[Game] Kings @ Nets - 2/5/16 - 4:30 PT, 7:30 ET

[KingsFanatic]

I'm always alarmed at how fast we go through coaches, but I think we just make bad decisions when it comes to hiring. Carmichael Dave said it right on his Twitter post by stating the following: "Not one coach since Adelman has gone on to have sucess elsewhere" Very Very True.

 

[KingsFanatic]

I think also that Karl is just a "wrong fit" for Sacramento. The reason I say that is because Karl's record speaks for itself. You don't win that many games if you are a shi**y coach! It's impossible...... But Sacramento just isn't the right fit for Karl and vice versa.............

 

[Iced Espresso]

Ideally Ben is getting 20-25 effective minutes per game off the bench at this point in his career playing behind a solid veteran. We haven't been able to make that happen yet though. Belinelli is a shooting specialist who's best used in a bench role so signing him pretty much means that Ben has to be the starter. Or we could dick around with various combinations of Belinelli, McLemore, Anderson, Collison and Curry in and out of the rotation so that nobody knows what their role is and everyone is unhappy.

Curry and Anderson are just "deep roster fillers", or should have been contemplating them that way as roster orchestration was being established. We desperately needed bench scoring and scoring range depth so Marco was a logical choice.

Ben is cheap, fantastic athlete, costs you nothing as far as acquiring because he's all ready yours.

It's not a great situation, but a make do.

If Ben performs, you've got it cheap next year too. If not, you've got the option to trade/invest differently in the off season.

Looks to me like a decent tread water scenario, as the "fix" was likely not attainable.

I'm not sure Vlade anticipated using Marco like Korver either.

Don't feel handcuffed either as I think if you wanted to move either one of them, someone would take them.

But to gamble on Matthews was too risky though if you ask me, that's a lot of coin, a lot of risk. So I'm in agreement with you on it not being a good call.

 

[Iced Espresso]

I think also that Karl is just a "wrong fit" for Sacramento. The reason I say that is because Karl's record speaks for itself. You don't win that many games if you are a shi**y coach! It's impossible...... But Sacramento just isn't the right fit for Karl and vice versa.............

Consider this Dick Motta 2.0

Except with a 1-40 road record and a new plane fittingly called Airball 1, we've got a new arena coming.

 

[hrdboild]

Lets deal with this situation instead of framing it how you want to. I don't buy your premise. In a world where defense and rebounding don't exist maybe McLemore could be considered better then Wes for all of three months coming of a achilles injury. If you factor in defense I'll still take this Wes over our Ben. It's been a bad three month stretch for a 29 year old coming off injury, to project about how he's on the permanent decline or his relative value for the length of that contract isn't fair. We've seen in more then one sport guys come back from the achilles these days, and we've seen that it can some time. It's a good deal for Dallas if he's back to form by next season.

That's only because you're not paying attention to facts. I use Ben as a means of comparison only because it's generally accepted as cannon around here that Ben is terrible therefore anyone who compares unfavorably to Ben must also be terrible. Wesley Matthews has a lower rebound %, lower steal %, lower true shooting %, and lower free throw attempt rate than Ben MeLemore does this season. Wes has the edge in assist % and turnover rate. Also accounting for the difference in minutes played (Matthews is playing 33.2 min and McLemore is playing 21.2 min) they're almost the same player in terms of counting stats per 36 except that Wes is averaging 1 less turnover per game, 1 less free throw per game, and shooting 38% from the field compared to Ben's 46%. So you can forget about the rebounding difference because there is none. And even though Ben is only taking 6 shots per game, he's actually scoring the exact same amount of points per 36 min as Wesley Matthews. (13.2 vs 13.3 is close enough given all the variables involved to be considered exact imo)

That leaves Wesley Matthews' supposedly stellar defense as the only justification for picking Matthews at $16 million to be your starter over McLemore at $3 million. Defense is so subjective that I'm not going to change your mind, but I will point out that br.com's defensive rating puts Matthews among the worst players on his team every single year of his career from his rookie year in Utah (where he ranked last out of 15 players) to this year in Dallas where he currently ranks 13th out of 15 players. Eye test says he's probably not that bad, but it's curious he's garnered a reputation as a good defender when this stat overwhelmingly says the opposite.

 

[KingsFanatic]

When George Karl is fired and if he goes on to coach somewhere else and is successful, I couldn't be more happier for him, but like others and Carmichael Dave was saying, he's just not a right fit for Sacramento.........We definitely need to make a change.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

It's a fine offensive unit that always look suspect defensively, and was not one of the best benches on paper. Kosta and Marco have been serviceable, but were buried by their teams in the playoffs last year and weren't resigned. Casspi was unproven on paper with DC coming off a injury but also a career year. And they have been bad. We'll see if another coach turns it around, but the early returns aren't good.

Long way of saying the achilles is a well known two year injury, and knowing that I would still rather have Wes on that contract rather then Marco and Kosta on theirs.

