1. I guess Dre wasn't worth mentioning here?
Yea I forgot about him, but my point is that Karl's system probably helped up team-wide assist totals. He's not here anymore.
1. I guess Dre wasn't worth mentioning here?
I am actually extremely disappointed we did not resign Rondo.
Go ahead and tell us why.
I'll tell you why I'm disappointed that we didn't re-sign Rondo.
Because it means he didn't help us win last year.
I loved the idea of giving Rondo a shot as a reclamation project. He looked pretty well recovered from his ACL injury and had never been a guy who relied on athleticism primarily. He's a cerebral player who thinks the game, knows where everyone is and where they should be and delivers passes like few guys in the NBA. He also seemed like the veteran presence that Cousins needed in his ear. A guy he respected greatly and who had a similar temperament but who had been a key piece of a championship team.
But while he led the league in assists and had his best season shooting threes, it didn't translate into the team improving at all.
I'm not upset that Rondo is gone, I'm upset that he didn't give the Kings enough reason to keep him.
Go ahead and tell us why.
The team actually improved quite a bit, in spite of everything. Until our shutdown/tank we were probably headed for 35-37wins or so. Until the team quit on Karl, .500 looked still possible.
Kings fans last year were blind as a bat as a group. Quite possibly the worst I have seen them, with the possible exception of Webb and Christie's final year. We had a team last year with the talent to beat virtually anybody but the Warriors on any given night and they did just that. This entire current exercise in tearing down is dubious until it proves it isn't. There's a way forward here, but it is going to be so narrow, going to require so much discipline and good luck with health. You give me Joerger with last year's crew, untouched, and I'm betting on 41 wins just from the coach and team not fighting each other. The talent was there. Now we canned the problem coach, but the question will be did we commit yet another massive Kings screw up and create a problem with the roster that we did not need to.
Seth Curry also signed a 2 year 6 million dollar contract with the Mavericks... we used 3x that amount of money on Anthony Tolliver.
I still can't reconcile you (rightly) being the loudest voice calling for defensive improvement from the Kings for years while also wanting Rondo to return. Only so much blame can go to George Karl's scheme when Rondo was James Harden bad/disinterested on that end of the floor this year.
The team was statistically better offensively and defensively when Rondo wasn't on the floor.
I've publicly, on this board, done a much deeper dive than that.
When Cuz and Rondo were both out there together we were flat dangerous.
For whatever reason remove Cuz from the pairing and nothing else with Rondo worked.
And the defense comes down to this: Rondo was once great on that end. Darren Collison never was and never will be. Brandon Jennings never was and never will be. Any number of guys never were and never will be (including actually the two PGs in the NBA Finals last year). But its a bit like Skal -- I will absolutely take the guy with the talent to be great over the guy without the talent to be great. Or in Rondo's case, the talent and knowledge of how to play defense if he gets along with a coach and a superstar and decides its worth it again.
Another guy who played poopoo defense last year was Afflalo. But again, I am in the market and I can tell anybody looking at the numbers that no, he wasn't a poopooty defender. He played poopoo defense. There is a difference. He started out the season doing ok, Rambis took over, they immediately clashed (Rambis was such a seemingly mild mannered geek hero as a player but seems to be singularly capable of losing his teams as a coach), and after the clash Afflalo decided well if you don't have my back, I'm not laying anything on the line for you and started barely jogging. Afflalo hasn't found it worth his while to lay it out over there in years. But give him a defensive coach... You can potentially resuscitate a guy who played poopoo defense but knows how to defend. There's nothing you can do for a Jose Calderon who just is a poopoo defender and never will be any better.
Now there were other issues here. It cost $14 mil a year to get Rondo. We would have had to scrap our roleplayer revolution. But these roleplayers only have a fraction of Rondo's talent. There's a way to make them work, but if they don't, its going to fail spectacularly. There will be no more nights like last year when we were simply the better, more talented team than playoff teams. The grit and grind has to work or dumping our FAs, and potentially Rudy and friends too, is going to be yet another huge talent setback for the franchise that always bleeds what little talent it gets away. And it will cost us Cuz too, just to complete the picture of the next 76ers.
