Just how good are the kings?

L

Lucivar

Prospect
Yes its 8 games in and the kings are 3-5 and people here are going wild, but i find myself wondering if its really justified. How is it that 4 games in when the kings were 3-1 everyone was excited but now everyone wants to fire PW. Well i was thinking that we should check to see if the hype or the dissapointment is justified either way by trying to compare the kings to the bad teams of the league.

first lets start with the team with the worse record so far, the clippers.

Baron Davis - Beno Udrih
Eric Gordon - Tyreke Evans
Ryan Gomez - Omri Casspi
Blake Griffin - Carl Landry
Chris Kaman - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

now, except maybe at the 2 with reke and gordon where perhaps reke has the edge, you can arguably say that the clips have an advantage in every positon. Now fine, you can claim that the clips are not playing up to their potential so lets look at a team or two that is said to not have as much potential, the t-wolves.

Johnny Flynn - Beno Udrih
Cory brewer - Tyreke Evans
Michael Beasley - Omri Casspi
Kevin Love - Carl Landry
Darko Milicic - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

again you can argue but of the top it seems the t. wolves are better at atleast 3 positions and imo have a better bench. One more the make my point? Lets look at the Sixers wich are a horrible team.

Jrue Holiday - Beno Udrih
Evan Turney - Tyreke Evans
Andre Iguedala - Omri Casspi
Elton Brand - Kevin Love
Hawes - Delambert / Cousins

Same conclusion really... We have reke, a role player or two, i guess cousins in 2-3 seasons and then nada... and thats against 3 of the worse teams in the leauge. Im not trying to be a spoil sport and i agree that this team has talent but at the moment, unless the kings start using that cap space they have, isn't it a bit exagerated to be frusturated at a 3-5 start?
 
You have to take into account the depth and big bodies we have in our front court which is a huge advantage.. i mean Hawes is starting for the sixers.
 
I'm certaintly not frustrated that the team is losing. I had reasonable expectations for them going into the season knowing that they're young and inexperienced. I am however frustrated at how they are losing. This team seems to run one play on offense--waiting for Evans to dribble and kick out. That's it. In the game against the Timberwolves, they would double Evans every time he tried to penetrate resulting in forced perimeter shots. And why the forced perimeter shots? The team drafted a player with the 5th pick who has the potential to be a very good ppost player, but night in and night out, Westphal ignores his abilities relying on Evans on each possession to create. Would it kill Westphal to add an inside presence to his team's arsenal?

Jason Thompson playing small forward? That makes no sense to me.

Carl Landry is a 6th man at best. He should not be starting because he is better coming off the bench anyways. I guess Westphal has found his new Ime Udoka.

Then theres the Donte Greene situation. How does a player go from starting in the first game to practically a ghost. If what he did off the court was so bad, suspend him and don't make it a distraction to the team.

All I expected this season was for the Kings to make progress, but this teams looks like a distant memory from last season.
 
Lucivar said:
Yes its 8 games in and the kings are 3-5 and people here are going wild, but i find myself wondering if its really justified. How is it that 4 games in when the kings were 3-1 everyone was excited but now everyone wants to fire PW. Well i was thinking that we should check to see if the hype or the dissapointment is justified either way by trying to compare the kings to the bad teams of the league.

first lets start with the team with the worse record so far, the clippers.

Baron Davis - Beno Udrih
Eric Gordon - Tyreke Evans
Ryan Gomez - Omri Casspi
Blake Griffin - Carl Landry
Chris Kaman - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

now, except maybe at the 2 with reke and gordon where perhaps reke has the edge, you can arguably say that the clips have an advantage in every positon. Now fine, you can claim that the clips are not playing up to their potential so lets look at a team or two that is said to not have as much potential, the t-wolves.

Johnny Flynn - Beno Udrih
Cory brewer - Tyreke Evans
Michael Beasley - Omri Casspi
Kevin Love - Carl Landry
Darko Milicic - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

again you can argue but of the top it seems the t. wolves are better at atleast 3 positions and imo have a better bench. One more the make my point? Lets look at the Sixers wich are a horrible team.

Jrue Holiday - Beno Udrih
Evan Turney - Tyreke Evans
Andre Iguedala - Omri Casspi
Elton Brand - Kevin Love
Hawes - Delambert / Cousins

Same conclusion really... We have reke, a role player or two, i guess cousins in 2-3 seasons and then nada... and thats against 3 of the worse teams in the leauge. Im not trying to be a spoil sport and i agree that this team has talent but at the moment, unless the kings start using that cap space they have, isn't it a bit exagerated to be frusturated at a 3-5 start?
Click to expand...

