SACRAMENTO KINGS: A Fan's Perspective: Part II

One of the last home games for the Kings in the city of Sacramento?
(photo courtesy of Josh Chiaratti)

Josh C

Josh C continues his rant about his favorite team, the Sacramento Kings.  Part I can be read, here.

As explained earlier, an NBA team needs a difference maker to build their team around and contend for championships.  The Sacramento Kings had their difference maker in Chris Webber.  Yes, the Kings were bold in trading for a player that did not want anything to do with playing in Sacramento, but the gamble eventually paid off.  Since Webber has left, the Kings have been trying to fix the club by way of short-term, quick fixes rather than rebuild.  The most glaring example of management’s stubbornness in placing a full-fledged, rebuilding plan came in the 2006 NBA DRAFT.

Webber was gone, the team’s window for a title had closed, and it was time to find an heir apparent to point guard, Mike Bibby. I understand that it was weak draft, but at #19, there were some nice, long-term projects you can gamble on.  Players available at that spot:

• Rajon Rondo
• Marcus Williams
• Kyle Lowry
• Shannon Brown
• Jordan Farmar
• Sergio Rodriguez 

And what do the Kings do?  They select Quincy “bleeping!” Douby! QUINCY DOUBY!!! I still remember that night like it was yesterday: the Kings had the opportunity to pick up a young point guard and Geoff Petrie and Co. picks Douby who is nowhere near the point guard prospect that the other players are.  I was so enraged by the selection that I started to curse Petrie and Douby’s name at the top of my lungs and proceeded to throw an empty plastic cup at the TV.  I still haven’t gotten over it! (For those that don’t know, Douby was scouted as a defensive liability, a combo guard who would best be used as a scoring option rather than a point guard, was given a ZERO in the passing and ball handling variables coming into the 2006 NBA DRAFT—Ed).

But all of these moves since Webber and Bibby have left are nothing compared to what they did in the 2011 NBA DRAFT.  At first, I was drinking the Jimmer Kool-Aid as I was singing the praises of Jimmer Fredette.  But after awhile, after the Jimmer Kool-Aid started to wear out, even after drinking high doses of the stuff, I’m finally coming to the sad realization that Jimmer might have been a mistake—at least for this team.  See, I still believe Jimmer can be a legit, productive pro; just not with the Kings.  He will only achieve success in the NBA with a real, professional team.  The pick would not be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the Maloofs, essentially, forced Petrie to trade for the draft rights of Jimmer and also bring in veterans that did not fit well with this team (see John Salmons).  

The Maloofs have been crying poor in the last few years or so and clearly this acquisition was done in anticipation that the cult following Jimmer effectuated in college, would streamline into the NBA by bringing more fans into the arena and help bring in more money.  Financially, the move did pay off as Jimmer’s #7 jersey boosted Kings’ jersey sales to new, astronomical figures.

I often wonder how many terrible, front office, transactions can be attributed to the Maloofs.  And then I realized that ESPN ranked the Sacramento Kings as the penultimate, worst franchise in the FOUR MAJOR SPORTS in the U.S. and Canada.  The Charlotte Bobcats are ranked ahead of the Kings.  Are you kidding me?  And as stated earlier, the Kings are one of two teams (the other being the Minnesota Timberwolves) who have not made the playoffs since 2005-06.  And I haven’t even mentioned their disservice to the city of Sacramento with their aggressive pursuit of a new stadium, threats of relocation, and selling the team with the potential, inevitable move to Seattle.  

There’s no team in sports that I’ve ever been nearly as passionate about as the Kings.  No team in sports continues to scorn me and has made me throw things in ongoing, raging frustration because of terrible ownership and management decisions.  As you can see, I’m a die-hard Kings’ fan as long as they remain in "Swerve City", but at this juncture of the franchise’s history, perhaps radical changes are needed.  Even if it means my favorite team moves on.  It will at least give me the opportunity to move on myself.

Hello Golden State Warriors, my name is Josh and I am in the market as a free-agent fan and looking to take my talents to a new NBA team...

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2011 NBA DRAFT REVIEW: Part I

Felipe M.

I had a perfect plan for the Cleveland Cavaliers to get better in a relative hurry. The Cleveland Cavaliers, if they want to have their fans forget about LeBron James, need to select Derrick Williams with the #1 pick overall and then select a point guard at #4. T’Wolves and Jazz don’t need a PG so the Cavs might end up with the best athlete in Williams and STILL get Kyrie Irving at #4. Besides, who was the last player Duke developed into an NBA franchise player? If I were a Cavs' fan, I would much rather have Brandon Knight anyway.

