NBA Playoffs, Round One

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Missing out on Steph Curry for Tyreke Evans is the original Kings draft blunder of this current sucky era. It's the closest match to the recent Bagley Luka blunder.
Nowhere even close. While Tyreke is no Steph, he was (a) no slouch either until injuries hit, and (b) Steph was hardly a proven talent in the way Luka was going into the draft, and related to that (c) it was not a case where 95% of the fan base and their mothers were calling for Steph to be drafted instead of Tyreke. Finally, outside of Steph, Derozan and Jrue (maybe Teague), there aren't really any other players drafted after Tyreke you can point to as Bona Fide stars having significantly better careers than Tyreke. Role players sure, but don't forget that Tyreke still played a pretty big role in NO after leaving the Kings, and was an important part of the team in that one NO playoff appearance. He still put up numbers on the Grizzlies though they didn't win. All in he was still in the league for 11 seasons.
 
Maloofs were managing for the short term at that point. I fully believe Petrie’s hands were tied. He went from picking Peja to picking Jimmer. I just don’t buy he suddenly got that bad at judging talent.
Yes, the Jimmer draft bothered me more than any other Petrie pick, since the pick seemed obviously bad at the time. (But I wanted Brandon knight-whoops!)
 
Nowhere even close. While Tyreke is no Steph, he was (a) no slouch either until injuries hit, and (b) Steph was hardly a proven talent in the way Luka was going into the draft, and related to that (c) it was not a case where 95% of the fan base and their mothers were calling for Steph to be drafted instead of Tyreke. Finally, outside of Steph, Derozan and Jrue (maybe Teague), there aren't really any other players drafted after Tyreke you can point to as Bona Fide stars having significantly better careers than Tyreke. Role players sure, but don't forget that Tyreke still played a pretty big role in NO after leaving the Kings, and was an important part of the team in that one NO playoff appearance. He still put up numbers on the Grizzlies though they didn't win. All in he was still in the league for 11 seasons.
Promising rookie season, followed by a second year marked by injuries, lowered efficiency, and needing a change of scenery along with a new role. Seems to jibe so far, even if I'm a bit optimistic in that I think Bagley will be a reasonably good, if limited, NBA player in 5 years.
 
Promising rookie season, followed by a second year marked by injuries, lowered efficiency, and needing a change of scenery along with a new role. Seems to jibe so far, even if I'm a bit optimistic in that I think Bagley will be a reasonably good, if limited, NBA player in 5 years.
While there careers could end up being the same, the situation leading up to the draft is totally different. Almost everyone wanted Luka, a lot believed he was special and pissed we didn’t draft him. Not everyone else was high on steph or knew he would be a star. So we don’t see Tyreke/steph as the kings being idiots and missing out on an obvious star in the making like not drafting Luka.
 
While there careers could end up being the same, the situation leading up to the draft is totally different. Almost everyone wanted Luka, a lot believed he was special and pissed we didn’t draft him. Not everyone else was high on steph or knew he would be a star. So we don’t see Tyreke/steph as the kings being idiots and missing out on an obvious star in the making like not drafting Luka.
I agree that Steph wasn't as heralded as Luka, but Luka had his doubters as well ( hasn't accomplished anything in the NBA, hard to compare Euro league stardom to NBA competition.)

In any case, I mostly bring up the comparison in terms of impact to the franchise. Each of these choices cost the Kings a decade.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
While there careers could end up being the same, the situation leading up to the draft is totally different. Almost everyone wanted Luka, a lot believed he was special and pissed we didn’t draft him. Not everyone else was high on steph or knew he would be a star. So we don’t see Tyreke/steph as the kings being idiots and missing out on an obvious star in the making like not drafting Luka.
leading up to that draft, everyone wanted Ricky Rubio soooooo
 
I agree that Steph wasn't as heralded as Luka, but Luka had his doubters as well ( hasn't accomplished anything in the NBA, hard to compare Euro league stardom to NBA competition.)

In any case, I mostly bring up the comparison in terms of impact to the franchise. Each of these choices cost the Kings a decade.
If all you're talking about is missed opportunity and consequence then why not Trob over Dame, Jimmer over Kawhi etc? All more recent examples. Sure Luka had his doubters, but the whole point is that said doubters were way off to begin with. Anybody who actually followed Doncic could tell he was special, the doubters were casual, largely American fans who just got word of this Euro dude a month before the draft. The whole problem is we had a front office who despite knowing game extremely well and knowing the Euro game very well, still decided to choose Bagley. In comparison, I don't recall any level of confidence going into the draft that Steph was going to be an all time great.

