Olden (Polynice) Times

Got some major minutes? you’re bringing back some hazy memories for me here.

Interesting that hendrickson went on to have a decent (by length) baseball career as a horrible left handed pitcher. As someone who saw him pitch quite a bit, I’d say he was better at basketball. If you only saw him play basketball you may be surprised I would say that.

The following retooling of the roster still must go down as one of the finest offseasons by any gm in any sport, ever.

Good post.

Hendrickson got into 48 games for the Kings that year, at about 15 minutes a pop.

I’m always amazed at how long a middling lefty pitcher can stay in the bigs – Steve Trout, Jesse Orosco, Dan Plesac. It makes me double ashamed that my left wing never got above night league.

As fans we always want more and better for our team. This season has started with the hope that the talent seen last season has matured over the summer. Adding a future star in DeMarcus Cousins and defensive stalwart Sammy Dalembert to a full season of Carl Landry and a more experienced youngsters Evans, Casspi, Greene and Thompson. Jettisoning the soft Spencer Hawes and the chucker Nocioni could only make this team. They are Bigger. They are badder. But they are not better. Two out of three. Oh well.

Aykis has posted a wonderful comparison of last year’s season to this year. The Kings were 2-1 in place of 0-3 and on their way to a home coming of “beatable opponents”.

At home, the Kings are takin’ a beatin’. And this young team is in a funk. They are lost and play like there is no hope for tomorrow. It is just a matter of time until the emotions bubble into a heated mess.

And that is the difference between the Rock’s ‘98 team and this dozen year later squad. Veterans played knowing tomorrow brings another challenge. There wasn’t fire but there was pride. Today, these Kings seems distraught and confused. I would like to see the fire and energy of last year. I would like to see Coach Westphal have these guys execute – learn to defend, cut to the basket on offense, learn to look for teammates on the floor and in the locker room (no, not to execute their teammates in the locker room).

Youth and maturity is lacking and I trust Westie to figure out a way to bring these guys together. If he can’t – he won’t be coaching in the NBA next season. (The mention of PJ Carlissimo is appropriate). And if Geoff Petrie can’t work some magic and combine guile and available cash into combinable talent his days will be numbered as well.

All of this takes patience and your wise words make the waiting more bearable. Thanks.

I beleive in what aykis formulated for a trade, (GP, i hope you’re reading these past few post here at STR) .. let’s have a trade with Toronto.. Landry for Bargnani, Udrih for Calderon, Dalembert for Evans(just to make the trade work) .. or perhaps have wright, jackson and thompson for Blake Griffin Trade. I could come-up with a mirage of trades that would make us better and not just help us now, but trade also for young players who are just entering their prime (griffin, bargnani), anyone here in STR can come-up with a trade that could make us better, and don’t even have me started about PW, the guy’s nuts! why can’t he just have a solid starting line-up so that our guys wouldn’t be so cluless on offense/defense since they would be able to distinguish their roles once we have a permanant line-up barring injuries. damn i miss our glory days, back when we were among the mavs,lakers,spurs who are always at the playoffs

As a relatively young Kings fan (22), I wasn’t really into the team back before they got good. In my defense, I don’t think I had the opportunity to regularly watch them on TV at that time, and c’mon, I was like 12. So whatever. But I’ve been a loyal fan since then and will continue to stick with my team through the low times. It’s good to know that there was a similar situation in the past that led to our best years. And obviously I completely agree that change for the sake of change makes no sense. I still think the team can click and get it together but obviously this season isn’t going to be a highlight of the franchise.

This is why I regularly tune in to Sactown Royalty – although I hardly ever post because of the “good ole boys” network that seems so prevalent on the site. This is the best article I’ve seen on here for a while. Thanks for the effort and time it took to write it.

Could moving Tyreke back to the primary ball handler be the move that needs to be made – in a similar way to the way in which Durant was moved back? Its been painful to see Tyreke get the ball at the three point line in a half court set. It seems like the Kings needs to push their offense at a faster pace.

Rec’d.

is why the 97-98 Kings did not combine the two Lawrence Funderburkes into one unstoppable force?

While I am disappointed in the team’s play and record, I am downright disturbed that the players nor the coach seem to have any answers or ideas as to why they are playing so poorly. To me, that is a bad, bad sign. It’s one thing when a team plays poorly but can still pinpoint some of the deficiencies and areas that need refinement. However, it is quite another to have a team that seems lost and clueless when it comes to explaining what needs to be fixed. Also, the fact that the team plays with no energy is a horrible indication that this squad is lost or not being reached by their coach.

After all, a team that doesn’t even know what’s wrong cannot begin to fix the problem. And, a team that plays with low energy shows a lack of interest and confidence.

