By the way, since I only see a handful of games every season, I thought it would be fair to quote someone who makes a living watching and writing about them.....
But by all means, let's talk about the buzz that surrounded him as a rookie, and his 'potential'.
Don't the Kings need rebounding and interior defense? Nene does not and never will provide any of this.
Its unfortunate you chose to quote someone who apparently doesn;t understand basketball terminology.
If you can post a guy up, in a spot he likes, intentionally throw him the ball, and he can make a move and score with consistency, that's not a garbage man. That's an offensive weapon. That's also Nene. Amusingly, and here I will just have to assume this is one of the standard local beat writers with an axe to grind, its also exactly what basically ALL of the hype was about Nene in his first two years. The post game. A real post player, whoohoo! Wasn't much else to him. If he had actually been agarbage player, he probably wouldn't even still be in the league.
As for the shooting range -- the whole current fascination with big men with jumpers is laughable -- many of the greatest bigs to ever step on the floor couldn't shoot a jumper to save their life. And the three who won all of the titles in the post-Jordan era do almost all of their damage inside (Shaq, Duncan, Wallace). I could probably make a reasonable looking argument that having big men with jumpers is actually bad for chances of ever winning a title. And people wonder where all the great centers went -- well, they probably went outside to shoot jumpers like a bleeping pansyass shooting guard.
As for the rebounding/shotblocking -- I was a Nene sceptic, still am to some degree. When the buzz about him was still loud I was pointing early and often to his sad rebounding and shotblocking numbers as evidence he was a paper tiger. But then year 3 rolled around, and he put up these numbers:
23.9min 9.6pts 5.9reb 0.9stl 0.9blk
And it may have changed things. May well have gotten him this contract too. because you know what? All of a sudden those are not bad rebounding or shotblocking numbers per minute at all (nor bad scoring numbers). Actually rather resembles the sort of numbers Pollard used to put up for us (sans scoring of course). And so now there is hope. He was very young in yr 1 and yr 2. He progressed in yr3. Lost yr 4 to injury. Would not surprise me to see him come out and be solid on the galss and as a shotblocker from here on out. Never expect him to dominate in those areas. But if yr3 is any indicator of growing up/progressing, he could be solid.