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Mark Kreidler: Trade puts the fun back in Sacramento
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, January 11, 2005
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I hate to gloss over the obvious, because in the case of Doug Christie that means missing all the good stuff. With Christie, what's obvious is what matters: He's an elite athlete who virtually never gives less than 100 percent of whatever performance his body and his skills will allow.
Christie is the player you hope other players might become when they grow up. He doesn't take a minute off. Plays through real pain. Does the dirty work on defense. Takes care of himself. Makes his teammates better.
Shoot, I sound like I'm ready to cast a statue.
What I really came here to do was applaud the Kings - for heading back to the future.
With all credit to Christie for who he is as a player and what he has meant to the Sacramento franchise, the Kings got better Monday. Not better defensively, and not necessarily better in terms of "chemistry," that highly valued but badly defined commodity that never quite led the franchise all the way to the top.
Just better, is all. Deadlier. Tougher to match up against. More difficult to cover. Younger. More complicated. More flexible. Maybe even more fun to watch.
Best-case scenario? Relevant again, as a conference contender.
But at the very least: better.
The Cuttino Mobley deal makes sense if you've been following along and connecting the dots. Mobley is a shooter and a scorer, sharper from three-point range than from the field at large. He looks for his shots and seldom fails to take them, and he can fill it up in a hurry.
Mobley is a lot of offense, that is to say - a lot of fast-paced, yank-up-the-three-pointer-when-you-see-it offense. Put him at the two-guard spot where Christie has lived these past 4 1/2 seasons, and you will never again see an opposing defender happily backing off the position to go double-cover somebody else, be it Peja Stojakovic, Chris Webber or whomever.
Mobley is another guy you have to guard, another scoring presence you absolutely must be aware of. There is Mike Bibby, and there is Stojakovic, and there is Mobley, and that's just the perimeter of the starting lineup.
And if that all sounds familiar, it should. It is, after all, the formula Geoff Petrie and Rick Adelman used to put this franchise on the map in the first place at the end of the 1990s.
Back then, when it felt like there was absolutely nothing to lose, Petrie and Adelman put their faith in a system that allowed players to run up and down the court and score like crazy. They brought in guys such as Webber, Jason Williams, Vlade Divac, Corliss Williamson and Vernon Maxwell and let them do their things.
If they didn't dismiss the defensive side of the game, they didn't exactly give it a big ol' bear hug. Theirs was the chaos theory: Score all the time, keep the offensive pressure coming from every available angle, and just dare the other team to keep up.
Over the years, of course, the Kings became more responsible - and duller. They played a better all-around game. Bibby took over as a steadier hand for Williams. Christie was brought in to provide a defensive toughness the Western Conference called for, particularly considering the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal axis in Los Angeles.
And that group, playing at its peak in 2001-02, came ever so close to going all the way.
But, look, things change. The best team in the West right now is a Phoenix squad scoring 110 points per game. The Kings were playing mediocre defense even with Christie, and they certainly weren't going to win anything based on shutting opponents down for four quarters. Why not go another way?
Acquiring Mobley is hardly tantamount to giving up on defense. He's a fair defender, better than some of the players he'll be joining, and Christie undeniably was beginning to see the far side of his elite defensive days as he passed his 34th birthday and began dealing with recurring injuries.
But, anyway, that's misunderstanding the deal, which at its heart comes down to the head coach and the general manager deciding to get back to what they do best. Adelman and Petrie love the offensive game, and it's a game that they know NBA players still want to play.
Or, as Mobley told reporters in Boston after learning of his trade during the Magic-Celtics game, "They (the Kings) look like a fun team. That's what basketball is about, having fun."
It used to be, around here - before Webber's knee swiped some of his athleticism and Stojakovic dealt with his first doubts, and before Bobby Jackson got hurt, and before Divac shuffled off to L.A. It was fun like that for a long time.
Now, suddenly, you look up and see the energy of Maurice Evans, the athleticism of Kevin Martin and the possibilities of adding a pure scorer such as 29-year-old Cuttino Mobley to the mix. And you see it might get fun again.
That, alone, makes the deal worth doing, no matter how hard it is to say goodbye.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/12005890p-12876265c.html
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Get the latest news in sacbee.com's Kings Alert newsletter. Sign up here.