You are getting the wrong idea. Very few people here are really disappointed with our record. The disappointment is with how the team is playing on the court, how Westphal's rotations leave much to be desired etc, not about the Ws and Ls. For the record, I wasn't happy when we were 3-1 either. The team was not doing a good job on the court and was very lucky to be able to get back from huge deficits in the games we won. When we won we still didn't look like a team that was playing with a plan, unless the plan was get down by double digits and then try and win the game. IMO the only reason we won those games was because Landry and Omri managed to hit their shots and Garcia was playing well. It wasn't because we played good defence, or had good offensive sets. We played the same rubbish that we've been doing on the offensive end, only Landry and Omri actually hit their shots.

In basketball you need to hit shots to win. duh. But you'd like the shots taken to be of good quality and by good shooters. Landry iso jumpshot at the elbow is not a good quality shot by a good shooter.
 
Well, imo. On offense it begins with the point guard. We dont have any real pg's. I watched the rerun of the Kings-Suns game earlier today, paying particular attention to Tyreke. Multiple times he was simply dribbling for 10-15 seconds, hold his dribble, then make a pass. Now this is our point guard we are talking about, the one who is suppose to initiate and control our entire offense. I think Tyreke is in a constant quandry over whether he should be scoring or passing. This is some serious stuff, we cant just look at Tyreke and look the other way every time he botches a possession because he can make the highlight reel. We really need to start thinkning about if we want Tyreke, our #1 scoring option, to be the guy controlling the offense. It is not a single player issue, this is a team issue. Many are wondering why our offense looks confused and out of sync. Well, if Tyreke cant make up his mind about scoring or making a pass, how do you expect our other teammates to work together well? This is a bigger issue than most are giving it credit for. Tyreke is able to make plays due 90% to his threat as a scorer. Is that a point guard? Imagine Tyreke playing point guard, without his driving ability. Then you can call him a scrub because his play making skills are not impressive. As i said, offense starts at the point, and will only be as consistent and reliable as the one leading it.

Defensively, I cant say much except Dalembert alone has stepped our defense up from last year. We still need to protect the paint better. And we also need to stop playing man to man defense so intensely as our defense is getting stretched out, opening lanes and leaving wide open gaps to be exploited.
 
Lockehead said:
Well, imo. On offense it begins with the point guard. We dont have any real pg's. I watched the rerun of the Kings-Suns game earlier today, paying particular attention to Tyreke. Multiple times he was simply dribbling for 10-15 seconds, hold his dribble, then make a pass. Now this is our point guard we are talking about, the one who is suppose to initiate and control our entire offense. I think Tyreke is in a constant quandry over whether he should be scoring or passing. This is some serious stuff, we cant just look at Tyreke and look the other way every time he botches a possession because he can make the highlight reel. We really need to start thinkning about if we want Tyreke, our #1 scoring option, to be the guy controlling the offense. It is not a single player issue, this is a team issue. Many are wondering why our offense looks confused and out of sync. Well, if Tyreke cant make up his mind about scoring or making a pass, how do you expect our other teammates to work together well? This is a bigger issue than most are giving it credit for. Tyreke is able to make plays due 90% to his threat as a scorer. Is that a point guard? Imagine Tyreke playing point guard, without his driving ability. Then you can call him a scrub because his play making skills are not impressive. As i said, offense starts at the point, and will only be as consistent and reliable as the one leading it.

Defensively, I cant say much except Dalembert alone has stepped our defense up from last year. We still need to protect the paint better. And we also need to stop playing man to man defense so intensely as our defense is getting stretched out, opening lanes and leaving wide open gaps to be exploited.
Click to expand...

I agree. I was hoping we'd get Collison last year, would have been great. I'm thinking this next draft we try and get a solid distributing PG, and hope Tyreke gets better off the ball. IMO if he could become a great cutter i wouldnt care much about his 3 as long as he hits his midrange shots.
 
Lucivar said:
Yes its 8 games in and the kings are 3-5 and people here are going wild, but i find myself wondering if its really justified. How is it that 4 games in when the kings were 3-1 everyone was excited but now everyone wants to fire PW. Well i was thinking that we should check to see if the hype or the dissapointment is justified either way by trying to compare the kings to the bad teams of the league.

first lets start with the team with the worse record so far, the clippers.

