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- Thread starter Tetsujin
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macadocious
Starter
KainLear
Starter
It might be a tough uphill battle to debate whether our team was a better-managed franchise (over any other team) when we missed the Playoffs for 16 years straight when more than half the league makes it.
But I digress.
Livinthedream
All-Star
Vlade did not pick the better player and he may have been wrong about Bagley overall,
but his reasoning was sound.
I'm in no way convinced that this organization as it stood at that time could have managed Luka. Mark Cuban had more standing and clout to push back on Luka than Vlade and Ranadive.
I will also not be convinced that picking the number 1 high school recruit, ACC freshman of the year, college consenus first team all american, college top big man award and then 1st team NBA rookie selection with no injury history to speak of was some how a reach.
The organization is in a better place now. But until the right management and coaching was in place, no one was going to succeed here.
but his reasoning was sound.
I'm in no way convinced that this organization as it stood at that time could have managed Luka. Mark Cuban had more standing and clout to push back on Luka than Vlade and Ranadive.
I will also not be convinced that picking the number 1 high school recruit, ACC freshman of the year, college consenus first team all american, college top big man award and then 1st team NBA rookie selection with no injury history to speak of was some how a reach.
The organization is in a better place now. But until the right management and coaching was in place, no one was going to succeed here.
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I'll stop here.
They won a championship with Dirk and also reached another final. Better than I have seen the Kings in my lifetime, and also during a period we did not play a single playoff game. I guess I'll never understand the "wasted Dirk" when they won a title and guy played his whole career with the org. Would be a storybook career for Kings fans. Oh well. Luka got the GM and coach fired and they've only gone on to be about 1000x worse since. So I guess score one for Vlade's intuition in that regard.
At the time we passed over Luka, we then managed to allow a player's dad to drive a wedge between the FO and the coach in a way that both the top assistant GM and the head coach were leaking conflicting narratives to the press and the coach even went so far as to say the team's top draft pick was not his preferred player.
Vlade blew a pick at 10 by trading it for picks at 15 and 20 the year prior who could have been: Malik Monk or Donovan Mitchell or Bam Adebayo OR John Collins plus any combo of OG Anunoby, Kyle Kuzma, or Josh Hart - all of these players have been linked in various ways to the Kings over the past few years, either ones fans covet or ones Monte may have tried to acquire, save for Spida.
I don't see any metric that can shake the facts that we were a bottom 3 FO for the entire decade of the 10s.
I will give credit where credit is due to the Vlade era Kings and say they did a wonderful job getting talent in Sacramento on reasonable, not crippling contracts. An area where the previous regime had failed, necessitating Vlade's first major blunder with that awful trade for space deal he made with Philly. Still, that is another point in the L column for Vlade as a whole. And you have to wonder if his one major win, FOX, the focus of this thread, directly came about because we lost ground in the 2017 draft due to that move.
That said we're in year 3 of Monte and a lot of overly critical fans felt Monte was wasting Fox or Fox was not an elite talent or some combo of bad all around, so let's just accept fans can be fickle. I hope Fox and Domas and Monte can reach two finals and win a championship for Sacramento. I don't care if they never reach the playoffs again after that run - my life will be complete.
KainLear
Starter
That'd be one of my dream scenarios before heading into this season (In my version we don't even end up with a championship but I digress). But fans can easily fall into some unrealistic fantasy stage because we can only interpret what happens in front of us, despite how we feel about our longevity as fans, we do not have any intimate knowledge of the fact.
You never know, we could reach two finals and win a championship and 10 years later we might meet another "fan" who accuses this team of treadmilling and wasting Fox and Domas' prime years.
* shrugs *
krylia sovetov
Bench
i still think it was not vlade's decision, but vivek's... one day, maybe, we will found out how that euroleague F4 dinner looked like (vivek, vlade, luka and bogdan were present) and what were the conclusions...
yes they won one (and only) title with dirk, i cannot make comments should they won more, didn't followed NBA for most of 2000's
but i remember that roller-coaster back in 2002-04 period, they tried with antoine walker, antawn jamison, juwan howard... nothing worked.
i guess risky moves are their tradition, that's how they got luka after all.
ATM mavs are is in down spiral of bad trades and bad contracts. seth curry trade, risky porzingis move which led to a tough pill in bertans contract, 19 mill to hardaway JR...
20 yrs ago i didn't paid much attention to trades, contracts, traded picks, main targets and sweeteners in trades, but i remember constant shake-up of mavs roster.
in 2005 i even had opportunity to ask donnie nelson personally: why did you let nash walk away? he just replied: cash!
didn't asked any further questions...
I had a cute little image in my mind about Domas and Foxy going in to get matching finger surgeries as a bonding exercise this week but I am glad Fox won't need it.
