The difference is, when you’re finished typing, your posts glow.

Ewing played in a Princeton style offense at Georgetown, Thompson Jr. was a Carril assistant remember. Singletary has been the most well received player we drafted from a critics standpoint (take that for what’s it worth.) And given rebound total and scoring total Thompson was more or less tied for second in the nation last year in terms of double doubles with Hansbrough. Speaking of which, don’t we constantly complain about this team’s most glaring deficiency being its inability to rebound? So we’re dissatisfied when we get one of the country’s best rebounders?

Not a slur, just an obscure Monty Python reference. So you should read the above with a British accent.

For better or worse, part of our current lot in life is due to the fact that we have contracts that are tied to the end of our magnificent playoff run. ‘Reef was signed because we needed a PF and we thought that we were still relevant (didn’t we feel relevant against San Antonio in the playoffs?). K9(woof!) is Webber remnants. If Webber were healthy today and playing next to Brad Miller Petrie would have achieved a decade long run of the beautiful Princeton offense that we so loved when C-Webb and Vlade were at the helm. As it is, Brad Miller is an overpaid center that doesn’t fill our current needs.

We suck, but not as bad as two years ago, and we may be a little better this year. We will be relevant again, and I think that we’re heading in the right direction. We can’t really compare ourselves to Portland (3 games better than us last year) or Atlanta (1 game worse), as their suckitude predates ours and they have had more time to start the climb back up the mountain.

I’d love for us to be better. I’d love the Artest thing to be done (one way or the other) so that we can move on with determining the future of Salmons and/or Garcia. I’d kind of like a starting NBA point guard – one of those would be nice to have. But I like this team. I like how hard they play. I like the youth that we have. I like the direction that we’re headed in. I like being a Kings fan.

One of the reasons that Ainge was able to do this was because he stockpiled assets for a couple of years.

It’s not like he just woke up one day and said, “I think I’ll trade my roster for a couple of SUPERSTARS and turn this thing around!”

Think about this, would the Kings be contenders if they won the Draft Lottery? Right now we’d probably be looking at the exact same roster with Rose/Beasley instead of Thompson (there’d still be a hole either PG/PF depending on who GP went with).

Is that better? F#CK YEAH that’s better! Does it make Sacramento a contender and solve all of our problems? Nope.

Now remember that’s absolutely the most EXTREME example. There is no magic bullet.

The performance against the Spurs might have been a bit of an anomaly (Bonzi played out of his head, as well as Ron). And don’t forget, we lost that series in 6 games. We may have scared them a bit, but we were never really on the verge of winning that series. If Martin doesn’t make that amazing layup, we lose that series in 5.

Big market, small market. Doesn’t matter that much (see San Antonio, Utah). What’s really killing Petrie is the inability to turn around after the C-Webb trade and do anything tangible with those assets. That’s why we are waiting for cap room to clear to make some moves.

And that’s fine, I’m cool with it taking some time. But everyone’s assumption is that this team is heading in the right direction. And I would agree, if the right direction is simply being a decent playoff-type team.