Baron Davis - Beno Udrih
Eric Gordon - Tyreke Evans
Ryan Gomez - Omri Casspi
Blake Griffin - Carl Landry
Chris Kaman - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

now, except maybe at the 2 with reke and gordon where perhaps reke has the edge, you can arguably say that the clips have an advantage in every positon. Now fine, you can claim that the clips are not playing up to their potential so lets look at a team or two that is said to not have as much potential, the t-wolves.

Johnny Flynn - Beno Udrih
Cory brewer - Tyreke Evans
Michael Beasley - Omri Casspi
Kevin Love - Carl Landry
Darko Milicic - S. Delambert / D. Cousins

again you can argue but of the top it seems the t. wolves are better at atleast 3 positions and imo have a better bench. One more the make my point? Lets look at the Sixers wich are a horrible team.

Jrue Holiday - Beno Udrih
Evan Turney - Tyreke Evans
Andre Iguedala - Omri Casspi
Elton Brand - Kevin Love
Hawes - Delambert / Cousins

Same conclusion really... We have reke, a role player or two, i guess cousins in 2-3 seasons and then nada... and thats against 3 of the worse teams in the leauge. Im not trying to be a spoil sport and i agree that this team has talent but at the moment, unless the kings start using that cap space they have, isn't it a bit exagerated to be frusturated at a 3-5 start?
Click to expand...

This is not how you analyze basketball teams. To whit -- the team that jsut beat us:

Steve Nash > Beno Udrih
Jason Richardson < Tyreke Evans
Grant Hill = Omri Casspi
Hedo Turkoglu < Carl Landry
Robin Lopez < Dalmebert/Cousins

Woot! We better than the Suns! Not how it works. More to it than that.
 
Bricklayer said:
This is not how you analyze basketball teams. To whit -- the team that jsut beat us:

Steve Nash > Beno Udrih
Jason Richardson < Tyreke Evans
Grant Hill = Omri Casspi
Hedo Turkoglu < Carl Landry
Robin Lopez < Dalmebert/Cousins

Woot! We better than the Suns! Not how it works. More to it than that.
Click to expand...

I literally lmao'd at this. :rolleyes:
 
jpsls said:
I'm certaintly not frustrated that the team is losing. I had reasonable expectations for them going into the season knowing that they're young and inexperienced. I am however frustrated at how they are losing. This team seems to run one play on offense--waiting for Evans to dribble and kick out. That's it. In the game against the Timberwolves, they would double Evans every time he tried to penetrate resulting in forced perimeter shots. And why the forced perimeter shots? The team drafted a player with the 5th pick who has the potential to be a very good ppost player, but night in and night out, Westphal ignores his abilities relying on Evans on each possession to create. Would it kill Westphal to add an inside presence to his team's arsenal?

Jason Thompson playing small forward? That makes no sense to me.

Carl Landry is a 6th man at best. He should not be starting because he is better coming off the bench anyways. I guess Westphal has found his new Ime Udoka.

Then theres the Donte Greene situation. How does a player go from starting in the first game to practically a ghost. If what he did off the court was so bad, suspend him and don't make it a distraction to the team.

All I expected this season was for the Kings to make progress, but this teams looks like a distant memory from last season.
Click to expand...

Ditto.
 
If we stop playin all nba dead weight coughcough head, jackson, wright coughcough and start playin actual nba players and develop our youth we are a legit 0.50 team this year.
 
Bricklayer said:
This is not how you analyze basketball teams. To whit -- the team that jsut beat us:

Steve Nash > Beno Udrih
Jason Richardson < Tyreke Evans
Grant Hill = Omri Casspi
Hedo Turkoglu < Carl Landry
Robin Lopez < Dalmebert/Cousins

Woot! We better than the Suns! Not how it works. More to it than that.
Click to expand...


