NEWS: Kings trade Casspi + first rounder for JJ Hickson

[Big Cuz 15]

I think the way Westphal handle those two players for most of the season was epically bad. One guy would go from starter to 12th man, and back again, maybe get some spot minutes here and there, then back to the end of the bench, then back to starter all of a sudden. And then, when Garcia came back, it was even more crowded, and he wasn't doing much to earn minutes either.

To properly evaluate a young player, I think they should be given a consistent role, with clear benchmarks, and if they aren't performing to expectations or standards, you adjust their role and try to find the best way to use them. That's not what Westphal did. It was impossible to get a good read on either guy last season because there was no rhyme or reason to the rotations.

I don't like Casspi's attitude going into last season, and I think to be used properly, he needs regular burn and regular touches. He didn't get that consistently last season, so his poor showing can at least partially be blamed on the coaching.

that was spot on

 

[Dime Dropper]

Talent wise this is a great trade for us. I just hope JJ works hard and that the rumours about his attitude aren't true. We don't need that on a young team. But considering we're likely to keep the pick for a couple years at least, I'm very happy with this.

We're more talented and athletic than last year. Getting Dally back would be the icing on the cake, althoughn it doesn't look like that will happen. I'd be fine with any of Gasol/Chandler etc. in his place, although that's unlikely also.

 

[Entity]

I hate to say it. but I think we just got our frontcourt piece. Don't get me wrong JJ is good but I would have liked to have had Daly. I doubt we make another frontcourt move. 3 man rotation with JT, JJ, DC. with whiteside getting some spot min and maybe D-block as the 5th bench guy.

Evans/Fredette/thomas
Thorton/Garcia
Salmons/Greene/Honeycutt
Hickson/Thompson/Jackson
Cousins/Whiteside

Thats our 13 and I am willing to bet it stays that way. Not disappointed. we upgraded at SF and I feel got better on offense at PF. Hoping Whiteside comes along quick or our 3 big rotation can step up on Defense.

 

[ParniValjak]

I hate to say it. but I think we just got our frontcourt piece. Don't get me wrong JJ is good but I would have liked to have had Daly. I doubt we make another frontcourt move. 3 man rotation with JT, JJ, DC. with whiteside getting some spot min and maybe D-block as the 5th bench guy.

Evans/Fredette/thomas
Thorton/Garcia
Salmons/Greene/Honeycutt
Hickson/Thompson/Jackson
Cousins/Whiteside

Thats our 13 and I am willing to bet it stays that way. Not disappointed. we upgraded at SF and I feel got better on offense at PF. Hoping Whiteside comes along quick or our 3 big rotation can step up on Defense.

I've go no doubt we will be going after a major frontcourt player in free agency. We still have the biggest salary cap space of any team and Gavin on radio said that number #1 priority is to sign Thornton. Priority 1A is to re-sign Dalembert and if we can't sign him we will go to the top of the free agent list and work from there.

I am sure we will try and sign another major player but whether they want to sign with Sacramento is another story.

I sincerely hope we can re-sign both Thornton (confident) and Dally (cautiously optimistic) and if we can sign another veteran PG (Earl Watson) I would be very happy with the off-season because we would have addressed a lot of our needs and we still wouldn't have spend all of the salary cap room. We would have a good roster that could go 10 deep and still have some salary cap space for flexibility in any potential trades that come along.

 

[ParniValjak]

BTW, has anyone got the link to Petrie's press conference regarding the trade?!

 

[Bricklayer]

BTW, has anyone got the link to Petrie's press conference regarding the trade?!

Were they evenh allowed to give one? I mean, I don't think they can today. In fact I don't think they can so much as have the guy fly out and shake his hand today. So it would hae had to have been yesterday. And they've scrubbed both NBA.con and Kings.com of any refereence to the players now (haven't checked to see if they had to pull all their youtubes as well).

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Were they evenh allowed to give one? I mean, I don't think they can today. In fact I don't think they can so much as have the guy fly out and shake his hand today. So it would hae had to have been yesterday. And they've scrubbed both NBA.con and Kings.com of any refereence to the players now (haven't checked to see if they had to pull all their youtubes as well).

Petrie and Westphal both spoke to the media (if not formal press conferences) yesterday, and they were on YouTube. However, it looks like the Petrie one at least is now set to "private", certainly because of the lockout. I assume the Westphal one is as well.