If Rondo played a shred of defense last year, he would either be back here or would be making a lot more money than he is now. Instead he decided to do this nearly every game and most teams decided to pass regardless of how much talent he possesses.
http://www.sactownroyalty.com/2016/...ome-major-defensive-lapses-seen-kings-vs-6ers
I read your breakdown. What it showed me was that playing with Rondo slightly benefitted Cousins and playing with Cousins greatly benefitted Rondo. At least from the standpoint of team stats. Rondo assisted on nearly every one of Cousin's threes and often delivered the ball where he could be effective. But dangerous? Hard to be a dangerous team when opponents know you won't play any defense and can easily be outworked as witnessed by that cringe worthy performance in Mexico City vs Boston.
And the idea that somehow Rondo is going to decide he wants to play defense again when he couldn't be bothered to in a contract (and reputation repairing) year is beyond hopeful IMO. If Rondo had any fire on that end we would have seen it at some point this year. At least a flash. A single stretch of determined defense. We didn't. He didn't give effort against the worst guards in the league and he didn't step up to the challenge of Curry, Westbrook etc. I can understand giving up on your coach part way through the year - Rondo started the season barely moving his feet on D. I saw absolutely nothing from Rajon Rondo that made me think he still had a passion for winning. No fighting through screens, no extra effort for loose balls, no being upset as losses piled up and guys went right by him repeatedly.
Rajon Rondo is a big name. He's no longer a good player. And unless something dramatically changes with the roster he's almost certainly going to be a disaster in Chicago next to another ball dominant guard with an unreliable outside shot.
Could not agree more. I disagree with Brick a lot, but I can usually glean where he's coming from in a basketball sense. He's just off his rocker here with no real leg to stand on. His argument basically consists of him having pedigree 8 years ago as a great defender/champion and that he can magically get that back.
Maybe he still has the talent to do so, but we saw none of it last year. The guy was possibly the laziest defender we've seen in a Kings uniform. It's one thing if he was trying out there and just didn't have the ability. But more often than not, he just didn't put the effort in.
It's also telling that the "super talented Rondo" basically had no market this offseason in an incredibly weak PG market where EVERYONE had money to spend.
There's nothing to get back.
That's the funny part about the Rondo thing. First of all, most of his bashers are full of poopoo and had their minds made up before he even arrived here, because ooh, he and Carlisle fought. A narrative was built,. the same way one was built around Cuz. In your case there's even more prejudice because of your conscious adoption of the PG-as-chucker motif, making Rondo a de facto dinosaur. So Rondo came, and I watched to see if he was indeed ruined. And I didn't see a one legged man. I didn't see a degraded passer. Contrary to Funky's assertion there were still a ton of hustle plays, and some of the most saavy plays we have seen since the Golden Era teams. He put up numbers virtually identical to what he put up before getting injured, and he even added a 3pt shot, which he hit at a higher rate than Conley hit his threes.
But that doesn't matter when you have a narrative and your mind made up. Its like our current political morass. Facts go right out the window.
Now on the other end of the floor he was undoubtedly lazy and playing at half speed. Then again that was virtually a teamwide affliction. Rampant confusion, frustration, quitting etc. If Rondo were this standout lousy defender while everybody else was busting their butt and vying for All Defense then we would have a case. But instead he was a canary. There was no guarantee he would have played better defense in other circumstances, but it was quite clear that last year was not better circumstances. Nobody liked the system, had any confidence in it, there were lockerroom problems, a silent coach sitting all game, we were 1-7 before we even began. A teamwide quit against the coach took place mid season. It was romperoom, and hence barely a test at all.
