The Sad Truth: Kings won't be competitive until 2010/11 Season

[bench_blob]

I'm always excited for a new season to begin, but the ugliness I'm sure will get to me sooner than later. I will be excited to see how our young guys develop if they get a chance to play that is. But you want to know why people aren't excited let me paint a picture.

Starting 5:
PG: Orion Greene
SG: Kevin Martin
SF: John Salmons
PF: Kenny Thomas
C: Brad Miller

Average Ticket Price: Among the highest if not the highest in the league!

Whoa, that's a starting five only a Mother could love....pretty sad.

Let's sum it up: This lineup is good for about 80 to 90 points a game, while surrending 105 to 115, a very poor rebounding team, not particularly athletic, no go-to player in the post or crunch time (assuming there would be one), no player who commands a double team, mediocre ballhandling, and way below average passing team.

Minus Bibby, and Artest, and Hawes, 2-18 is a foreseeable record for the first 20 games of the season. Teams will be salivating to play us; no matter how well coached, no matter how well we execute, the talent, shooting, passing, rebounding, athleticism is not there.

Recipe for victory: K Mart goes for 50+ points.

Pre-season impressions:

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #1 = Mikki Moore -- FRAILE body, foul prone, can't finish down low, can't get his shot in the offense, $18 million dollar for this? Can't beat out KT for starting job? That pretty much sums it up.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #2 = CISCO GARCIA -- Has not improved since rookie year. Looks same at 23 as at 26 years old, development has been neglible. Not athletic, not quick enough, , poor decisions, mentally weak -- this is a make or break year for Cisco; Coach Theus, former collegiate coach, are you kidding? there are no more excuses - now or never.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #3 = SAR (Abdul Rahim) - The Nets were right; moves like Chris Weber did post surgery; has no lift, no lateral mobility, no desire; serious liability defensively -- makes zero sense to have him on the court period for any meaningful minutes given sad physical condition.



POSITIVES:
Brad Miller looks great. Last year he looked like Kevin James from the King of Queens, this year he actually looks like a basketball player (call me crazy but I like the corn rows).

Qunicy Douby - needs time on the court, more self-confidence, then I like his potential, shooting, defense.

John Salmons- Good player, smart; time to be more assertive.

Coach Theus - If this year and the losses doesn't break his spirit, he will be our coach for the next decade.

 

[tyrant]

Whoa, that's a starting five only a Mother could love....pretty sad.

Let's sum it up: This lineup is good for about 80 to 90 points a game, while surrending 105 to 115, a very poor rebounding team, not particularly athletic, no go-to player in the post or crunch time (assuming there would be one), no player who commands a double team, mediocre ballhandling, and way below average passing team.

Minus Bibby, and Artest, and Hawes, 2-18 is a foreseeable record for the first 20 games of the season. Teams will be salivating to play us; no matter how well coached, no matter how well we execute, the talent, shooting, passing, rebounding, athleticism is not there.

Recipe for victory: K Mart goes for 50+ points.

Pre-season impressions:

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #1 = Mikki Moore -- FRAILE body, foul prone, can't finish down low, can't get his shot in the offense, $18 million dollar for this? Can't beat out KT for starting job? That pretty much sums it up.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #2 = CISCO GARCIA -- Has not improved since rookie year. Looks same at 23 as at 26 years old, development has been neglible. Not athletic, not quick enough, , poor decisions, mentally weak -- this is a make or break year for Cisco; Coach Theus, former collegiate coach, are you kidding? there are no more excuses - now or never.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT #3 = SAR (Abdul Rahim) - The Nets were right; moves like Chris Weber did post surgery; has no lift, no lateral mobility, no desire; serious liability defensively -- makes zero sense to have him on the court period for any meaningful minutes given sad physical condition.

lovely post. brings a tear to my eye

 

[Gary]

I don't see how the Kings don't have a crunch player (Martin), Passers (Miller, Greene, Cisco, Salmons, Shakur), and also the line-up is pretty athletic.

I agree that Martin is pretty clutch, but the Kings are not athletic, and that list of passers made me puke in my mouth a bit.

We will be a pretty pathetic team for the first few weeks/months.

I would be surprised if we win 10 out of our first 42 games.

 

[Bricklayer]

Now I actually think the 10-32, 2-18 type stuff is going too far into the negative. We are basically one player (Bibby) from where we were when people were thinking we might be able to go 40+ and be "lucky" enough to be the #9 seed. Now Bibby is an important piece, and in his veteran stediness and with the complete lack of backup his loss will make it hard to be respectable. But there's still too many semi-talented vets on the team to be a 15 win team or something unless Reggie proves completely incompetent. We will struggle, but we still aren't a historically bad team or anything. We'll get a few here and there. Probably surprise a good team once a month or so, and generally not have the worst record in the league.

 

[Entity]

We are going to need Douby and Cisco to step it up for the next 2 weeks. We need about 25 pts total out of those 2. How about Darrel Watkins. It looks as though he is going to get min because of Justin, and Hawes out and SAR looks like crap and Miller having back problems. In fact he could get 10 to 12 min Wednesday nights.

BTW why hasn't the Williams case gotten far enough along so he can come back to the team or be waived or something. It seems like its going to be a he said she said type of deal or in this case he said she said and another she said.