Of course not but its just to show some teams with worse records then the kings with players which imo are more talented, because to me, it was kinda ludacris that people would get so worked up about losing a few games and firing coaches just 8 games in. I do however agree that the playing style should change. At the moment its reke driving and 4 players watching him. now that wouldn't be so bad if you had some reliable shooters aka a peja or a dequan cook, kyle korver etc. type of players... but you dont. You have 3 bad shooters, beno who imo is a good midway shooter but threes aren't his best option and omri whos a very streaky shooter so by all accounts, I think the team isn't under achieving at all. When you take everything into consideration and the fact that we do get a good bunch of points up on the board, I think the team is on the right track. And by the way, how is it that everyone has started complaining abot JT so much? I remember last season everyone was saying that the man had no reason being on a basketball court and had bad b-ball iq and such. So he's playing as seconed SF because someone needs to back up omri and since donte is crossed out for some reason we don't know, not many other players do make sence... not saying that JT is a good option but hes only player JT as Sf on about two games and for a period of like 10 minutes against a strong player like beasley which we all saw that no one could defend... Just saying
 
Its about the organization and chemistry the players have... playing by maximizing players strengths equally... Paper Talent usually extends to wins only until a certain extent
 
Well how good are they? Right now, not very good at all. Their games aren't even competitive anymore. Until we see that same fight from last year were not going to win many games. Not that I expect us to anyway.
 
Bricklayer said:
This is not how you analyze basketball teams. To whit -- the team that jsut beat us:

Steve Nash > Beno Udrih
Jason Richardson < Tyreke Evans
Grant Hill = Omri Casspi
Hedo Turkoglu < Carl Landry
Robin Lopez < Dalmebert/Cousins

Woot! We better than the Suns! Not how it works. More to it than that.
Click to expand...

You can't compare young teams and experienced teams in that way. Experience of Hill and Nash makes them so much better.
 
Its foolish to compare teams this way.

In every win we have had to come back from 14 or so points. We havent really deserved to win any of them. Thats not how you're supposed to play .. Like someone else said, its NOT the record, its how we play on the court, and how the coach is using our players.
 
In a way its sort of an abstract arguement. The Kings are building for the future and in my opinion have the talent on board to project to being a very competitive team in the future. So at this point in time Cousins may not be as good as Kaman, or many of the other centers in the league. But in a year of two, he may be one of the best or better centers in the league. I'd certainly take Beno over Flynn right now. So far Flynn hasn't proven anything. Don't get me wrong. I like Flynn, but at the moment Beno is the better player.

The point is that your comparing a team thats made up of very young players to teams that for the most part have been together for some time. Kaman is entering his 6th or 7th year in the league. He's an all star center and he should be better than our guys right now. So I guess I don't see the point of this. Were young and there are a lot of teams at the moment better than we are. So whats changed that we didn't know coming into the season. No one expects us to be good right now. I'm sure there are some delusional people out there that envisioned a championship when we went 2 and 1 on our road trip.

When I first looked at the schedule I thought we had a chance to win at least 2 or our first 3 games. If we got really lucky, maybe all three. Hard to do on the road though. Coming home I thought we had a chance to win our home opener. I chalked up Memphis as a loss and the Lakers as a loss. That would have brought us to 3 and 3. I had us beating Minny and losing to the Suns. So for the most part our record is close to what I expected. Not what I hoped for. That falls into another catagory. So I'm not that disappointed in the record. I'm disappointed in how we're playing.

As far as comparing player to player as a way of determining how good a team is, it doesn't work. Looks good on paper, but it simply doesn't work. To many intangibles. If it really worked the Heat would be undefeated right now and the Hornets would 3 and 4. As they say, thats why you have to play the games.
 
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I don't think that anyone's going to dispute that in terms of sheer results and impact, Tyreke and Dalembert are our two best players as of now. Said that before the season, and it's clearly the case now. The rest is a real crapshoot--Cousins really ranks highly with me as well, but immaturity in his game and his attitude is causing a real learning curve with him as of now, although that's to be expected given what we knew pre-draft, frankly. Whiteside also ranked really well, but he's not playing. So that means Casspi's our third best player, and while he's not a bad third option for most teams at all he's also quite disgruntled as we all know, and could be primed for a regression a la Fernandez because of that. JT, our 4th best last year, is in the real doghouse, and frankly might be better as a cog player in a playoff team at this point than for a team like us still trying to find our identity. Udrih is a stopgap PG option, Donte Greene has talent but hasn't put it together in terms of impact, and Landry had already started regressing quite severely when he joined us last season. The rest (Head, Wright, Jackson) are purely fodder.

