It's a bad sign.

After a very lackluster off-season (so far), especially after so much speculation on our part (too much), I kind of have an empty feeling within me concerning the upcoming season.  We are all of the opinion that our veteran starters will play too much, hello hydra, yet it feels like we are the only ones who would rather watch our young players play (here's to the year of the dog, go K9).  It seems that Geoff's approach has been one of a stern father patiently waiting out this troubled time, 2-3 years, as his child sits in the corner staring at the wall.  It's obvious that we have a deficiency of talent and are infected with a superfluous amount of once-talented veterans, yet I still have hope.  Unfortunately this hope is in the form of next year's draft; please tell me I am not the only one...

It has more to do with the incredible amount of information available via the internet, and the easily obtained knowledge of whose next year's studs will be, as opposed to giving up already.  If the internet had been around in the baby blue days, I am pretty sure I would have let my mind wander to the possible picks of the future as opposed to the horrendous quality of play we had at the time, thankfully it does exist now and gives me many sources of hope.

Here are some of the highly touted high-schoolers entering there first (and most likely only) year of college basketball.

Kevin Love: Will be attending UCLA as a Center, 6'-10" the son of a former NBA'er he has a plethora of basketball knowledge.  He won the Gatorade Athlete of the year and National Player of the Year awards as a Senior in high school, and is touted as many to be the greatest outlet passer since Lute Olsen (ESPN).

As he is a tall white un-athletic center, you can bet your ass the kings will be looking at him hard come draft time next year, although will the acquisition of another lottery pick who plays the exact same position/style be enough to dissuade Geoff? Only time will tell.

Bill Simmons also writes about his love affair with Love and hatred of another prep-star O.J. Mayo here: http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons&entryDate=20070329 .

On to the next, since you obviously read the above piece, O.J. Mayo would seem to be the next appropriate topic of our discussion. He's a 6'- 4" combo guard and has been a hot topic of discussion for awhile now, as there was some commotion regarding his admissions to his new school of USC.  He is a shoot first guard better served as a SG, but he can handle the point albeit more from a selfish point of view (think Marbury).

I am not too high on him and as the Kings only real star plays the same position I don't really feel we will be ushering in days of Mayo in our future.

Our next prospect is Derrick "Pooh" Rose.  He is a pure PG with great passing, athleticism, and has good PG size.  Standing at 6'-2" and 180 lbs he is playing PG for Memphis this year so chances are you'll get a good dose of him in the NCAA tourney next year (god that's far away).  He has been heralded as the second coming of Jason Kidd, hopefully his wife doesn't suffer the same fate.

Trey from I ball for real compares his skills with O.J.s in a piece I found via Truehoop: http://iballforreal.blogspot.com/2007/08/derrick-rose-vs-oj-mayo.html from initial scouting reports he could be our PG of the future, however we would definitely need some tanking to get in his range for picks.  Trey offers up some good points, but the fundamental flaw in his piece is that O.J. is more of a SG whereas Pooh is definitely locked into the PG position, making it more of an apples-to-oranges comparison.

The selection of Pooh would definitely be great not only from an athletic/skill direction but also from the forum hilarity perspective.  Having Pooh being backed up, hopefully, by Pooh Jeter would probably make life in Sacramento too much fun so I am not willing to get my hopes up just yet.

Anyhow, I hope you all enjoyed my escape from reality (this next season) and I look forward to seeing K9 ballyhoo and miss lay-ups this next season.  I'll try to update with more prospects as they come, however, I am at work right now and only had time for an abridged version. GO KINGS!!!