[Game] Kings @ Spurs, Friday July 31, 5 PM PT

On paper this isn't an untalented group but they're not quite where they need to be and they're not good enough to survive crummy management and coaching.

Bjelica and Holmes are good role-players but bottom third starters. Barnes is about one level too high on the totem pole than he should actually be. The Buddy Hield-CoJo pairing is atrocious and it's blatantly obvious to organizations with brains that Fox and Buddy should be sharing the floor as much as humanly possible.
 
On offense, he’s at least an effective option as a spot shooter as a 4. Agree its not ideal though
It's not him, it's the spacing. He's fine when used correctly. I think after the first half of the year and re-start it's obvious that it takes almost all the spacing away because they are going to clamp down on Fox first and foremost. If the team had Steph Curry at PG it would be fine, but they have a traditional slasher PG.
 
Luke Walton is a GODAWFUL basketball coach. That is all. Oh and also Vlade hired him without interviewing another person and after firing a coach that led the team to it's best season in over a decade. Oh and he drafted Marvin Bagley over Luka Doncic. Bad teams are bad for a reason. I feel bad for De'Aaron Fox to have to waste his career in basketball hell. That is all.
 

gunks

Hall of Famer
Luke Walton is a GODAWFUL basketball coach. That is all. Oh and also Vlade hired him without interviewing another person and after firing a coach that led the team to it's best season in over a decade. Oh and he drafted Marvin Bagley over Luka Doncic. Bad teams are bad for a reason. I feel bad for De'Aaron Fox to have to waste his career in basketball hell. That is all.
Well, hopefully Fox is here longer than Vlade. Not that a new GM is a guarantee things will get better, especially if they're hand picked by the Vivster.

Anyways, I'm not trying to trigger any Vlade apologists tonight, so I'll keep it at that. On to the next one!
 
Luke Walton is a GODAWFUL basketball coach. That is all. Oh and also Vlade hired him without interviewing another person and after firing a coach that led the team to it's best season in over a decade. Oh and he drafted Marvin Bagley over Luka Doncic. Bad teams are bad for a reason. I feel bad for De'Aaron Fox to have to waste his career in basketball hell. That is all.
Cousins years all over again.

Though this time I hope they trade him and start another rebuild if they're not better by the first or second year of his second contract and we can get Vlade outta here.

Pains me to say that as I like Fox, but one of the worst mistakes was not trading Cousins as soon as you could once the clock started ticking and it was clear they were never going to go anywhere.
 
First off, the KINGS have nobody to blame for the L tonight but themselves. The refs weren't good and were calling BS touch fouls for the likes of DeRozan and not for Swipa, but still ..... the KINGS defense was terrible throughout numerous spots of the game and they lost to what I consider a crap team.

Buddy Hield is pretty much worthless when he's not shooting the ball well. 2 for 13?? He was a big reason why the KINGS lost. You need your scorers to score.

I thought Bazemore and Jeffries both played well. But everyone else not named De'Aaron Fox or Bogdan Bogdanovic was kinda meh.

Circling back to the Spurs, I hate reading all the praise for DeMar Derozan, who I consider a vastly overrated player. Dude can't shoot beyond 20 feet and like the Bearded Hag relies heavily upon receiving bail out calls by the officials in order to be effective. Never been a fan of that dudes game. At all.

This is by far the worst Spurs team they've had in years. Which is why they have a losing record. And they didn't even have Aldridge. No excuse for losing to that team. I really won't be surprised if they don't win another game. At best, I see them winning 2-3 games.

Back to Buddy Hield. He looked heavy and out of shape. Did I mention how worthless he is when he doesn't shoot the ball well? UGH.

Ending on a positive note, it was a fantastic game for Swipa -- who looked like he was playing at a completely different speed than everyone else on the floor.

If we ever get to a day when he gets touch foul calls like DeRozan or the Bearded Hag ---- look the eff out!!!
 
First off, the KINGS have nobody to blame for the L tonight but themselves. The refs weren't good and were calling BS touch fouls for the likes of DeRozan and not for Swipa, but still ..... the KINGS defense was terrible throughout numerous spots of the game and they lost to what I consider a crap team.

