helps develop the tallent that Skal has and they can keep him on the roster. But nothing in past decision making indicates to me that they will not either let him walk, or trade him for a draft pick and a shooting guard.
PG - IT
SG - Curry
SF - Gay
PF - Cuz
C - Whiteside

Yep and instead all we have is Gay with a torn achilles. You couldn't possibly screw it up this bad if you GM'd the team with your eyes closed.

I agree, Skal is the only positive thing coming out from this mess. I really love what I'm seeing from him, I can see potential. Maybe, for once, we found a diamond?

Then, a crazy question: considering how much they played this season, is Ingram so much better than Skal at this point?
I'm really hoping we found a diamond here. He has nearly everything going for him and his weaknesses are things that get easily corrected. His body will get stronger and his rookie mistakes should lessen with more playing time, more seasoning and getting more practice to build familiarity with his teammates. The shooting stroke is already there and will only improve. He has some post moves with a nice hook. He's showing toughness and tenacity when it comes to doing some of the dirty work inside. I don't expect him to be able to rebound like Cousins but he's already a much better rebounder than WCS.

I don't think we can quite compare Skal and Ingram yet because Ingram has been thrown to the wolves against the leagues best but we should be able to make a nice comparison by the end of the year if Skal gets a decent amount of playing time against legitimate players. Right now his per36 numbers are much better than Ingram's but there's also the small sample size and amount of garbage time minutes in there that can sway those stats.