Thursday Footnotes

If Nene is what he is advertised to be and could get healthy for next year, the Kings could start Miller and Nene up front while Hawes still develops, and Mikki becomes expendable or a pretty good player as bench bigs go. 3-Wil would have the balance of this year to write his own ticket.

Salmons is your 3, Martin your 2, with Garcia and Douby picking up the bench minutes.

With Nene's contract, Bibby would have to go. Get what you can, re-sign Udrih, and you still have your draft pick for the player of your choice (a pg to develop, perhaps?).

So you wind up with a decent starting five, two impact bench players (Moore and Garcia), two developing young players (Douby/Hawes), a potential wild card (3-Wil), a rookie, and whatever Bibby fetches. Not bad. Not a reason to clear banner space in the rafters yet, but not bad.

I still think that Nene is too expensive for how unproven he is, or too unproven for how expensive he is, take your choice. But it is hard to argue with the thought process that we will have to take a chance somewhere along the line if we are to improve.

In the recent poll I voted a preference for the proposed Linas/Najera deal, but that was because I have no clue about Nene's long term medical prognosis.

I do know that Geoff really likes Nene's game, and if GP thinks the medical risk is reasonable then I'm cool with such a deal.  

In fact I'd prefer it to Linas/Najera because in hoops you always want to lean toward getting one great talent rather than two good talents, and Nene's upside is so much higher than Linas.