I guess it was early-bird-worm on those. I don't remember anything stunning about the material. Petrie said that the trade has been in discussions for a bit and was supposed to happen on draft day, but they took a while to agree on the pick (I think we won that one, given how stunningly protected it is). In order to get it done yesterday before the lockout both teams had to waive the physical. Westphal seemed very pleased in general to add Hickson. Both guys emphasized Hickson's athleticism a lot.

 

[Bricklayer]

Well got these quotes at least from this article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...kings.hickson.casspi.ap/index.html?xid=si_nba

"This is a chance to acquire a young player that has already proven himself to a pretty decent level in the league and someone who can strengthen our roster," Kings GM Geoff Petrie said, adding he had trade talks with the Cavs before and during the draft. "There is still a lot of upside there. A lot of the players taken in the draft a week ago are not that much younger than J.J. and he has had three years in the league and he was getting more productive each year."

Kings coach Paul Westphal is excited about the Hickson-Cousins-Thompson trio.

"He is a really good fit," Westphal said. "All three of those players can play a little bit (of) center and power forward. It gives us a very solid rotation. (Hickson) has shown versatility and ability to fit in. I don't think that you necessarily have to run every play for him to have him be effective. But at the same time, he can be effective if you run plays for him.

Which on that last one there is a hint there of calling Cousins/Hickson/JT the rotation. Which if true has talent, and also has Westphal unemployed in 12 months after the Maloofs latest brainiac brainstorm that hey, defense matters too, and its time for us to swing our childish enthusiasm over to that side of the ball again and fire another coach for front office decisions.

 

[swisshh]

Not true. Here you go making things up again to fit an agenda. How do I know that you ask? I'm sitting here looking at JJ's game logs for the entire season. He became more and more consistent as the season went on, numbers continued to improve, and the "fall off" games were seen much less. But you can't expect a 22 yr old to never show inconsistency the first time in a new role.

Now, show me the numbers you're looking at, where you actually see a legit comparison between the consistency of JJ vs Omri/Donte. I'm assuming you're looking at a different set of game logs, unless you're just making everything up, but from what I'm looking at, Hickson was more consistent than anyone on our team outside of Beno.

I don't make this stuff up. You can look through the boxscores and see it. Perhaps you are looking through those game logs and ignoring that trend and focusing on a good string of games. He'll have 20 pt games and then 6 pt games. All the Cav fans I've talked to say he's inconsistent, so this isn't just boxscore talk but word from people who watch Cav games. (God bless their tortured soul.)

 

[pshn80]

Thats our 13 and I am willing to bet it stays that way. Not disappointed. we upgraded at SF and I feel got better on offense at PF. Hoping Whiteside comes along quick or our 3 big rotation can step up on Defense.

I'll take that bet. I'll be very, very surprised if we don't make at least one more major move. It could be an ancient - formerly great - point guard or a futher upgrade at small forward or a replacement for Dalembert, a defender. It will be one of them and maybe two. On the other hand the next game could be at the beginning of the 2012-2013 season.

 

[pshn80]

Which on that last one there is a hint there of calling Cousins/Hickson/JT the rotation. Which if true has talent, and also has Westphal unemployed in 12 months after the Maloofs latest brainiac brainstorm that hey, defense matters too, and its time for us to swing our childish enthusiasm over to that side of the ball again and fire another coach for front office decisions.

Hopefully the "hint" is just a fall back position. I do believe the FO is quite aware of our need to resign or replace front court defense. Doing it though is a little harder to guarantee. Let's hope.

 

[Glenn]

I'll take that bet. I'll be very, very surprised if we don't make at least one more major move. It could be an ancient - formerly great - point guard or a futher upgrade at small forward or a replacement for Dalembert, a defender. It will be one of them and maybe two. On the other hand the next game could be at the beginning of the 2012-2013 season.

Maybe they'll sign you. Or a few more of us that I know of.

I don't see them trying to upgrade the SF position if that puts Salmons on the bench. Putting him on the bench is next to totally nullifying the trade for him as he will become a comparitively useless malcontent.

We need a great defensive starter at center. If we can't get him this year, save the money and make a move next year. Anything in between smacks of the multiple MLE signings of a few years ago. We don't need a mid level player. We have plenty.

I've said it before but in this context, I'll say it again. I would rather we saved the money and go into the season with what we have as what we have is significantly better than last year's team at the beginning of the season.

Besides as we don't know what the new CBA will do to our team, it might be handy to have some money in the bank to take care of the future salaries of Reke, Cuz, and probably JJ. There is enough potential talent on this team to demand a lot of money and we might very quickly find ourselves in a position like Miami.

