1) It shouldn’t be surprising at all that we didn’t appear to have an offensive identity the first four games. Our PG was still coming back from injury and playing like crap. Our back-up PG was playing his first season with the team—and is old. Our 3rd string PG didn’t play almost at all, and was also playing his first season with the team. In addition, the center who usually runs a lot of our offense was out, and we were starting a center who had only started a handful of games with us last year.

2) What we are seeing now is not only playing more beatable teams, but the team starting to actually put together their game plan. I don’t expect to see things really gel until January at the earliest, but what I see gives me hope.

3) Those terrible teams we are playing against lately are at exactly the stage we are. They are teams with one or two veteran players and a couple of future potential stars. So the fact that we are beating them—despite them having players taken higher than us in the last two year’s drafts—shows that we are better than we might have expected. If we are actually beating “lesser” opponents—and beating them easily—it puts us somewhere higher than the young, upcoming team that even we as fans expected.

4) Lastly, what I think most Kings fans hoped for was a glimpse of what might be. That maybe our draft picks were better than the media would have us believe. What have we learned so far:

PG—Beno is still unknown, but at very least, B. Brown appears to be a solid back-up that most teams would love to bring off the bench. Can’t really give GP points here, because if Beno doesn’t work out, it kind of offsets the success of signing Brown on the cheap. If Beno plays to even average potential, it’s at least +1 pt.

SG—For those idiots writers and fans who thought Speed was overrated and would choke with Artest gone, “Sucks to be so very, very wrong huh?” +2 points for signing an All Star caliber 2 guard to a reasonable five year contract. Backup? Well, that’s another story. Hopefully Garcia fills in well, once he’s healthy.

SF—Again, all those people who said Salmons was a fluke when he started last year, prepare to eat your words. Not saying he is an All Star by any stretch, but the dif between him and Artest is not anywhere near all the dire negative predictions.

For the season, Artest is averaging 15.7 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 2.4 APG, and 2.1 SPG, in 40 minutes.
Salmons is averaging 17.3 PPG, 4.1 RPG, 3.6 APG, and 1.1 SPG, in 37 minutes.

And the kicker is that Salmons is doing this shooting 50% to Artest’s 33%. Is there a defensive drop off? Yes. Is it as huge as predicted? I don’t think so. Again, 1 pt for GP, but backup here is again a big question mark. Garcia? Yes. Double E? Not this season.

PF JT. Need we say more? At very least, this kid is the second best PF out of the draft and a solid player for the future. Upside? Could people be saying a year or two from now that he was the steal of the draft and our PF for years to come? Absolutely. Considering where we took this guy, this is 2 pts for Petrie. Yes, JT still shows his rookie mistakes every game, but the numbers don’t lie.

C This may be Petrie’s biggest coup. Remember the big, white, slow un-athletic center we drafted last year? Yeah, that’s right, the guy who can shoot a hook with either hand, is averaging two blocks a game, and would be averaging a double-double if he played 35+ minutes a game. It’s sad to see how he plods up and down the court, huh? Again, I don’t see how this isn’t worth at least a point and a half for GP. Not two, because some of his other options were gone when we got to SHawes (unlike JT this year), but a lot of people thought he screwed up.

Final analysis. We are a young team. We play defense like a team that doesn’t know and trust each other’s rotations yet. But we have either a solid player or likely future solid at every position. We will be able to keep said players with significant cap room in 2010. We have two first round draft picks next year. We have a couple of highly tradeable pieces. The pieces we want locked up long term are in long term or rookie contracts.

It does not appear that we will be cellar-dwellers this year. While it doesn’t appear that we will be contenders this year, we should definitely be in with-in two years, and we could sneak into the playoffs this year if several other teams continue to suck wind. We are much, MUCH, more fun to watch than we were all of last year. I’ll take that in a heartbeat.