While ESPN is very negative towards us, but you have to see it from their point of view. This roster has not been upgraded at all. We lost Rondo, who is viewed overrated by the media, but still we replaced him with Garrett Temple, who most of the ESPN gurus have probably never heard of. We swapped Quincy Acy for Tolliver which is a wash, Added Barnes who was a decent addition but he is 37 years old, and Affalo replaces Bellini (slight upgrade but you have to remember the media is going to not see it that way unfortunately). I love the additions of Richardson and Skal but they are rookies and will more than likely take some time, Papa is ugh, and that is our off-season so far. The pressure is on Vlade to find an impact player for Rudy.
Unless you are one of the contenders, ESPN does not pay much attention to you, especially if you are on the west coast.
They still think that most of our issues last year had nothing to do with George Karl and everything to do with Vlade and DMC which is not exactly true. While there is a fair share of blame to go around, most of it has to be attributed to Karl for a long, never ending list of reasons.
1. He did everything he could to pee off his franchise player before the season even started
2. He continued to push his system onto a roster that is assembled for a very different style of basketball than the one his system pushed.
3. He showed no fire or leadership from the bench. He could hardly get up off the chair, lost his voice and would never get up to stand up for his players.
4. He continued to push pace despite his two best players being more of a half court, grind it our type of players.
5. He pushed his big center to run up and down the court as if he was a lanky Willie Cauley-Stein
6. He sacrificed rebounding and defense for shooting and offense.
7. He turned his best player who terrorizes teams on the lost post (see Charlotte game where he dropped 56 points) into a 3 pt chucking SG. While a 3Pt shot is a handy weapon for Cousins, he should not rely on it no where near as much as he did last season.
8. He stressed offense and never focused on the defense. As soon as the training camp started all we heard about was playing with a 15 second shot clock and nothing about focusing on the defensive end.
We are now resetting to where we were when we had Malone as the coach. We will be a defensive minded team who grinds out wins and punishes teams on the inside. This roster is suited to that type of game. Every single free agent we signed is known as a defensive players (except Afflalo who was known as one before he decided he had more fun on the offensive side of the ball but even still he is an upgrade at SG no matter how we look at it).
ESPN has never gone into much detail with struggling west coast franchise like the Kings. They do their high level analysis heavily affected by the opinion of others who themselves have not too far into it. ESPN had us gone to Seattle and it was a certainty despite it never quite being that sure a thing.
This roster is far from perfect and will need more work in months to come but as we currently stand, it is a very solid roster that should be pushing for an 7th-8th seed in the West provided that coach Joerger stays true to his style and does not turn into George Karl II.
The starting 5 is very good, solid starting 5 for a half court team that will have a strong focus on the defensive end and will run half court offense focused around their best player in a position were he will do most good for the team.