 

[Bricklayer]

BTW why hasn't the Williams case gotten far enough along so he can come back to the team or be waived or something. It seems like its going to be a he said she said type of deal or in this case he said she said and another she said.

Hasn't even been a month yet. You can take months before you even get the indictment, 6 months or even close to a year before you even get into court depending on how clogged the jurisdiction is. Onyl way the thing ends really early is if the womnan backs off her climas...and the prosecutor decides not to go forward anyway.

As an aside, from our perspective this may be seen as relatively low risk since all NBA contracts have behavior/morals clauses that allow them to be voided if you are convicted of this sort of thing. Can wait to see what happens, and worst case, void the contract and not have to pay on it. Not sure how the current pseudo-suspension works -- do we have to pay him installments in the interim? Or not until he's off suspension or whatever? If we do pay him, is it recoupable if he's convicted? Etc.

 

[Jerichoholic]

Whew, a lot of stuff to respond to here...let's see.

1. Moore's contract, sure he will make 5 million a year when the average player makes 4 million and there is a premium on big men. Problem with this argument is that Moore isn't even average, he is below average. And Moore may be tall and long but that usually translates into rebounds and blocked shots which Moore doesn't get, we might as well of signed a guy who was 6'4".

2. Hawes/Miller: We discussed a lot this offseason of Miller playing PF again but with his weight this would be a problem. Well it hasn't been discussed since but the way he has played this preseason PF would actually be a good fit. When Hawes comes back he should start at center and play the low post while Miller moves to PF and plays the high post.

3. Douby's role and potential: His ballhandling is coming around but he is definitely not a creator or passer...he is a scorer. I don't think the comparison with him and other shoot-first PGs is fair, not only can this guy shoot the lights out but he is a great penetrator and finishes well at the rim. The guy can flat out score, there aren't many players like him but at this stage he really reminds of Gilbert Arenas, we could have a steal here...either way he's still not a pure PG.

4. Our record: The original point of this thread was to show how bad of a position were in. You take this already poor team and take Artest for 7 games, take Bibby for 3 months, it looks as if Miller and Shareef will have injury problems already and that comes to a team lucky to win 30 games. When the season is over we will seriously be thinking that the number one draft pick is possible...although with our luck we'll probably fall to 5.

 

[fnordius]

at this stage he really reminds of Gilbert Arenas

During each of his first 2 years, Arenas shot about 2.25 times for each assist he made. With Douby, the ratio so far is 7.5 to 1. We will see.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

And I'll beat you 10 times out of 10.

Shooting is not a top tier skill for a point guard. The orignal Eric Snow has started 500 games over his career and been to the NBA Finals twice. The "new" Eric Snow has a good shot to get there this year, and might lead the league in steals. He will do everything but shoot, and that's considerably more valuable than someone who does nothing but.

Minor correction: Snow has been to the Finals three times.

 

[Jerichoholic]

During each of his first 2 years, Arenas shot about 2.25 times for each assist he made. With Douby, the ratio so far is 7.5 to 1. We will see.

I was talking purely about the scoring standpoint...you could throw defense in there as well. I'm just telling you what I see in Douby's game, stats wise we don't know what he can do. Arenas got to start in his first year, Douby barely got off the bench.

That's what is amazing about this team is that you take our young guys like Garcia, Douby, and Williams and last year they barely played...why? Oh, I forgot, because we're sooo good.

 

[Arena Skeptic]

If Hawes comes out and plays well, I'm betting that your outlook will brighten instantly. We have a young skilled big man who will be able to score in the post. I'm not going to worry about his knees. The last report said that his previous micro-fracture surgery looked very good. What I focus on is the fact that we don't have any big man that can score in the post...unless you count Rahim, which I don't anymore. Of course, he's going to come up short on the rebounding and shot-blocking but I hope that his skill set helps are other players perform better.

Thornton does not play PF. He's a small forward all the way. A good looking rookie except that Hawes is the better pick. I'm thinking that Rondo is a potential backup PG who is getting starters minutes. He's as good as the guys around him. He would not make a difference on this team. The same goes for Marcus Williams. Nice players but what have they done? Will these guys be all-stars? Really don't think so. Rondo doesn't shoot the ball well enough. The Bibby injury does allow for the staff to see what we got in Douby and Cisco. For me, the jury is out on Cisco...can he be a consistent NBA rotation player? Same for Douby. Same goes for Hawes.

We just haven't seen Hawes play, period.

I'm sort of basing my comments on 1) making light in front of what I'm expecting to be a long season, and 2) Hawes' Mike Dunleavy-like body, and 3) the bad Pac-10 rebounding numbers (when you're 7' tall and have THOSE rebounding numbers, predicting a bright NBA future is more speculative than anything).

I think the best thing we can all do is live with the fact that the only way out is to let five bad contracts expire. And speaking of which, why in the world would Bibby opt out early now? The Kings will have him for the duration. No teams will give him even half what the Kings are contractually bound to give him.

I just really wish Petrie could do one thing: Get KT to opt out, just like Mullin did with Adonal Foyle. That genius move saved the W's money and got them cap relief. Why can't Petrie/Joe/Gavin talk KT into accepting a 2/3 buyout? That would be such a huge help.

By the way, I really, really like Thornton, a lot. He's a little raw, but I'm telling you, in two years, comparing Spencer with Thornton will seem a lot like comparing Todd Fuller with Peja Stojakovic. Sorry, but I really believe it.