 

[Kings Faithful]

I don't make this stuff up. You can look through the boxscores and see it. Perhaps you are looking through those game logs and ignoring that trend and focusing on a good string of games. He'll have 20 pt games and then 6 pt games. All the Cav fans I've talked to say he's inconsistent, so this isn't just boxscore talk but word from people who watch Cav games. (God bless their tortured soul.)

Every player has 20 pt games and 6 pt games... if you look at the game logs for the second half of the season JJ has 5 games below 10 pts.... and 36 above..... he also has only 7 games below 8 rebounds.... and 34 above, with 12 of those games being 15+ rebounds.

He isn't consistently amazing... but he is consistently good... with sprinkles of amazing. That being said he was the first option on that Cavs team so I expect his scoring to go down a bit, but his rebounding production should be the same.

 

[upinsmoke]

Im just looking for him to be a solid 4th big. Create easy buckets by playing off Cuz by slashing/putbacks ect. Dally please comeback!

 

[KingsFan707]

My biggest concern about the trade is how will we share the mins? We will add a defensive big man to an already crowded rotation so how much impact/playing time will the player have? Cousins will likely get his 30+ mins but after that you need to spread out the remaining to 3 players who all likely think they should get the bulk of them.

 

[LWP777]

This is a pretty good breakdown of his plays against our very own guys last year--and since we know the Kings players pretty well, it gives a good idea of JJ's capabilities.

It looks like he has a lot of ability. He has quickness and a few different skillsets on offense including a hook and eye for tipins. He also seemed to have good position on defense even when he got scored on and can get himself open by cutting into open lanes.

However, his hands are not soft--which sometimes negates his ability to get open when cutting. He loses his handle and passes bounce off them a couple times which broke up his own play. Early on in the video there's also a made 3, but JJ made no effort to get position for a possible rebound attempt if by chance it was missed.

Just a couple things I noticed.

Thanks for the video. You talked about his hands and that was my first thought as well when watching the video. It was bringing back shades of Mikki Moore just when I almost had him fully out of my memory.

 

[upinsmoke]

My biggest concern about the trade is how will we share the mins? We will add a defensive big man to an already crowded rotation so how much impact/playing time will the player have? Cousins will likely get his 30+ mins but after that you need to spread out the remaining to 3 players who all likely think they should get the bulk of them.

But Hickson is not a defensive big man. More of a scoring big imo.

 

[Dime Dropper]

But Hickson is not a defensive big man. More of a scoring big imo.

I don't think the poster you quoted is referring to Hickson as a defensive big. He's worrying about minutes when we do sign a defensive big ala Dally or Chandler (not saying it will happen, but it clearly is/should be the goal).

 

[SacTownKid]

Well got these quotes at least from this article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...kings.hickson.casspi.ap/index.html?xid=si_nba





Which on that last one there is a hint there of calling Cousins/Hickson/JT the rotation. Which if true has talent, and also has Westphal unemployed in 12 months after the Maloofs latest brainiac brainstorm that hey, defense matters too, and its time for us to swing our childish enthusiasm over to that side of the ball again and fire another coach for front office decisions.

If Daly doesn't come back the thing I'm excited most about is the possibility that because of the need for that skill, Hassan will get time. I really think he has the ability to be an even better interior defender than Dalembert. I was watching some summer league from last year and the dude just totally erased Cousins' mistakes left and right in a few of those games.

 

[Entity]

I am affraid by Westphals quote that we are done with frontcourt. I think maybe they see something in whiteside and hope he is ready to play a role. Also I am not totally convinced that DMC and Hickson are awful defenders. in now way am i comparing the two but Vlade and Chris weren't exactly defensive juggernauts same for bibby and Peja. JT has show defensive spurs off the bench and like I said they may see Whiteside as our defenive big off the bench. although none of this explains the FA spending we have been promised. I mean a 4th maybe 3rd guard. Now got some ability to upgrade at SF. but outside of Chandler and Daly i don't see a big that we need to chase in FA. Oh and if i here Gasol again i will puke.

 

[rainmaker]

I am affraid by Westphals quote that we are done with frontcourt. I think maybe they see something in whiteside and hope he is ready to play a role. Also I am not totally convinced that DMC and Hickson are awful defenders. in now way am i comparing the two but Vlade and Chris weren't exactly defensive juggernauts same for bibby and Peja. JT has show defensive spurs off the bench and like I said they may see Whiteside as our defenive big off the bench. although none of this explains the FA spending we have been promised. I mean a 4th maybe 3rd guard. Now got some ability to upgrade at SF. but outside of Chandler and Daly i don't see a big that we need to chase in FA. Oh and if i here Gasol again i will puke.