I hate to gloss over the obvious, because in the case of Doug Christie that means missing all the good stuff. With Christie, what's obvious is what matters: He's an elite athlete who virtually never gives less than 100 percent of whatever performance his body and his skills will allow.
Christie is the player you hope other players might become when they grow up. He doesn't take a minute off. Plays through real pain. Does the dirty work on defense. Takes care of himself. Makes his teammates better.
Shoot, I sound like I'm ready to cast a statue.
What I really came here to do was applaud the Kings - for heading back to the future.
With all credit to Christie for who he is as a player and what he has meant to the Sacramento franchise, the Kings got better Monday. Not better defensively, and not necessarily better in terms of "chemistry," that highly valued but badly defined commodity that never quite led the franchise all the way to the top.
Just better, is all. Deadlier. Tougher to match up against. More difficult to cover. Younger. More complicated. More flexible. Maybe even more fun to watch.
Best-case scenario? Relevant again, as a conference contender.
But at the very least: better.
The Cuttino Mobley deal makes sense if you've been following along and connecting the dots. Mobley is a shooter and a scorer, sharper from three-point range than from the field at large. He looks for his shots and seldom fails to take them, and he can fill it up in a hurry.
Mobley is a lot of offense, that is to say - a lot of fast-paced, yank-up-the-three-pointer-when-you-see-it offense. Put him at the two-guard spot where Christie has lived these past 4 1/2 seasons, and you will never again see an opposing defender happily backing off the position to go double-cover somebody else, be it Peja Stojakovic, Chris Webber or whomever.
Mobley is another guy you have to guard, another scoring presence you absolutely must be aware of. There is Mike Bibby, and there is Stojakovic, and there is Mobley, and that's just the perimeter of the starting lineup.
And if that all sounds familiar, it should. It is, after all, the formula Geoff Petrie and Rick Adelman used to put this franchise on the map in the first place at the end of the 1990s.
Back then, when it felt like there was absolutely nothing to lose, Petrie and Adelman put their faith in a system that allowed players to run up and down the court and score like crazy. They brought in guys such as Webber, Jason Williams, Vlade Divac, Corliss Williamson and Vernon Maxwell and let them do their things.
If they didn't dismiss the defensive side of the game, they didn't exactly give it a big ol' bear hug. Theirs was the chaos theory: Score all the time, keep the offensive pressure coming from every available angle, and just dare the other team to keep up.
Over the years, of course, the Kings became more responsible - and duller. They played a better all-around game. Bibby took over as a steadier hand for Williams. Christie was brought in to provide a defensive toughness the Western Conference called for, particularly considering the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal axis in Los Angeles.
And that group, playing at its peak in 2001-02, came ever so close to going all the way.
But, look, things change. The best team in the West right now is a Phoenix squad scoring 110 points per game. The Kings were playing mediocre defense even with Christie, and they certainly weren't going to win anything based on shutting opponents down for four quarters. Why not go another way?
Acquiring Mobley is hardly tantamount to giving up on defense. He's a fair defender, better than some of the players he'll be joining, and Christie undeniably was beginning to see the far side of his elite defensive days as he passed his 34th birthday and began dealing with recurring injuries.
But, anyway, that's misunderstanding the deal, which at its heart comes down to the head coach and the general manager deciding to get back to what they do best. Adelman and Petrie love the offensive game, and it's a game that they know NBA players still want to play.
Or, as Mobley told reporters in Boston after learning of his trade during the Magic-Celtics game, "They (the Kings) look like a fun team. That's what basketball is about, having fun."
It used to be, around here - before Webber's knee swiped some of his athleticism and Stojakovic dealt with his first doubts, and before Bobby Jackson got hurt, and before Divac shuffled off to L.A. It was fun like that for a long time.
Now, suddenly, you look up and see the energy of Maurice Evans, the athleticism of Kevin Martin and the possibilities of adding a pure scorer such as 29-year-old Cuttino Mobley to the mix. And you see it might get fun again.
That, alone, makes the deal worth doing, no matter how hard it is to say goodbye.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/12005890p-12876265c.html
