Tweet
"First, the back story.
The Maloofs (who own the team) and general manager Geoff Petrie have made horrible basketball decisions:
They recently fired castoff coach Paul Westphal, whom they hired after he had made the Pepperdine team worse every year he was there.
They moved one of the league's great value plays -- a rotation player on a rookie deal -- in Omri Casspi for J.J. Hickson, whom they have since waived. The Kings were the team to throw an extra first-round pick into that deal -- and their only hope of keeping that (conditional) first-round pick is to stay bad for six full seasons.
After the Nets used the amnesty clause on the vastly overpaid Travis Outlaw, the Kings saved the Nets $12 million by signing him for that amount off waivers -- and now he has one of the lowest PERs at his position and averages only about 10 minutes a game.
Factor in production, potential, contract and everything else, and many would value Bismack Biyombo, Beno Udrih, Jimmer Fredette and John Salmons in that order. Biyombo is a very young, high-risk/high-reward big man, and Udrih is a middling player with an affordable contract. Fredette has been one of the least effective players in the NBA, while Salmons is both inefficient and terribly overpaid. Last June, however, the Kings essentially moved the two best assets out of those four for the worst two. Within hours, John Hollinger had explained all the ways this was clearly a disaster. All at once, the Kings got less productive, more expensive, older, positioned worse in the draft, and more crowded at the shooting guard position.
This last offseason the team made a big splash in signing noted post defender Chuck Hayes to a bigger deal than the Rockets were willing to match. But the Kings botched the medical exam, publicly backed out of the deal based on the perception of health problems, which led to an awkward and public back-and-forth between the players, independent doctors and the team. By the time it was settled, the team had agreed to add an extra million dollars to Hayes' already ambitious salary. At an age when he should be in in his peak, Hayes has struggled with conditioning and has underperformed expectations in essentially every statistical category.
A few years ago the Nets voided Shareef Abdur-Rahim's contract because of medical concerns about his knee. The Kings then gave Abdur-Rahim a five-year deal worth more than $30 million. Three years into it, Abdur-Rahim retired because of that same knee.
The Kings waived Mikki Moore with a year left on three-year, $18 million deal.
Petrie publicly offered Bonzi Wells a multi-year deal worth more than $30 million in the summer of 2006. Had Wells accepted it, he would only have recently come off the Kings' payroll, even though he played his last NBA game in May 2008.
As a recent All-Star and first-team all-NBA defender, Gerald Wallace has earned greater honors than any current Kings. And he would be a current King, if Petrie hadn't left him unprotected in the 2004 expansion draft. Wallace could barely get off the bench in Sacramento, but given playing time was instantly the Bobcats' best player.
A team that has struggled to find a coach is also a team that fired both (now Timberwolves head coach) Rick Adelman and (now Thunder head coach, a former Kings assistant) Scott Brooks.
The Sixers are very pleased with young big man Spencer Hawes, whom they got in a trade that got the Kings nothing that has proved to matter."
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...of-the-iceberg
The Maloofs (who own the team) and general manager Geoff Petrie have made horrible basketball decisions:
They recently fired castoff coach Paul Westphal, whom they hired after he had made the Pepperdine team worse every year he was there.
They moved one of the league's great value plays -- a rotation player on a rookie deal -- in Omri Casspi for J.J. Hickson, whom they have since waived. The Kings were the team to throw an extra first-round pick into that deal -- and their only hope of keeping that (conditional) first-round pick is to stay bad for six full seasons.
After the Nets used the amnesty clause on the vastly overpaid Travis Outlaw, the Kings saved the Nets $12 million by signing him for that amount off waivers -- and now he has one of the lowest PERs at his position and averages only about 10 minutes a game.
Factor in production, potential, contract and everything else, and many would value Bismack Biyombo, Beno Udrih, Jimmer Fredette and John Salmons in that order. Biyombo is a very young, high-risk/high-reward big man, and Udrih is a middling player with an affordable contract. Fredette has been one of the least effective players in the NBA, while Salmons is both inefficient and terribly overpaid. Last June, however, the Kings essentially moved the two best assets out of those four for the worst two. Within hours, John Hollinger had explained all the ways this was clearly a disaster. All at once, the Kings got less productive, more expensive, older, positioned worse in the draft, and more crowded at the shooting guard position.
This last offseason the team made a big splash in signing noted post defender Chuck Hayes to a bigger deal than the Rockets were willing to match. But the Kings botched the medical exam, publicly backed out of the deal based on the perception of health problems, which led to an awkward and public back-and-forth between the players, independent doctors and the team. By the time it was settled, the team had agreed to add an extra million dollars to Hayes' already ambitious salary. At an age when he should be in in his peak, Hayes has struggled with conditioning and has underperformed expectations in essentially every statistical category.
A few years ago the Nets voided Shareef Abdur-Rahim's contract because of medical concerns about his knee. The Kings then gave Abdur-Rahim a five-year deal worth more than $30 million. Three years into it, Abdur-Rahim retired because of that same knee.
The Kings waived Mikki Moore with a year left on three-year, $18 million deal.
Petrie publicly offered Bonzi Wells a multi-year deal worth more than $30 million in the summer of 2006. Had Wells accepted it, he would only have recently come off the Kings' payroll, even though he played his last NBA game in May 2008.
As a recent All-Star and first-team all-NBA defender, Gerald Wallace has earned greater honors than any current Kings. And he would be a current King, if Petrie hadn't left him unprotected in the 2004 expansion draft. Wallace could barely get off the bench in Sacramento, but given playing time was instantly the Bobcats' best player.
A team that has struggled to find a coach is also a team that fired both (now Timberwolves head coach) Rick Adelman and (now Thunder head coach, a former Kings assistant) Scott Brooks.
The Sixers are very pleased with young big man Spencer Hawes, whom they got in a trade that got the Kings nothing that has proved to matter."
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...of-the-iceberg
Comment