Why do I keep watching? I'm a fan of the Kings. That's kind of a silly question to be honest. I don't think the team has to be just like the team of old, but a real offensive system and a balanced roster are pretty much must-haves for any NBA team.
I agree, but a lot of the people here seem to have this idea that for us to win we NEED to play like the Kings of old, that somehow ball dominant guards don't exist on winning teams. Everybody agrees that Tyreke needs to learn to pass the ball, to play within an offense better. Everybody agrees that to this point (or rather last season) Westphal pretty much didn't have much of a system in place. What I don't understand is why so many posters here can't seem to be patient and give the team a bit of time.
If we were winning then parts of my assessment of Tyreke would be wrong, but my assessment of Reke comes from before he was even drafted and unfortunately it's been true so far. I wish it wasn't because I want the team to win. You can win with a player like Reke if he expands his game and you put players around him that help him, but the team hasn't done that. They wasted time trying to play him out of position and haven't really gotten the complimentary players a young star needs to develop. You need either a vet with the right toolset and authority or a coach who knows what he's doing, but the Kings have gotten neither. It's best if you have both.
Again, I agree on the importance of having good vets and a good coach. The lone article concerning the NBA in my local newspaper today was about Kobe Bryant and Mike Brown. Here's a link to the same thing being reported:
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/...-angeles-lakers-coach-mike-brown-not-pushover
That's the kind of attitude that star players and good coaches need to have. As a coach you can't be afraid to correct a player when he's wrong, and as a player you can't be sensitive to such criticism in a bad way. I agree that Tyreke was largely given a lot of freedom in his rookie year, but again, I feel that we really didn't have anyone else to rely on. Fair criticism of his play is absolutely acceptable. But I really can't stand the trolls who suggest things like "Trade Tyreke + JT for Steve Nash and Gortat". It's one thing to not be sold on the Tyrekeisgoingtobeasuperstar bandwagon. It's another thing to say that he's of no value/future worth to this team when he hasn't even played 2 complete seasons, hasn't been given a proper offensive system to TRY to perform in, and spent less than a season working with a rookie Cousins who we all feel is a big part of our future.
Unfortunately, I don't fancy the idea of Tyreke at SF as some have suggested. I think he still has to have the ball quite a fair bit, and I'll give him this season to show that he's not a selfish player. IMO, on the offensive side of things, we need to surround Tyreke and DMC with good outside shooters (check) and some veterans who can set good screens/ won't fumble passes (not so check). Defensively is where our problems mainly lie. Face it, offensive system or not, messy or not, our team is not going to struggle to score the ball much. It's going to be defense that determines whether we win games or not, at least against non-elite competition.
My point is that the team is very much still a work in progress, and I understand that fans want to see results now. Our losing has been prolonged because we didn't start the rebuild early enough, and even when we kinda did we were building around Kevin Martin as our franchise player, who's completely different from Evans. That kinda "wastes" our efforts a little.
For a small market team to win, it needs to draft good players. That's most important because we can't really lure a lot of FAs. That's where I feel the source of our problems is. Douby, Hawes, JT, Greene. All these guys didn't turn out the way they were "supposed" to, and Hawes, JT and Greene all showed flashes of being able to fill certain gaps in our team. The problem is Hawes played like a softy 78 games of the year (the other 4 good games were aginst the Lakers or Philly), JT still isn't reliable enough for a good playoff team, and Greene ... Well let's just say our 6'10 defensive good shooting SF dreams haven't exactly been realised.
All that said, I do think we are right there, and our young guys just need to make that leap for us to compete for a playoff spot. Our core of DMC, Tyreke and Thornton CAN take us deep into the playoffs if we surround them with the right cast, as you said. It's fine to demand a good product on the court, but let's not get so carried away that we start turning on the very players who we're counting on to hopefully bring us to another championship run. Tyreke Evans for Steve Nash is not the answer.