I've heard three interviews with Westy over the last couple weeks. In each one, he stated clearly, "we're far from done, and we still have multiple holes we'd like to fill. We'll have opportunuties." In his last interview with Grant, he explicitly said, "by no means is the roster we have now going to be the roster we go into the season with. There are things we'd like to do".

I'm paraphrasing, slightly, but I expect them to be just as aggressive as they've been so far this off season. I also think they'll be a few solid opportunties for us after a new CBA is in place. We might miss games, but small markets should really benefit.

 

[Gary]

I don't think the poster you quoted is referring to Hickson as a defensive big. He's worrying about minutes when we do sign a defensive big ala Dally or Chandler (not saying it will happen, but it clearly is/should be the goal).

DeAndre Jordan..

Been saying this since the year he was drafted when the Kings could have bought that pick for like 500k.

 

[MassachusettsKingsFan]

If Dally walks .. I'd really like to see what Whiteside can do as the 4th big to begin the season. Throw him to the wolves and see if he can make it. And If he cant, at least we know.

 

[bajaden]

I don't make this stuff up. You can look through the boxscores and see it. Perhaps you are looking through those game logs and ignoring that trend and focusing on a good string of games. He'll have 20 pt games and then 6 pt games. All the Cav fans I've talked to say he's inconsistent, so this isn't just boxscore talk but word from people who watch Cav games. (God bless their tortured soul.)

Just to clarify. I believe we were talking about how he played at the end of the season. The point being that he improved as the season went on. You tell me if these last 15 games were inconsistent or not. In order from the last game through 15 games

1. 15 Pts, 13 Rebounds
2. 20 Pts, 11 Rebounds
3. 11 Pts, 12 Rebounds
4. 22 Pts, 15 Rebounds
5. 28 Pts, 10 Rebounds
6. 16 Pts, 19 Rebounds
7. 23 Pts, 8 Rebounds
8. 21 Pts, 10 Rebounds
9. 20 Pts, 7 Rebounds
10. 21 Pts, 12 Rebounds
11. 10 Pts, 13 Rebounds
12. 24 Pts, 15 Rebounds
13. 17 Pts, 17 Rebounds
14. 18 Pts, 6 Rebounds
15. 28 Pts, 9 Rebounds

We could use a little inconsistentcy like that.

 

[bajaden]

If Dally walks .. I'd really like to see what Whiteside can do as the 4th big to begin the season. Throw him to the wolves and see if he can make it. And If he cant, at least we know.

I agree! He definitely needs to get his feet wet. Not having a summer league is a bummer. He could used it as a nice stepping stone back into action. The major point is that we don't want to waste another year with him. So yes, he needs to get some minutes.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

yeah no harm in giving Whiteside a shot if we have room, remember some people thought he was worth a shot at 5 if Cousins was gone. I hope we don't have to go there but I'd rather do that than overpay for someone.

 

[Warhawk]

Just to clarify. I believe we were talking about how he played at the end of the season. The point being that he improved as the season went on. You tell me if these last 15 games were inconsistent or not. In order from the last game through 15 games

1. 15 Pts, 13 Rebounds
2. 20 Pts, 11 Rebounds
3. 11 Pts, 12 Rebounds
4. 22 Pts, 15 Rebounds
5. 28 Pts, 10 Rebounds
6. 16 Pts, 19 Rebounds
7. 23 Pts, 8 Rebounds
8. 21 Pts, 10 Rebounds
9. 20 Pts, 7 Rebounds
10. 21 Pts, 12 Rebounds
11. 10 Pts, 13 Rebounds
12. 24 Pts, 15 Rebounds
13. 17 Pts, 17 Rebounds
14. 18 Pts, 6 Rebounds
15. 28 Pts, 9 Rebounds

We could use a little inconsistentcy like that.

Agreed.

 

[R2D2]

We could use a little inconsistentcy like that.

A. If only Casspi was as inconsistent as THAT we might not had J.J.
B. If everyone on our roster can be as inconsistent, we might see us inconsistently make it to the playoffs for several inconsistent years.

 

[Glenn]

A. If only Casspi was as inconsistent as THAT we might not had J.J.
B. If everyone on our roster can be as inconsistent, we might see us inconsistently make it to the playoffs for several inconsistent years.

Oh, my!