Kings Trade for Tubby White Guy, Foreigner

Rejoice Greg Ostertag fans, rejoice!

The Kings have acquired Vitaly Potapenko and Sergei Monia for Brian Skinner in a deadline-day trade, various sources are reporting.

As for Skindog, the first of the Philly Three to be peddled: We'll miss ya, dude. Not in a Bobby Jackson, Chris Webber way. Hell, not even in a Maurice Evans, Eddie House way. But we'll miss you. Your block on Marion in Albuquerque was the highlight of the 2005-06 preseason. Thank you.

Now, on the the new parts. Here is the only sentence I should have to post on Vitaly Potapenko to give you an idea of who he is: Seattle coach Bob Hill benched the Ukraine Train for being overweight and out of shape. Flashbacks, anyone?

That said, Pomme-Frites (yes, that is our first attempt at dubbing Vitaly) is damn near a 7-footer, so we have a tall guy not named Jamal Sampson we can actually stick in for Brad. (Skindog was 6'9 in heels.) VP is making $3 million this year, and will make $3.3 million next season. After that, the contract is over.

Now about this Sergei Monia fellow. You want to know how hard it is to find information on him? I'm not even sure his name is spelled "Sergei Monia." Sports Illustrated spells it "Sergei Monya," and HoopsHype calls him "Sergey Monya." He's a Russian rookie, seeing very limited in Portland. A profile on NBADraft.net said Sergei "hs a nice midrange jumper and is a solid 3pt shooter, but his best attribute is his team defense, he knows how to help teamates and he's a pretty good one on one defender too." The stats say differently, as Sergei's FG% is around 37% for the season. He has, however, been trapped on the bench of a cruddy Portland team.

No word on whether he and now-estranged Russian Blazer buddy Viktor Khryapa had a Franchise-Cuttino relationship that could lead to some issues.

I don't expect either newbie to make a major difference immediately - I mean, has Skinner been making a difference? Sergei is a bit younger than Kevin Martin and Francisco Garcia and much more raw (it would seem), so I don't anticipate him affecting their PT any. Monia seems like a solid Petrie chip, though.

Pomme-Frites could get some minutes in relief of Brad, though he is actually allergic to the ball on offense. Some blocks and a decent rebound percentage when he's in is all we should hope for.

(he most disturbing part of all this is that if someone asked me which NBA player I most resemble, I'd probably have to say Sergei Monia. Except less Russian looking.)