What is conformable, what is proven, is that:
Rondo 15-16 35.2min 11.9pts (.454 .365 .580) 6.0reb 11.7ast 2.0stl 0.1blk 3.9TO
Rondo 11-12 36.9min 11.9pts (.448 .238 .597) 4.8reb 11.7ast 1.8stl 0.1blk 3.6TO +All Star, Atlantic Division Champions, 39-27
And so now I am sitting on a player who on one side of the ball is putting up virtually identical numbers to the ones he put up as for a team that reached the ECF 5 years ago and lost a Game 7 to the Heatles. And the most accurate thing that can be said about him on the other end was that he wasn't trying very hard. Not that he couldn't move. Not that he had forgotten how to play. He just wasn't trying very hard, in a season when there was a lot of that going around.
Maybe your wrong. Its not like the FO didn't try to get a couple of better FA's. it's not like they didnt try and move up in the draft to get the 2 or 3 players they had targeted. They didn't want to give up what was needed for the draft pick...who knows what the cost was? They didn't get the players they had targeted in FA so they went to plan B. I've got no problem with the acquisitions. They are better than last year. They are being fiscally responsible. They are not looking for the quick fix. They are investing in youth with the plan on developing these guys.I appreciate you trying Brick, but the degree of stubborn on this particular issue exceeds all reason from what I can see. People didn't want him here to begin with and once it became clear we weren't going to be in the Playoffs this year old grudges came back hard. The narrative on Rondo is so established at this point, it would take an act of God to change people's minds. I'm tired of trying to see the rational where there is none. The best PG we've had here since Mike Bibby is gone for basically no reason and people are celebrating -- I suppose because we're happy to return to the "who's the PG this year" slot machine we've been spinning for the last decade.
Speaking of spinning, it's interesting watching people try to spin this off-season as some master stroke of restraint and fiscal responsibility. Isn't it frighteningly apparent that we have no long-term plan? Last summer Vlade went out and targeted Rondo, we got him the shooter he wanted, we got a backup PG who can shoot the lights out to hedge our bets, we spent the rest of our money on a competent backup C. All moves that made sense if our goal was to build a quality team around the Cousins/Gay pairing which was the only promising aspect of our lost season the year before. Now we tell Rondo that we don't want him back, we trade Belinelli, we let Seth go and we load up on (let's be honest) a bunch of backup SG/SFs on 1 or 2 year deals. Is this what Joerger asked for? Get me a ton of mediocre wings? I seriously doubt it. We need to pay Tolliver $8 million to be our 9th/10th man but we can't afford to give Caron Butler $1.5 million? We need Garret Temple and Arron Afflalo but we can't afford $3 million a year for Seth Curry at a position of need? You have to be seriously deluded to buy that these are forward-thinking moves designed to increase our ability to compete.
At least tell me our plan is to cash out on Cousins for assets and wait out the Durant/Curry Warriors window of the next 4 years. That would make a modicum of sense. Competing? You've got to be crazy. Not only are we 10 years removed from our last first round playoff loss, we're apparently incapable of executing a team building plan that extends beyond the confines of a single season. This time is going to be different? I like Dave Joerger in theory, but I'll believe it when I see it. If I see it. I'm at the point now where I've realized there are better ways to spend my time. It's not just about Rondo and Butler. The attitude around the team this season, the attitude among the fans this season, the comments coming from the front office, the actual moves being made and money being spent. The whole thing has turned toxic to the point I don't even want to be involved anymore. Why are we forming factions around particular players? Why are we still bringing up moves that happened years ago and shaking our fingers? None of this represents what's positive and uplifting about competitive sports.
