Maybe, just maybe...

[BawLa]

Muss is a genius. He comes in and immediately recognizes our lack of depth in our frontcourt. So he purposely plays SAR and Corliss at Center in order to clearly present the "issue" to GP.

Maybe, just maybe that explains what is going on. Or maybe I need to cap that bottle of wine. Only time will tell.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

This is on Petrie. Adelman did similar things when Brad was out.

 

[mrtcereal]

This is on Petrie. Adelman did similar things when Brad was out.

I was considering starting a new topic based on this earlier, but I'd go further. I'd say that the current problems with the team are Petrie's fault rather than Musselmen's. He plain and simple has not built a great team. He's built a decent team, a team that can contend for a playoff spot, but not much more than that. Petrie needs to adapt, what worked four or five years ago, doesn't exactly work now.

 

[supamari0]

This team has serious personel issues. There are still remnants from Adelman's offense and not enough parts for Musselman's game (which supposedly was a more defensive oriented basketball) Of course to have a defensive stallwort it would be pretty helpful to actually have someone who can block shots/grab rebounds/defend the paint which this team has none of. Artest is good but this team needs a real center, otherwise they'll just continuously get abused by opposing big men and guards that cut to the basket.

 

[fnordius]

Muss is a genius. He comes in and immediately recognizes our lack of depth in our frontcourt. So he purposely plays SAR and Corliss at Center...

Well, I'm sure that if Muss manages to get us the #1 draft pick that way, Petrie will do the right thing.

Seriously, though, I hope that you're wrong. If Petrie won't listen to Muss when he's saying something very sensible, just a few months after he's started the job, and forces him to prove his point with tactics like that, then we have a problem with Petrie, which is harder to fix than a problem with Muss. That scenario is about as fun to consider as one where Petrie doesn't like Muss coaching the team, and is starving us for bigs in an attempt to force Muss' firing.

I just don't even want to think about it.

 

[kennadog]

To be somewhat fair to GP, he was obviously given the word to cut payroll below the luxury cap. Kings had one of the highest team salaries in the league 02/03. Went down every year after, till they got under the luxury tax threshold last year with the Skinner trade.

I figure it has to be pretty hard to keep a team competitive when you aren't just trying to stay under the LTT, but are actually having to cut salary every year. Much harder than just trying to stay under the LTT.

Like trying to keep the same lifestyle while cutting back considerably on your expenses.

 

[fnordius]

Still, boosting payroll by dumping Williams and Woods in favor of Mo Taylor is a little hard to stomach. Or trading Webber, then having KT on the books for years after Webber's contract ends. Or letting Gerald Wallace, on a cheap contract, walk off because... ?

As ugly as some of the cost-cutting moves were, it wouldn't be so painful if the other transactions had worked out better.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Or letting Gerald Wallace, on a cheap contract, walk off because... ?

Because the rules of the expansion draft pretty much guaranteed we were going to lose a good player, you can only protect so many and we had to protect our core at the time. Hindsight being 20/20 we should have left Webber unprotected, but everyone would have been screaming bloody murder if that had happened.

 

[Bricklayer]

Because the rules of the expansion draft pretty much guaranteed we were going to lose a good player, you can only protect so many and we had to protect our core at the time. Hindsight being 20/20 we should have left Webber unprotected, but everyone would have been screaming bloody murder if that had happened.

No, Webber wasn't the mistake. FOREsight being 20/20 (seeing as I called it at the time it happened -- it was not rocket science), we should have signed Anthony Peeler top a 2 year deal rather than a 1 yr with an option deal. Or we should have signed somebody else to a two year deal instead of Peeler. We KNEW the expansion draft was coming, and we did not take the adequate and obvious step to protect our young talent. If Peeler is signed to a 2 yr, rather than a one year with the option to opt out of yr 2, then we could have exposed Peeler in the draft rather than Wallace, and things might look a bit rosier around here.

 

[fnordius]

Because the rules of the expansion draft pretty much guaranteed we were going to lose a good player, you can only protect so many and we had to protect our core at the time. Hindsight being 20/20 we should have left Webber unprotected, but everyone would have been screaming bloody murder if that had happened.

Think so?

I don't think they would have taken Webber. They are a low-budget team, and that would have eaten their entire payroll.

 

[thatguy]

No, Webber wasn't the mistake. FOREsight being 20/20 (seeing as I called it at the time it happened -- it was not rocket science), we should have signed Anthony Peeler top a 2 year deal rather than a 1 yr with an option deal. Or we should have signed somebody else to a two year deal instead of Peeler. We KNEW the expansion draft was coming, and we did not take the adequate and obvious step to protect our young talent. If Peeler is signed to a 2 yr, rather than a one year with the option to opt out of yr 2, then we could have exposed Peeler in the draft rather than Wallace, and things might look a bit rosier around here.

Not to be totally contrarian, but the real foresight would have been to put Christie on the list. In many ways, Wallace is a younger version of Christie.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

The other thing to keep in mind is that Wallace wasn't developing here as an underused reserve. They could have also left Songaila exposed, we didn't seem to want to keep him around beyond the next year either but at the time he was seen as having more upside than Wallace. He just wasn't seen as part of the big picture.

 

[Entity]

I don't know why it sticks in my head that we are (showcasing???) Corlis as having some talent so a trade of his expiring will not give the team he goes to nothing.