Buddy Hield is pretty much worthless when he's not shooting the ball well. 2 for 13?? He was a big reason why the KINGS lost. You need your scorers to score.

I thought Bazemore and Jeffries both played well. But everyone else not named De'Aaron Fox or Bogdan Bogdanovic was kinda meh.

Circling back to the Spurs, I hate reading all the praise for DeMar Derozan, who I consider a vastly overrated player. Dude can't shoot beyond 20 feet and like the Bearded Hag relies heavily upon receiving bail out calls by the officials in order to be effective. Never been a fan of that dudes game. At all.

This is by far the worst Spurs team they've had in years. Which is why they have a losing record. And they didn't even have Aldridge. No excuse for losing to that team. I really won't be surprised if they don't win another game. At best, I see them winning 2-3 games.

Back to Buddy Hield. He looked heavy and out of shape. Did I mention how worthless he is when he doesn't shoot the ball well? UGH.

Ending on a positive note, it was a fantastic game for Swipa -- who looked like he was playing at a completely different speed than everyone else on the floor.

If we ever get to a day when he gets touch foul calls like DeRozan or the Bearded Hag ---- look the eff out!!!
I thought most players actually played well when they were put in spots that are suited to their strengths.

Buddy and Joseph as the only ball handlers with the second unit? Recipe for disaster because neither is a playmaker or can organize an offense. Buddy needs to be in lineups with Fox so he can spread the floor for Fox and have Fox do the ball handling. Bogi should be the ball handler off the bench because, frankly, no one else can. Terrible rotation.

Bjelica played really well, in my opinion. He just looked terrible because Walton had him playing as a 4 against a small Spurs lineup. As we saw, that's a defensive nightmare, especially against the high pick and roll, which DeRozan feasted on.

Obviously, the players have to play well and earn the win, but they also have to be put into positions that optimize their abilities. That didn't happen, and hasn't happened most of this season. Walton's atrociousness as a coach was on full display tonight.
 
I thought most players actually played well when they were put in spots that are suited to their strengths.

Buddy and Joseph as the only ball handlers with the second unit? Recipe for disaster because neither is a playmaker or can organize an offense. Buddy needs to be in lineups with Fox so he can spread the floor for Fox and have Fox do the ball handling. Bogi should be the ball handler off the bench because, frankly, no one else can. Terrible rotation.

Bjelica played really well, in my opinion. He just looked terrible because Walton had him playing as a 4 against a small Spurs lineup. As we saw, that's a defensive nightmare, especially against the high pick and roll, which DeRozan feasted on.

Obviously, the players have to play well and earn the win, but they also have to be put into positions that optimize their abilities. That didn't happen, and hasn't happened most of this season. Walton's atrociousness as a coach was on full display tonight.
This is all of it in a nutshell. Walton didn't get the last memo. Somebody print this out and mail to Orlando pronto. Title it, "How not to get fired".
 
I'm not actually that surprised or even disappointed at this defeat.

I predicted between 2-4 wins out of 8 at the start and I think that's about right for the level of talent we have Vs the opponent's we will see.

Clearly fox has decided this is his time to step up (hopefully because usually when he does this his next game is trash) and that's great. If he wants to be the name on this team that's something for us to work with next year.

It's quite clear and has been for a while, to me anyway, that Heild is certainly not going to be a piece, it's likely neither is Bagley. Fox and Bogi look like 2 nice pieces, as does Holmes.

The aim of any team is to win titles.... There's no way in a month of Sundays this team will ever get anywhere near that, so they need to move on. Simple really.
 
Apparently can't teach a young coach new tricks. The stats alone give Walton the keys to potential success. And that success toes a clear line of Barnes at PF in almost any and all situations. If it's not ideal for them then Vlade has some trade work to do in the offseason.
Pretty frustrating tbh. I have no idea what possesed him to keep Bjelica/Holmes in together at the end of the game when DeRozan kept torching us and Bjelica kept leaving Rudy open. Almost a direct correlation of us sucking with 2 bigs on the floor and us playing well with 4 wide and 1 big.