In my entire experience as an NBA fan, I've seen 5 or 6 franchises that are smart and proactive about competing for championships. Everyone else is churning through personnel or going through the motions. I've finally had to question if it actually makes sense to use the global "we" to refer to an organization which obviously doesn't share my values. I've tried as hard as I can to reconcile the disparity, but every time I try to project a plan out of the latest random assortment of transactions they zag the other direction. They fire the coach or change the GM or trade a key player and we're onto a new "plan". But then "plan" implies a series of connected moves intended to reach a common purpose -- I don't think there is one. I think Cousins' trade demand, whenever it comes, is going to catch them completely by surprise when they probably should have seen it coming since 2 or 3 years ago. So they'll take the best deal they can get which most likely involves betting on ping pong balls. That new arena is bigger than basketball and it was an important step to take for the city of Sacramento to build toward the future. The Kings will still be there in 20 years with whoever is in charge at that time trying their hand at it. But we're not competing. Or rather they're not competing. And as a fan, I've finally had to admit to myself that I'm not comfortable supporting a team which isn't trying to win; isn't even capable of it because they lack the skill and ingenuity to figure out how.
There's nothing to get back.
That's the funny part about the Rondo thing. First of all, most of his bashers are full of poopoo and had their minds made up before he even arrived here, because ooh, he and Carlisle fought. A narrative was built,. the same way one was built around Cuz. In your case there's even more prejudice because of your conscious adoption of the PG-as-chucker motif, making Rondo a de facto dinosaur. So Rondo came, and I watched to see if he was indeed ruined. And I didn't see a one legged man. I didn't see a degraded passer. Contrary to Funky's assertion there were still a ton of hustle plays, and some of the most saavy plays we have seen since the Golden Era teams. He put up numbers virtually identical to what he put up before getting injured, and he even added a 3pt shot, which he hit at a higher rate than Conley hit his threes.
But that doesn't matter when you have a narrative and your mind made up. Its like our current political morass. Facts go right out the window.
Now on the other end of the floor he was undoubtedly lazy and playing at half speed. Then again that was virtually a teamwide affliction. Rampant confusion, frustration, quitting etc. If Rondo were this standout lousy defender while everybody else was busting their butt and vying for All Defense then we would have a case. But instead he was a canary. There was no guarantee he would have played better defense in other circumstances, but it was quite clear that last year was not better circumstances. Nobody liked the system, had any confidence in it, there were lockerroom problems, a silent coach sitting all game, we were 1-7 before we even began. A teamwide quit against the coach took place mid season. It was romperoom, and hence barely a test at all.
What is confirmable, what is proven, is that:
Rondo 15-16 35.2min 11.9pts (.454 .365 .580) 6.0reb 11.7ast 2.0stl 0.1blk 3.9TO
Rondo 11-12 36.9min 11.9pts (.448 .238 .597) 4.8reb 11.7ast 1.8stl 0.1blk 3.6TO +All Star, Atlantic Division Champions, 39-27
And so now I am sitting on a player who on one side of the ball is putting up virtually identical numbers to the ones he put up as for a team that reached the ECF 5 years ago and lost a Game 7 to the Heatles. And the most accurate thing that can be said about him on the other end was that he wasn't trying very hard. Not that he couldn't move. Not that he had forgotten how to play. He just wasn't trying very hard, in a season when there was a lot of that going around.
Kings lineup---------------------------Poss.----ORtg----DRtgI've publicly, on this board, done a much deeper dive than that.
When Cuz and Rondo were both out there together we were flat dangerous.
For whatever reason remove Cuz from the pairing and nothing else with Rondo worked...
Kings lineup---------------------------Poss.----ORtg----DRtg
Boogie, Rondo, no Mclemore--------2212----107.9----107.2
Boogie, Rondo, Mclemore-----------1526-----109.3----104.9
It's all about Benny!
Nobody worked last season without Cousins, except James Anderson. He might have just really hated Boogie.
Only 6 teams had ORtg-DRtg>4.4 last season, and #6 Clippers were at 4.5. So Benny is one helluva invisible man.Seems like the teams numbers are always better with McLemore for whatever reason. I'm wondering if it's because his backups are so bad that he's the clear default winner because while he hardly seems to do much to really help the team, he doesn't really do much to hurt it either. He's just kind of invisible most the time which is better than Belinelli or Stauskas coming in and bricking shots everywhere and playing zero defense.