Tyreke's rookie performance while inflated, was also a lot more promising than Bagley's. Bagley was/is raw as hell and basically relied on athleticism his rookie year. Tyreke might have lacked a jumpshot and had questionable bball iq, but his defense and offensive skills were light years ahead of what Bagley displayed. With Tyreke you already knew what you were getting at the least by his second season - he just got hampered by injuries that killed his explosiveness. With Marvin you don't even know how good he can consistently be even if he were healthy all of his coming fourth year.
 
Missing out on Steph Curry for Tyreke Evans is the original Kings draft blunder of this current sucky era. It's the closest match to the recent Bagley Luka blunder.
While I understand the point you are trying to make, this is 1000% a hindsight hot take.

That night, as Commissioner Stern read "With the fourth pick, in the 2009 NBA Draft, the Sacramento Kings select ... " the TV showed a split-screen emphasizing the divergent paths in history for our beloved Kings franchise ...

Those two faces: Tyreke Evans and ... Ricky Rubio.

Curry? Good jumpshot, high BBIQ. Could do well with D'Antoni's run-and-gun offense on the Knicks. Think Jason Terry.

Curry wasn't consider by either Kings fandom or sports media pundits as the "can't miss" future superstar point guard in the draft. No no, In 2009, that was the "Spanish sensation" Ricky Rubio. In fact, contemporary mock drafts considered the Kings gloriously unlucky for falling to the fourth pick in a "three pick draft" of Blake Griffin, Ricky Rubio, and ... Hasheem Thabeet.

Stupid ping pong balls. So, do we go for position of need with Jonny Flynn or BPA in Jordan Hill? Decisions, decisions.

Suddenly, Kings fans started wetting themselves when rumors leaked the Thunder might actually pass on Rubio to reach for James Harden. Can you imagine being so lucky?! Poor poor Sam Presti. Drafted Durant and Westbrook, and now thinks in only his third draft he knows more than everyone else. Can't win 'em all Sam.

Then, disaster. Word spread Evans had dominated in the team one-on-ones, and the debate raged: if Rubio did fall, would the Kings take the future superstar who supposedly threatend to stay in Europe to avoid playing for Sacramento, or the dude who did well in workouts and said he liked our cowtown city?

People were livid, calling Petrie and the Maloofs small-town minded cowards. Even David Khan knew to call Rubio's bluff and make the obvious pick. Not sure how Khan was going to pair Rubio with Jonny Flynn in the same backcourt, but whatever, it'll workout for the T-Wolves because Khan got them RUBIO!

Yes, people had the same self-immolation, while committing seppuku reaction when the Kings passed on Rubio that they had when the Kings passed on Luka.

If Rubio had become Curry, then you would have a point.
 
Missing out on Steph Curry for Tyreke Evans is the original Kings draft blunder of this current sucky era. It's the closest match to the recent Bagley Luka blunder.
I wouldn’t call it a blunder. Score first, low defensive potential, frail combo guards that weren’t assists machines like Steph werent highly coveted at the time. Steph was not projected by anybody to be a franchise player for an especially good team..let alone a player who completely changed the way the game is played and won championships. I thought everybody viewed Steph like a more electric Jamal Crawford with better playmaking. Which was very worthy of where he was selected but a team picking fourth and looking for a franchise player could easily be seduced by what Tyreke had to offer physically and stylistically in a game ruled at the time by LeBron, Kobe, Wade and Melo

I completely understand how Tyreke wowed everybody..and it was made clear in the season. He had two way potential at three position. His body was NBA ready. It could’ve been great and it looked like he was going to be. Just injuries and likely poor development by the Kings. Also, there were red flags with Evans personally that were rightly or wrongly written off. Now he is banned from the league

It’s always interesting to put the players the Kings could’ve drafted on paper but the thing about guys like Steph, Giannis, and even Kawhi is that those guys would’ve taken the patience the Kings(or Kings fans) didn’t have. Giannis was nothing for a season and was basically anointed based on his measurements and played until he panned out. That was a big course to set the franchise on around a mid first rounder but it paid off for them. Steph had a lot of growing pains and injuries in his first few years and no indication of what was to come. He was pretty much as projected and his second contract turned out to be a steal because of it. Kawhi was a small system contributor until one finals series that the Kings would’ve never found themselves in ...Kings fans would’ve assumed these guys to be very very expendable after the first couple of seasons even assuming they weren’t already sabotaged by bad development and bad coaching.
 
