C demarcus cousins
PG serge ibaka
SF rudy gay
SG thabo sefalosha
PG isaiah thomas
if you give me that starting lineup, i roll with it ten times out of ten. but when exactly are these skilled veteran defensive stoppers at PF and SG arriving in sacramento?
if you give me willie cauley-stein or noah vonleh in the draft, then i feel more comfortable with the kings frontcourt rotation than i do now, but only marginally so. cauley-stein and vonleh are gonna be rookies, and neither project out as anthony davis-level rim protectors. it will take them time to adapt to the speed of the nba. and then there's still the issue of needing defensive help at SG. the kings won't find one in free agency if they re-sign thomas. they'll be quite capped out. that leaves the trade block, and while they have a couple pieces with value, who knows what kind of return they'll net in any given trade?
if thomas had another year on his contract to evaluate his level of play alongside cousins, gay, and the potential of adding better-fitting role players, then i'd be more inclined to hang onto him. unfortunately, that timetable isn't a reality, and you yourself have admitted that, with thomas starting at PG, there is simply much less flexibility in the kind of roleplayers the kings need to acquire to find success with a trio of cousins/gay/thomas. i just really don't like the idea of re-signing thomas to big money without knowing how successful PDA would be in filling those clear defensive needs at PF and SG...
edit: of course, the "wait and see" approach could work out fine if the kings can retain thomas' services at a reasonable value. then there's flexibility in returning him to a sixth man's role if he doesn't work out. but it's quite a gamble with the salary cap if the kings ink thomas to $8-10 million per and then realize that he simply won't work as a long term starter...
Here's the issue though. I'd agree with you, if we had Gay signed long-term, along with Cousins. People for some reason, have been acting like it's a foregone conclusion that Gay stays here long-term. I don't think it is at all. And while I think he's enjoyed playing with us, he's also playing well enough to get teams interested in him again. And we don't have the RFA rights on Gay either. Do we really want to have to pay him 5/70 for him to stay here? Do we trust his play with us, in such a limited sample to max him again? Does he even want to resign?
What CAN'T happen is we find ourselves without Gay and IT and Cousins is all by himself again.