What we see is what we get...Roster set?

[Smills91]

Mediocre would be 6th-8th man on a middling team. Although the Kings didn't really make it to the "middling" level last year, NJ was as middling as possible (41-41), so if you take Moore and Salmons together, they might squeak by at the low end of mediocre. But when teams like GS and the Clippers have Brandan Wright and Al Thornton as 6th-7th men, it really is just squeaking by.

I don't think that "sub-mediocre" is much more of an exaggeration than "mediocre" would be. And when Moore turns 33, "sub-mediocre" will probably sound exactly right.

If Mediocre is to Par
Then sub-mediocre is to Double Boogie

There's a big difference between average and below average.

 

[dude12]

I didn't see where Moore signed this long term deal? It's 2.5 years long basically. That's a very tradeable asset.

Salmons - I think is a GREAT 6-7th man off the bench. I think he's worth his pay, didn't overpay, we didn't underpay. He's very tradeable IMO, on his own merit. I think he'll look even better in an uptempo system that Theus plans to implement. Yeah his deal is long term, but he's a quality player.

Kenny/Brad/SAR only have 3 years left...they're 1-2 years away from being VERY tradeable pieces.

If C-Webb doesn't blow out his knee, this whole rebuild point is moot. Petrie did the best with what he had...it's tough cookies. The Clips just lost EB for probably the season, and they lost Livingston for the season last year and this year probably.

Tough cookies. Sucks for them to lose their franchise guy and most promising up-and-coming rook.

Same thing happened to us. You do the best with what you have. I still think we're in a great position to rebuild in 2 years, ESPECIALLY with some strong performances from Bibby/Ron/Brad to start out the season, which is VERY VERY LIKELY IMO.

Excellent points here. The term you used which I like is "quality". Your spot on in talking about Salmons and Moore. Both have reasonable contracts. They got what the market bears. Mediocre is a guy like Greene and Shakur, but these guys can change this label if given an opportunity and they produce. They can become quality players. That is their upside...won't be star quality guys.

Salmons is a very similar player to Cisco. Plays multiple positions, plays hard nosed defense at multiple positions, can handle the ball. I think Cisco is a better creator and 3-point shooter but Salmons is a better penetrator. I'd like to see Salmons be more assertive on offense. Solid player.

 

[dude12]

maybe you misunderstood me. by treading water i mean not going anywhere, no direction, and no hope of reaching shore, but not bad enough to sink. i highly doubt that there are 24+ teams in the aforementioned description. talent will continue to rise, teams will get better, stars will rise. to go with them, you need to pull some crafty moves, and develop what you have. some teams do that. others, like us, are merely content (its what it seems like) to tread water. in this respect, i mean pick up a middling player that isnt garbage in the slightest, but sure as hell aint gonna be your savior. take your middle draft pick, sign your mle, and lle, and call it an offseason. win your 35-40 games, rinse, and repeat.

this analogy is getting stupid, but ill just keep going with it. if youre out in the middle of the water, treading water just to keep your head above the water wont get you anywhere (middle lottery, 10+/- seed). you need to turn over, float for a while, and assess the situation. wheres west? wheres east? (pick a plan). sure, you could float farther out (such as losing more). but you can then gather your strength for when the tides are favorable (cycles of winning teams/losing teams), and go for it when the waters are helping you.

I understood your point. I guess my point is that I don't want to see us trade all of our assets for below-market value. I suppose if we did, then we would be in the top part of the lotto for sure. Teams can get stuck in that cycle for a long time is all I'm saying. Our 10th pick may end up being as good as the 3rd pick in this draft. Once we are able to trade Bibby, I think we'll be in position for a good rebuild but the right deal has to come along. Need a willing trade partner.

 

[quick dog]

I shall never again complain about ten years of peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. For many years I thought this was akin to child abuse. At least it wasn't given catfood!



Geeze Celt, were you a poor immigrant boy from Sicily or something? What's this Handsome Celt stuff? You should have been given an oatmeal cake and chunk of lamb shank.

Oh well, I would rather talk about unpleasant food than the Kings at this time. I shall schedule music practices during Kings games just to accomplish something this Fall.

 

[CruzDude]

We could well see Mikki at the 5 and Brad at the 4 for many matchups and I think Kings will carry 13 with 2 on the inactive list and do some rotations among the 11-15 slots. As to games, nah, not me, it's too much a crap shoot this year and it will take new Coach T 1/2 the year to figure out what works best, if then. So lets ride this right hand break as far as it takes us and have a ball watching the newbies.