Instead, the Cleveland Cavaliers blew a perfect opportunity to get better by doing the following--and now, a recap of the 2011 NBA DRAFT:

Picks 1-5: A lot of nonsense happened in this year's NBA Draft and nothing was more ridiculous than seeing the Cavs pass on this year's best overall player in Derrick Williams by selecting a good point guard, but not a franchise-type player, in Kyrie Irving. Once again, the Duke Propaganda Machine suckers another NBA team's future fortunes down the drain.

Even worse was seeing Williams go to the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NBA's version of hell. The T'Wolves already have plenty of players like Williams and by them picking him with the #2 pick overall, have all but guarantee the obstruction of this kid's development. The T'Wolves almost ruined Kevin Love and have done a horrible job in developing young talent and do a worse job in evaluating talent. Before the 2010-2011 season, it was reported that the T'Wolves' top brass decided that after looking at their roster, they came to the conclusion that Darko Milicic was the best player to build their franchise around. Yikes!

The other picks: Enes Kaster seems to fit perfectly well with the Jazz, especially if the trade rumors about Paul Millsap are true. Tristan Thompson out of Texas was the other pick for the Cavaliers who looks to be a poor man's version of Derrick Favors and according to Jay Bilas, Thompson needs to improve on his SCORING! You can forget about another Cleveland uprise happening any time soon.

The 5th pick saw the Toronto Raptors draft yet another European player in Jonas Valanciunas from Lithuania--a 19 year-old player who will never set foot with his NBA team until he's 24 and by then, Bryan Colangelo might be long gone. Or Jonas would have been traded to another team, thus making him a wasted pick at #5.

Picks 6-10: Jan Vesely from the Czech Republic was described as a "high-flying, energy guy" who can one day be a slam dunk champion. Unfortunately, the Wizards already have a player like that in JaVale McGee. And again, Vesely is reported to not make the Wizards' squad for another 5 years.

The Bobcats selected Bismack Biyombo from Congo who literally came out of nowhere. The 18 year-old is very athletic, but "cannot score." So Michael Jordan, who has been notoriously bad as a GM, decides that he needs the second coming of Hasheem Thabeet on his team. Just like the other Foreign players picked, Biyombo has a buyout issue, which is great because MJ has been known to have very little patience with young players (that he hand-selected in the first place). Best part about being Michael Jordan? He can screw up the Charlotte Bobcats all he wants because he will never get fired.

Brandon Knight--my guy!--gets selected by the Pistons, a great pick for Detroit as they are getting older and Rodney Stuckey is proving to not be the point guard that they were hoping for. Knight might just be the best point guard in this draft.

Speaking of point guards, the undersized Kemba Walker goes to the Bobcats as MJ might be losing patience with one of his hand-picked players, point guard D.J. Augustin--or maybe he wants both players to share the backcourt, making them one of the shortest in the NBA.

Finally, the Kings had to make a couple of deals to get Jimmer Fredette, which makes no sense to me whatsover. Yeah, they made room by trading away Beno Udrih, but they still have Marcus Thornton and no way is the Jimmer overtaking Tyreke Evans. Bilas thinks that Fredette can develop into a "scoring" guard, not just be limited as a Steve Kerr-like spot up shooter, but if his defensive liabilities become an issue, he might be just another white, bench player in the mold of J.J. Reddick and Adam Morrison.

This draft set a record for most Foreign players selected in the first 10 picks. However, this is a by-product of a draft full of "weak" collegiate players that were perceived to lack the offensive skills to make them standout in the NBA. This caused many NBA teams to roll the dice on a lot of foreign players. However, many of these players have many years to go before they arrive with their NBA teams.

History shows however that many foreign players who were drafted in the top 20 from 2000-2010 did not fully develop into the players that many NBA scouts thought their upside would take them. Of the 25 foreign players selected in the top 20 between 2000-2010, only half of them are still in the NBA, and often times, most of those players never make it to the NBA despite being drafted so high. However, the biggest letdown about these foreign players drafted very high in the NBA draft is that they never develop into that franchise type player that one would hope to get when selecting such a player. Many NBA teams select such players hoping they get the next Dirk Nowitzki, but more often than not, if one of these players end up a notch below Pau Gasol or Yao Ming, it should be considered a small victory.

To be continued....