So... let me make sure I have this right: you think that we've seen everything we need to see of Koufos and Belinelli, but it's too soon to make the call on "down to one ACL" Wes Matthews?

 

[ParniValjak]

When George Karl is fired and if he goes on to coach somewhere else and is successful, I couldn't be more happier for him, but like others and Carmichael Dave was saying, he's just not a right fit for Sacramento.........We definitely need to make a change.

No team will hire George Karl again. This was always his last stop in the NBA.

 

[Amit149]

You clearly have a way higher opinion of the importance of a draft pick than I do; what did Divac give up, exactly?

Best-case scenario is we're a forty-five win team, that can entice a higher class of free agents in the offseason than we could as a twenty-five win team.

What we gave up is roster flexibility and we blocked many ways to improve, you say a 40 win team can "entice a higher of free agents"- let's say it's true, how are you planning to pay them? since you'll need to spend most of your capspace to sign Rondo...

We have no trade assets right now, we can't trade a first round pick till 2020, there is no way we can win the lottery and we have very little cap room- what it all mean is that in order to make a change/improvement you will most likely have to trade one of your big contracts who are also your main guys on the team.

We also hurt ourselves from the standpoint that it will be hard for us to tank in future years since we don't have control over our pick, and we have an unprotected 1st rounder to the 76ers due the year after Cousins contract expires- which is not ideal.

We gave up a lot this summer becasue we basically just locked ourselves to this core, and this core is not good enough... it might be better with better coaching but the ceiling is very low, there is no point in going "all-in" to entice free agents when you don't have the money to sign them.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

What we gave up is roster flexibility and we blocked many ways to improve, you say a 40 win team can "entice a higher of free agents"- let's say it's true, how are you planning to pay them? since you'll need to spend most of your capspace to sign Rondo...

Oh really? A salary cap jump of about twenty million dollars has been predicted for this coming offseason since, like, 2014. Do you have some reason to believe that that's not going to happen?

 

[Amit149]

Oh really? A salary cap jump of about twenty million dollars has been predicted for this coming offseason since, like, 2014. Do you have some reason to believe that that's not going to happen?

No, I have every reason to believe the jump is going to happen.
And still when you do the math we are not left with a huge sum- about 20 million in cap space after said jump, and that's before signing Rondo, there is very little room left in that scenario to sign both Rondo and someone you consider as a key free agent considering contracts will be respectively higher due to the cap rising.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

You and I may not be operating from the same working definition of "key" free agent. We shouldn't be trying to go after a superstar/max player at this stage. I feel pretty confident that we'll have enough cap space to go after the player we need to take the next step. Which, incidentally, is still not straight to title contender.

We should have been on track to be an eighth seed this season, and the fact that we're not is on the coach. The next step after that is homecourt in the first round. And the next step after that is contender. We should have had Step A well in hand, and we'll have plenty of cap space to get the kind of player(s) we should have needed to get from Step A to Step B.

 

[LPKingsFan]

You and I may not be operating from the same working definition of "key" free agent. We shouldn't be trying to go after a superstar/max player at this stage. I feel pretty confident that we'll have enough cap space to go after the player we need to take the next step. Which, incidentally, is still not straight to title contender.

We should have been on track to be an eighth seed this season, and the fact that we're not is on the coach. The next step after that is homecourt in the first round. And the next step after that is contender. We should have had Step A well in hand, and we'll have plenty of cap space to get the kind of player(s) we should have needed to get from Step A to Step B.

I don't recall where but someone broke down the cap situation and it showed that we might not have enough to re-sign Rondo and a guy like Ryan Anderson. Does he fit your definition of "key free agent"?

 

[Flopi]

If next summer salary cap is, as projected, around 90M$ Kings would have around 27M$ of cap space.

Problem is 10 years veterans like Rondo could ask for a max salary starting at around 29M$/year.

 

[Amit149]

You and I may not be operating from the same working definition of "key" free agent. We shouldn't be trying to go after a superstar/max player at this stage. I feel pretty confident that we'll have enough cap space to go after the player we need to take the next step. Which, incidentally, is still not straight to title contender.

We should have been on track to be an eighth seed this season, and the fact that we're not is on the coach. The next step after that is homecourt in the first round. And the next step after that is contender. We should have had Step A well in hand, and we'll have plenty of cap space to get the kind of player(s) we should have needed to get from Step A to Step B.

No we are not,

Even in a situation when we don't pick up our options on Acy, Moreland and Dukan and Butler decides to opt-out we will sit at 23.9 million in cap space (credit to twslam07), now Rondo's current contract is the same as a 12.6 million in the new cap and since he has raised his stock since the summer he could possibly demand more (like Flopi said we can't fit a max contract for him even if we give him all our cap space).
In the event he signs at somewhere between 15-18 million we are left with 6-9 million... which doesn't give you very good players under this cap (since 8 million under a 89 million cap is like 6 million this year).