 

[HndsmCelt]

The problem is not the Salmons or Moore contract per sey, it is the fact that we wrote those contracts when it was clear to even Stevie Wonder that this team needed to compleetly rebuild. That means top priority should be aquiring a Franchise type player. Signing middling FA's just nickle and dimes your cap space away with out giving you anything you can really use to build a wining team from. Thier contracts can't really be consolidated and traded for a franchise player. When these "bundled" trades take place the bundles usually are made up of young UNDER paid players like the KG Celts trade OR expirings that provide cap space. That again was part of what made the Webber trade SO abysmal for the Kings!

This constant signing of middling tallent to MLE contracts is very much like the dumb spending habits of most Americans. Rather than saving for the large purchaces of Cars, boats, Plasma TV's (Think top FA's) people blow thier monthly pay checks on eating out, movies, Ipods, fashon etc then have to BORROW money for the big ticket items. The difference is with the sallery cap in the NBA there is no lender to let you spend even more money once you blew your wad on the junk.

Said it once, I'll say it again. Teams aquire franchise players in 3 ways. First they can get them through simply buying them on the FA market. Not the most comon way it hapens since top FA's tend to resign with thier original team. Secondly teams trade for them. Again if you look at the TOP trades of the past few years they tend to fit 2 profiles. Either the team trades tallent for tallent like Miami did to get Shaq OR they trade POTENTIAL to get tallent as the Celts did to get Garnet. In either case the team essentially is sacrificing the future to win now, which may be fine in some cases but usually leaves fans dissatisfied in the end espcially if they do NOT win it all. The third and most comon way teams get franchise players is through the Draft. That means getting a top 1-3 pick, which of course also means loosing alot of games.

Signing these middling pros effectivly eliminates not only the possiblity of outright paying a top FA but having their skills on your team also minimizes the likelyhood of your team loosing enough games to get that top draft pick. As an added bonus these middling contract guys take up play time from the young players you would like to evaluate and possibly develope to build that wining team. So it is not just a lose-lose it's a lose-lose-lose.

Again this is not necessarly about Miki's or John's contrats by them selves it's a BIG picture thing. These guys can not help the Kings rebuild, infact their BEST efforts virtually kill a rebuild... not their fault either I balme the yahoos who signed them.

 

[RunNGun]

Is it just me or am I the only one who doesn't want to go through an agonizing rebuild process. I think that people are forgetting that GPs job is to put together the best roster that he can with the resources available to him. The Maloofs are spending 50+ million dollars on this team and they want to make money off of this investment now. This means filling seats in Arco every night and I don't think that people are going to continue to go to games if GP announces a full rebuild and basically admits that the season will end painfully in the realm of 25-30 wins.

Not to mention that losses do not mean luck in the draft as we saw in the case of Memphis and Boston. And with our history, I would never leave anything to luck. Yes, Boston got its all star team, but they essentially admitted that they will be a 20 win team again in 3-4 years ( And nothing is guaranteed with those 3 pairs of knees.) Which means another painful rebuilding process.

Now if only there was a way to trade your way into the Atlantic division.

 

[Bricklayer]

Is it just me or am I the only one who doesn't want to go through an agonizing rebuild process. I think that people are forgetting that GPs job is to put together the best roster that he can with the resources available to him. The Maloofs are spending 50+ million dollars on this team and they want to make money off of this investment now. This means filling seats in Arco every night and I don't think that people are going to continue to go to games if GP announces a full rebuild and basically admits that the season will end painfully in the realm of 25-30 wins.

Not to mention that losses do not mean luck in the draft as we saw in the case of Memphis and Boston. And with our history, I would never leave anything to luck. Yes, Boston got its all star team, but they essentially admitted that they will be a 20 win team again in 3-4 years ( And nothing is guaranteed with those 3 pairs of knees.) Which means another painful rebuilding process.

Now if only there was a way to trade your way into the Atlantic division.

Not the only one. But I am afraid suffering from the same disease as the others.

Sometimes things just need to be done. If your arteries are clogged, then you NEED to have open heart surgery to repair them. Until you do, you never get better. In fact, you slowly die. If you have choked yourself on credit card debt, you NEED to cut back, quit spending, live small, until you have paid them off. If your shoulder is dislocated you NEED to have it yanked back into socket. If your tooth is rotten you NEED to have a root canal. All of these things suck. They all hurt, they all are things that the cowards in us want to avoid. They are also all necessary, and once they are done, then and only then do you start to feel better again.