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If all you're talking about is missed opportunity and consequence then why not Trob over Dame, Jimmer over Kawhi etc? All more recent examples. Sure Luka had his doubters, but the whole point is that said doubters were way off to begin with. Anybody who actually followed Doncic could tell he was special, the doubters were casual, largely American fans who just got word of this Euro dude a month before the draft. The whole problem is we had a front office who despite knowing game extremely well and knowing the Euro game very well, still decided to choose Bagley. In comparison, I don't recall any level of confidence going into the draft that Steph was going to be an all time great.

Tyreke's rookie performance while inflated, was also a lot more promising than Bagley's. Bagley was/is raw as hell and basically relied on athleticism his rookie year. Tyreke might have lacked a jumpshot and had questionable bball iq, but his defense and offensive skills were light years ahead of what Bagley displayed. With Tyreke you already knew what you were getting at the least by his second season - he just got hampered by injuries that killed his explosiveness. With Marvin you don't even know how good he can consistently be even if he were healthy all of his coming fourth year.
Bagley’s problem is in his IQ and I disagree it can be taught. It’s like when you overrun a computer it starts dropping packets.

I think the same thing happens with peoples brains as the speed of the game increases. Only some peoples brains can keep up and others drop packets. They literally don’t “see” the detail other players see. You can’t teach a player to react to items he never perceives.

as a result at this level, I think Marvin will continue to struggle. I also think BBIQ has to be a top level criteria going forward.
 
I wouldn’t put it past the Maloofs, but that always sounded like a rather convenient leak for Petrie. Even if it’s true, are you really changing your approach because you’re worried about replacing Thompson’s 9/7 a game? It’s ok to admit that we caught the falling knife with Robinson! Most mocks had him the higher “BPA,” anyway, it’s just that he was expected to go earlier, right?

I was excited about that pick, too... until his first summer league game when it was clear he was actually quite undersized when not playing against other college kids.
Hasn't Petrie acknowledged he's the only player they ever drafted he didn't work out personally?

It seems really off-brand and we know the Maloofs were making the picks at this stage of the game.
 
I was also all in on the Rubio train.

Bagley and Reke comparison is interesting given I at least had a lot of upside hope with Bagley in year one.
 
Guys, don't be angry at who the Kings picked, be angry that for this many years the Kings have been burying young talent that they used major draft assets to get regardless of potential. If you take a Jimmer, or a Bagley, or a whoever that pretty much every single bit of perceived upside is going to be relative to the amount of shots they put up a game, goodness gracious even if they are a turd in the end, get that value up beyond the bottom please by giving them a piece of the offense. They tried to do this and win at the same time crap and that rarely works and gets your team exactly where this franchise has been for 15 years.
 
Guys, don't be angry at who the Kings picked, be angry that for this many years the Kings have been burying young talent that they used major draft assets to get regardless of potential. If you take a Jimmer, or a Bagley, or a whoever that pretty much every single bit of perceived upside is going to be relative to the amount of shots they put up a game, goodness gracious even if they are a turd in the end, get that value up beyond the bottom please by giving them a piece of the offense. They tried to do this and win at the same time crap and that rarely works and gets your team exactly where this franchise has been for 15 years.
I agree with every bit of this post with one rather glaring exception.

Jimmer’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t get enough shots. It’s that he wasn’t better than the guy picked last in the same draft as him.

Also instead of getting Kawhi, who was that mystical unicorn of being both the BPA and the NEED pick, Kings made a jersey-selling move taking the NBA’s Tim Tebow, and bringing back Salmons just to mess with our heads.
 
While I understand the point you are trying to make, this is 1000% a hindsight hot take.
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Thank you for retelling the Rubio story. It jibes pretty well with my memory now (I would have been on team Rubio at the time, I thought he was very impressive in the Olympics as a 19 year old).

