Grades v. Celtics 12/28

[kennadog]

Crap, I think I accidentally voted for Beno Instead of Natt

Hard to go wrong, no matter who you voted for.

 

[Kingster]

I'm furious.

I've been looking forward to being in Sacramento in January ever since being in Vegas for the summer league so that I could swing it to watch the Kings play twice at home. (Against Miami and Dallas) I finished purchasing tickets to the Miami game yesterday. I had planned on picking up tickets to the Dallas game in the next few days, but now I can't justify it. I wish I could get my money back for the Miami game as I didn't pay to watch Mikki Moore start the game and steal our future's minutes.
I expected for Boston to just kill us tonight because they just lost 2 in a row and we are not a good team.
In fact, if it meant Spencer and JT starting and getting 30+ minutes a night, and Donte & Bobby Brown getting 20+ minutes a night, I would accept going the rest of the season getting blown out by 20+ points a night.
I do not care about our record.
All I care about is that our young guys develop by playing with each other during meaningful minutes in the game.

For those of you who say, "Well, it's the Boston Celtics, and I don't want to see us have our Kids go out against the Champions and get crushed", I say that I disagree completely with that mindset.

Let me ask those who think like the above, "What does it say to the young guys when they know their coach doesn't have enough faith in them to produce by giving them meaningful minutes until after the team is down by 40 POINTS!?"

On League Pass it was Grant and Jerry who I was able to see tonight and one of them said something to the likes of, "Well, all the players have to look at this score and then look in the mirror realize that each one of them contributed to the poor outing."

To that I say, "Ridiculous."
If you are Spencer you simply say, "It's not my fault. See what happens when you start Mikki Moore? We were down by 4 when I came in the 1st, and were only down 6 when I was taken out. The next time I got into the game we were down by 30."
If you are JT you say, "I played a total of 6 minutes in the 1st half and it wasn't until we were down by 40 at the end of the 3rd when you finally let me play significant minutes."
If you are Donte you say, "I got put into the game for a single minute, and then didn't get back in until we were down by 40."

How can we expect the Kids to grow and develop if they are not put into a situation to compete and struggle night in and night out? Watching the players on this team who have no future with the Kings get the majority of the minutes while getting embarrassed is just not acceptable.

I'm just plain disgusted with how Natt is handling this.

Well said. I think Natt didn't fully realize what everybody else seems to have realized - he isn't going to win with the vets, so why bother playing them? I think the vets made their worth to this team abundantly clear. One thing I did like with Natt is that he immediately yanked Beno after a clueless turnover in the first half. Then he proceeded to tell him why he took him out. Then he told Beno to, "Look at me" when he said it. I respect that.

 

[rhythmless]

can someone tell spencer hawes that he doesnt have to slip a screen EVERY single time? it would probably be nice to do something for your teammate, instead of looking to pop for a shot all the time.

mikki doesnt deserve the start, but i think hawes deserves some bench time.

 

[Bricklayer]

can someone tell spencer hawes that he doesnt have to slip a screen EVERY single time? it would probably be nice to do something for your teammate, instead of looking to pop for a shot all the time.

mikki doesnt deserve the start, but i think hawes deserves some bench time.

Spencer has the same problem in the post, where he doesn't understand that a large part of the value of a post player isn't in him scoring himself, its in him holding the ball, waiting for the defense to collapse, and then beating it with a pass. Specner, and Jason as well, have no saavy -- they re always in a rush to get theirs rather than waiting to set things and people up. Yiou would hope those sorts of things improve with experience, if they ever get any.

 

[kingsfan101]

Yiou would hope those sorts of things improve with experience, if they ever get any.

One also hopes that the coaching staff and the vets (particularly the $11M mentor) would be in their ears all the time.

 

[kingsfan101]

Two more thing I would add to Brick's list

At number 3

Letting RA leave. One of the worst decisions by the Maloofs. We are now paying 3 head coaches and hating each of them, while the winningest coach in our history, someone who wanted to stay here but we were stupid enough to let go, led his new team to a 22 game winning streak last year, and is doing fine right now too.

Rick's teams have traditionally had good chemistry and ball movement. Players like playing for him, and he has gotten most out of his players, including problem kids like Ron and Bonzi. While he wouldn't have been able to achieve any magic with this team, I doubt performance of the likes of Brad falls so much under his watch, that they completely obliterate their trade value.

At number 4

Samaki Walker's 3 at halftime in Game 4 of WCF

Some of us forget it due to Horry's shot at the buzzer, but this was equally cruel, particularly because it came after the buzzer. Had this been called correctly, Horry's shot might have been irrelevant.

Also, where do we rank the luck of running into Bavetta and company for game 6 of WCF?

 

[ESP47]

I think I'd move trading Webber up to #3. Even the gimpy Webber was better than the crap we got. Then with the Peja/Artest trade, this lineup would have been nice

PG - Bibby
SG - Bonzi
SF - Artest
PF - Webber
C - Miller
6th - Martin

Thats a highly effecient team. Instead we barely squeak into the 8th seed thanks to Artest's play at the end of the year and Bonzi gives us a glimmer of hope with the best 7 footer impersonation of his career. We would have made the playoffs for at least the next two years before Webber deteriorated. Plus we'd still at least have Barnes who turned out to be serviceable. Instead we got a half year of good play out of Skinner and K9 and two and a half feel good, yet accomplish nothing years out of Corliss. Not only that but our rebuilding would probably still be ahead of where we are now. We already had KMart. I guess we wouldn't have been able to Garcia (big deal) and Douby (who cares). Really I think that move might have set us back 5-6 years alone.