There is delusion to thinking that you never have to get bad in a professional sport. But there is also just a basic flaw in human psychology to the syndrome as well. Sometimes things just NEED to be done. And it does not matter how bad they hurt. They need to be done. So you suck it up, and do it. And then look forward to the better tommorow. Otherwise you can look forward to nothing but suffering and wallowing.

 

[HndsmCelt]

Oh you are not alone, you might even be in majority. For the past 3-4 seasons the Kings have been "rebuilding on the fly" and so far it has resulted in progressivly worse teams. Maybe a team in a large market can get away with it but I just don't see Sac pulling it off. A rebuild team does NOT mean boring jsut the opisit for many fans. Watching Justin Williams, Quincy Douby, Kevin Martin and Cisco run, shoot and jump would be preferable even with a loosing record and since we KNOW they are young kids developing their game the losses would be excusable. But watching Kenny, SAR, Miller Artest and Bibby loose is just painfull and pointless.

I agree about not trusting the luck of the lotto for your franchse, a good GM makes his own luck, heck even Danny Ainge did that. But my main point is that the true rebuild process of NOT signing MLE FA's clearing cap space by seeking expirings resutls in the WIN-WIN scenario of getting at worst at 4th pick AND having the cash availalble to sign a top FA.

 

[Kingster]

Salmons - I think is a GREAT 6-7th man off the bench. I think he's worth his pay, didn't overpay, we didn't underpay. He's very tradeable IMO, on his own merit. I think he'll look even better in an uptempo system that Theus plans to implement. Yeah his deal is long term, but he's a quality player.

Kenny/Brad/SAR only have 3 years left...they're 1-2 years away from being VERY tradeable pieces.

Same thing happened to us. You do the best with what you have. I still think we're in a great position to rebuild in 2 years, ESPECIALLY with some strong performances from Bibby/Ron/Brad to start out the season, which is VERY VERY LIKELY IMO.

I've heard of looking at the glass as half full, but..........

1) Salmons is relatively slow. Didn't see what Phoenix saw in him and I don't see what "uptempo Theus" will see in him. Garcia fits. Salmons doesn't. Salmons is a slow tempo grinder. I see him fitting with the Bibby, Miller, Artest, SAR, just like last year because they fit with the slower tempo. I don't see him fitting in with Martin, Garcia, Williams, Miki, Douby or anyone else who can run. I think Salmons would be perfect for Utah.

2) In 1-2 years SAR is going to look like he's running backwards he's going to be so slow. He won't be tradable. He'll be worthless, unless you mean trading him for a 2nd round pick means valuable.

3) I hope we begin the rebuilding process sooner than two years. What precedes rebuilding? Oh, I remember now - "refurbishing".

4) I'm very skeptical that the "uptempo Theus" system will work with Miller, Bibby, Artest, SAR, and Salmons. I am concerned that just as Theus misperceived Miller's talent, he has also misperceived the talent of his team, and I predict that fairly soon into the Theus regime that there will indirect or direct statements from the Kings org indicating that they will not be uptempo. First, you have to defend to run. Second, you have to rebound. Third, it's helpful if you're fast. All three characteristics are absent with the current Kings. Unless you sit Bibby, Artest, Miller, Salmons and SAR for long periods of time, you're not going to be a running team.

 

[fnordius]

4) I'm very skeptical that the "uptempo Theus" system will work with Miller, Bibby, Artest, SAR, and Salmons.

Several years ago we revolutionized the NBA with a new style of play. It's time that we resumed our position of leadership, and taught the rest of the NBA another lesson. So look out, everybody! Here comes the next generation of NBA basketball! "Limp and gun."

 

[HndsmCelt]

Irionically you may be right. Given the roster we have there is just no way the starting 5 of Bibby, Martin, Artest, SAR and Miller can "run and gun"... but there is another solution that WOULD be fairly unique. Rather than feed in substitutions one at a time New Coach Guy COULD wholesale sub like a hocky coach. Take Miller, SAR, Bibby and Ron out bring in JWill, K9, Cisco and Shakur (or other fast PG) suddenly the offensive style changes 180 degrees. But I will not be holding my breath on that one.