So yes- we are don't have a lot of money to spend even if we can attract said free agents.

 

[John Galt]

When George Karl is fired and if he goes on to coach somewhere else and is successful, I couldn't be more happier for him, but like others and Carmichael Dave was saying, he's just not a right fit for Sacramento.........We definitely need to make a change.

You're kidding right? He does not have energy/stamina to coach elsewhere. No way.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I don't recall where but someone broke down the cap situation and it showed that we might not have enough to re-sign Rondo and a guy like Ryan Anderson. Does he fit your definition of "key free agent"?

Not really. We need the proverbial "3 and D" guy, with an emphasis on the D.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

No we are not,

Even in a situation when we don't pick up our options on Acy, Moreland and Dukan and Butler decides to opt-out we will sit at 23.9 million in cap space (credit to twslam07), now Rondo's current contract is the same as a 12.6 million in the new cap and since he has raised his stock since the summer he could possibly demand more (like Flopi said we can't fit a max contract for him even if we give him all our cap space).
In the event he signs at somewhere between 15-18 million we are left with 6-9 million... which doesn't give you very good players under this cap (since 8 million under a 89 million cap is like 6 million this year).

So yes- we are don't have a lot of money to spend even if we can attract said free agents.

If Rondo wants to stay, I think it's going to cost much closer to fifteen million than eighteen million. I have complete confidence that we could have gotten the kind of player we needed with what's left.

Which is, of course, moot at this point, since Karl has scuttled our chances of making ourselves attractive to that player.

 

[Entity]

If Rondo wants to stay, I think it's going to cost much closer to fifteen million than eighteen million. I have complete confidence that we could have gotten the kind of player we needed with what's left.

Which is, of course, moot at this point, since Karl has scuttled our chances of making ourselves attractive to that player.

Unless we did hire a real replacement and things turned around a bit. Not 20-12 or anything like that but .500 or slightly above after the change and things really on upsweep after season. New coach, new cohesion, new arena newfound enthusiasm from players. That could be attractive right? I mean last offseason as good as vlade did for most of that offseason it was a Karl vs. Boogie. Which will be gone type deal. Vlade put bandaid on thar gapping wound. I think we all knew that wouldn't hold. A change now could net us a good player in the offseason

 

[Showtime]

I'm always alarmed at how fast we go through coaches, but I think we just make bad decisions when it comes to hiring. Carmichael Dave said it right on his Twitter post by stating the following: "Not one coach since Adelman has gone on to have sucess elsewhere" Very Very True.

Well, part of that instability comes with the fact that there have been issues higher up. We've gone through multiple owners and multiple GM's all in the past two years. So, coaching cannot be stable unless the ownership and FO is also stable. That hasn't happened yet. I think they need to figure out who the long term GM is going to be, and get HIS guy in as a long term coach, and then this circus might end.

 

[Showtime]

If Rondo wants to stay, I think it's going to cost much closer to fifteen million than eighteen million. I have complete confidence that we could have gotten the kind of player we needed with what's left.

Which is, of course, moot at this point, since Karl has scuttled our chances of making ourselves attractive to that player.

Let him walk (or do a sign-and-trade), and go after Conley and Ryan.

Conley/Collison
Ben/Marco
Gay/Casspi
WCS/Ryan
Boogie/Acy

With Ben actually getting consistent minutes, and Mike in the backcourt, that starting lineup can play much improved defense. Marco playing a very limited role as a spot shooter and Ryan coming in as a stretch 4 paired with Boogie can space things out and provide Boogie with a better shooting crew. They can play big, and slow and grind teams, or with a few substitutions can become a better deep threat and Ryan can bang inside and rebound if needed.

 

[KingMilz]

Let him walk (or do a sign-and-trade), and go after Conley and Ryan.

Conley/Collison
Ben/Marco
Gay/Casspi
WCS/Ryan
Boogie/Acy

With Ben actually getting consistent minutes, and Mike in the backcourt, that starting lineup can play much improved defense. Marco playing a very limited role as a spot shooter and Ryan coming in as a stretch 4 paired with Boogie can space things out and provide Boogie with a better shooting crew. They can play big, and slow and grind teams, or with a few substitutions can become a better deep threat and Ryan can bang inside and rebound if needed.

Do you think guys off Conley's caliber want to come play here to play with Cousins/Gay? Aside from Rondo who was basically forced here since no one wanted him who has come here and signed? Unless we trade for them why would they come here, why would you want to play with volatile lazy players that no matter what mail it in every season before All Star break?

 

[FaStRmAn]

The kings don't fight through screens. They switch. and switch. and switch.......

They need to SWITCH from Decaf to regular. There is an apathetic rift going on right now in this locker room. Dont know if its Cousins again or if its other players, but they are playing like they dont care anymore. I dont know if its scheme or the lack of good defenders, but I have seen teams with worse athletes play much better defense.