For a lot of people, the Bagley---Luka story is framed as a story about core fans (as opposed to casual fans) having the special, correct insight. The Tyreke, Rubio story serves as a counterexample. Core fans missed the point entirely at the time, and it was correct to ignore them.

I don't think we build a model about how to make better decisions by considering these two examples, but I do think it's valuable to occasionally revise our history with the full benefit of hindsight. Franchise history for history's sake.
 
If all you're talking about is missed opportunity and consequence then why not Trob over Dame, Jimmer over Kawhi etc? All more recent examples. Sure Luka had his doubters, but the whole point is that said doubters were way off to begin with. Anybody who actually followed Doncic could tell he was special, the doubters were casual, largely American fans who just got word of this Euro dude a month before the draft. The whole problem is we had a front office who despite knowing game extremely well and knowing the Euro game very well, still decided to choose Bagley. In comparison, I don't recall any level of confidence going into the draft that Steph was going to be an all time great.
For one, I think the TRob pick and the Jimmer pick are already well discussed and understood here (and also very obvious.).

And maybe I'm caught up in the moment, but when it's all said and done, Steph and Luka will leave a greater legacy in basketball than Kawhi and Dame.

But there are other things about the Tyreke pick that are worth exploring. Tyreke was the first pick in a new, ignominious era of the Kings organization. There's a continuity from the Tyreke pick all the way to trading Demarcus to the Pelicans. It's one thing to blunder a pick, but it's another for the organization to commit to a wrong path.

  • The Jimmer pick was bad, but I shrug my shoulders at at the 2011 draft; the Kings recognized the draft's mediocrity and traded down. And even scored one of the top players in the second round. All told a pretty good showing. Kings missed Kawhi; but most other teams missed him too.
  • The TRob pick was the biggest delta between what we picked and what was available; and it's interesting to fantasize about how Lillard and Cousins would have worked together. But despite blowing the pick, the team managed the mistake pretty well, using TRob to buy Cousins a friend in Patrick Patterson, and eventually converted Patterson into Rudy Gay.
Both of those picks were also made in the context of strategy of building around Evans and Cousins as a foundation. "If we already had our main guys, we really just needed players that would fill in the cracks as role players." Then Evans leaves for a mid-level deal in free agency, the Kings (I think properly) let him walk, and the new owner is left with Cousins, and a bunch of pieces built on a mistaken premise.

Personally, I don't weep for the Malone era and what could have been (maybe we could have made the playoffs once?), I think that would have been a good time to start building from scratch. But if you did like watching that team, then you should consider that the TRob pick, as bad as it was, ended up being more valuable to the Kings than the Tyreke pick.




Tyreke's rookie performance while inflated, was also a lot more promising than Bagley's. Bagley was/is raw as hell and basically relied on athleticism his rookie year. Tyreke might have lacked a jumpshot and had questionable bball iq, but his defense and offensive skills were light years ahead of what Bagley displayed. With Tyreke you already knew what you were getting at the least by his second season - he just got hampered by injuries that killed his explosiveness. With Marvin you don't even know how good he can consistently be even if he were healthy all of his coming fourth year.
I'll challenge this a bit. Tyreke was injured coming into his second year, but it wasn't really clear how much his injuries caused him to lose a step, and how much he was just unable to compete in a league that had figured out his limitations after his rookie year. He was never (with the Kings at least) able to dominate in the half court after his rookie year; the team managed to keep his PPG up by running the ball up the full court.

Bagley established his rookie season that he had a good scoring touch and an ability to out-compete second string players with athleticism off the bench. There's a place in the NBA for someone with that ability, even if it's not a starring role.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
This story about THJ learning about the UTEP two-step from his dad at a game 7 would be more interesting if THJ ever did anything aside from shoot perimeter jumpers.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
Really not sure why the Clippers are still switching on every possession in game 7 when guarding scorers like Luka in must-win situations is sorta what Kawhi is known for but I'm not Ty Lue.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
I don't root for either team. The only player I root for on either team is DeMarcus Cousins. The only way that DeMarcus Cousins plays in the 2021 NBA playoffs is if the Clippers get out of the first round.

Go Clippers.
I wanted Luka. I was right about Luka. I love watching Luka. I’m basically a Mavs fan because of it. Lol
 
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