So really, while I thought that internal improvements would even have us fighting for the 8th seed prior to the season (boy, was I wrong), I didn't take into account the immaturity and growing pains our team still suffers from. One can make the case that we are underachieving relative to our talent level, as Evans-Dalembert-Cousins-Casspi-JT would be a huge lineup and an intimidating starting five, and Udrih and Whiteside I believe would've been decent backup players as well. But it's not worked out that way. The good news is we have an offensive guy (Evans) and defensive guy (Dalembert/Whiteside?) to build off of, but our team is in such limbo right now it can just go in many different directions. There's quite a bit of talent all-around, but it's really not been harnessed optimally.
 
This reminds me of the story Jerry Reynolds tells of back in the day when Danny Ainge joined the Kings. Danny Said (And I paraphrase) "Coach I think I know why we are not very good." At which point Jerry said "Why Danny?" Ainge said "I'm your best player, and when I was with the Celtics I was the 3rd or 4th best player."

Any guesses why Landry does not look as good on the Kings as he did on the Rockets? If your answer is less veteran talent you are correct.

Also the other night when Tyreke fouled out the Kings looked helpless on the offensive end. Tyreke is the only "Go to option". I think if the Kings would work on posting up Cousins that would develop a 2nd "Go to guy".

The Kings are real young and this is going to take time.

The last thing we need right now are wholesale changes in players or coaches.

KB
 
King Baller said:
This reminds me of the story Jerry Reynolds tells of back in the day when Danny Ainge joined the Kings. Danny Said (And I paraphrase) "Coach I think I know why we are not very good." At which point Jerry said "Why Danny?" Ainge said "I'm your best player, and when I was with the Celtics I was the 3rd or 4th best player."

Any guesses why Landry does not look as good on the Kings as he did on the Rockets? If your answer is less veteran talent you are correct.

Also the other night when Tyreke fouled out the Kings looked helpless on the offensive end. Tyreke is the only "Go to option". I think if the Kings would work on posting up Cousins that would develop a 2nd "Go to guy".

The Kings are real young and this is going to take time.

The last thing we need right now are wholesale changes in players or coaches.

KB
Click to expand...

Couldnt agree more with you... Im against a coach change this early, but Id take a look on adding another veteran talent to our core....
 
I'm not sure adding players is the best idea. I kind of feel like our stumbling and bumbling (thanks clyde) on the court is due in part to the roster moves we made over the summer.

I mean they got rid of Jon Brockman for no reason, and then they refused to resign Ime Udoka just so they could sign on Antoine "DUI" Wright. I thought the front office would prioritize keeping these guys together to show some loyalty and to give the young guys some stability. Instead, GP made his annual stupid signings.
 
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Arby's Roast Beef said:
Udrih is a stopgap PG option,
Click to expand...
Sometimes I wonder about the ability of Kings fans to discern reality from fantasy.

Look at Udrih's #'s, people - he's at least the 3rd best King, and (I think) he's shooting the best from the field for guards, and is best from the FT line.
He's AVERAGING
PPG RPG APG TO FT% FG%
14.6 3.6 5.6 1.5 .850 .485

What is with KF that undervalues some players (Udrih) while way overrating others (JT)?
 
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Bricklayer said:
You may want to check your calendar -- believe it or not we survived Y2K just fine.

THIS decade we've got:

Grant Hill: 27.4min 11.0pts 6.5reb 1.9ast
Omri Casspi: 28.3min 11.5pts 3.6reb 1.1ast
Click to expand...

Those stats don't support your point. Like a previous post stated, experience alone makes these guys so much better than ours. Let alone it's grant hill. You can't base everything on stats all the time. It doesn't work that way.
 
What the Kings need:

A legit starting PF, SF, some guard depth, and as BMiller52 stated above me: vets and a shooter or two.

Reke is our best player and I dont even really think he's allstar tier yet (If Reke is an allstar so are Mayo and Curry). I'd say Beno and Dally are our next best players on the squad. They are decent starters, but IMHO those two are benchers on top tier teams. Landry, Cisco, and Omri are inconsistant. I know everybody hates him, but JT needs more PT to get into a groove. He still has it in him to be a 14/9 PF. Cuz is at least a year away from being a starter. Greene is about to bust out of the league. The rest of the guys on the roster are scrubalicious.

I also think its a bit too early to throw Westphal under the bus. GP hasnt given him a good roster.

On the bright side: Reke, Cuz, JT, Omri, Whiteside, (maybe) Greene. All those guys have room to grow. We just need some vets.
 
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