Also, it may be a little premature to call the Sam Dalembert experiment a total failure, but it obviously has not been a success. Could it be that SD’s offensive feebleness outweighs his defensive contributions? I mean, if the team had better offense, they could afford slightly worse defense. The trade winds have mostly focused on JT and Greene, but SD is the one that needs to go? Lastly, while I agree that nothing big is likely to happen before the offseason (barring something risky like a Melo trade) the Kings could be waiting until the December deadline for trading newly-aquired players lifts, as more players will be available at that time.

This sort of optimism and patience would have been really hard to listen to on Turkey Day.
Thanks for the reflection on the past pains.
 Sometimes you have to remember the girlfriend that got away to be patient with the one you currenly have!

You were preaching patience and tempered expectations since before the season. Then the season began, and thud. Kings are worse than we thought. This post does not address that. Panic or knee-jerk moves moves aside, does not strategy change when you take a step backwards instead of forwards? Patience is prudent when there is something to wait for. But if a GM cannot see and respond to reality, endemic losing takes hold and collective optimism dies. The light is still at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel is longer and the light is dimmer. And why is this off-season with lockout looming so appealing? The time to improve your team is any time when opportunity presents itself, when potential trade partners offers appealing terms, not coinciding with an arbitrary point in Kings history.

Here’s what we have learned so far:
(1) The NBA has figured out a way to guard Tyreke.
(2) Big Cuz is not ready to start, let alone dominate. 38% shooting and chronic TOs is not ROY stuff.
(3) No one on the roster has played particularly well.
(4) Upside is apparently not ready to contribute.
(5) Pooh Jeter is not ready to contribute.
(6) Our size advantage has not materialized as hoped.
(7) Jason Thompson has become exactly what I thought he was, and thats not good news.
(8) Dalembert has been an offensive bust.
(9) Our coach has not proved himself strategically or motivationally or anything-ly.
(10) The parts do not complement each other. There is little passion, little leadership, little reason for current optimism.
(11) Neither Omri nor Donte have commanded minutes at the ‘3’. Where we hoped one player would emerge, neither has.

This is my synopsis of the first 14 games. I am not drawing definitive conclusions for the next 15 games, tonight, or the rest of the season. But objectively speaking the season so far has been a disaster. I would add the Kings 4-10 record is deceiving, as they have actually played worse than their record indicates.

And one more way to look at this: First defense was the problem. Then offense was the problem. Also free throw shooting, interior defense, passing, establishing roles and rotations, running a fast break, finding a defensive scheme have all been issues. The front court has been bad. The backcourt has been bad. The bench has been ineffectual. The problems are less isolated and more generalized, which tells me this is not an easy fix. This is a bad basketball team.

Happy Holidays!

Really, 14 games with a young team … that not even approaching the torture of the past.

Didn’t the Hawks turn in 4 consecutive awful seasons with a young team not to long ago? Ok, I know it was closer to 20 awful years with the Hawks but it took their current corp 4 years before they figured out how to compete.

My advice, take your lumps and learn to enjoy the long, long coming of age process.

Yes, young teams will take their lumps while figuring things out and I get that. What disturbs me is the overall lack of effort, pride, pissedoffness, or whatever you want to call it. How many times do you have to be embarrassed before you say enough and actually do something about it?

That’s what gets me- not the losing (which does suck) as much as the way we’re losing.

Could be worse- we could be Detroit Lions fans!

I’ve always held that teams should stick with what they’ve got for longer than they usually do. Its why I feel the Cleveland Lebrons would always lose in the playoffs: they would change integral parts of their team constantly, so there wasn’t much consistency of who they were playing with.

Specifically with the Kings, theyre problems seemed to arise before the season began with quotes I’d hear like that Demarcus Cousins was focused on getting Rookie of the Year, and Tyreke and others were focused on making the playoffs. If you put those expectations on yourselves, games are going to be even more difficult to win because shots will feel more important than ever and way too much stuff will be running through your head.

They still have a very new team compared to last year, with what seems like even younger players and difficult mindsets. Those types of problems commonly become this lackadaisical attitude that they have had recently in not putting together a good effort throughout the whole game, making turnovers while trying to do too much, and not being focused on both ends of the floor (when they play D, somehow they can’t play O, and vice versa).

Maybe I don’t know him well enough, but Tyreke Evans looks lost and lazy. I see how he is definitely the best all around player on the team at the moment, but I don’t see him changing what he does wrong, and his facial expressions indicate that sometimes he just doesn’t care. I haven’t thought of him as a team leader at all this season, and maybe thats where the changes need to start. Perhaps people in the organization need to sit down with him and talk it over.

I don’t really look ahead past this season (with the exception of seeing whos under contract, for how much, and for how long). You see so many teams turn it around out of nowhere (especially with a young team) that I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that happens (short of getting home-court advantage in the playoffs this season). I just hope for the sake of the future of this organization that they don’t make hasty decisions (especially ones like firing Westphaul).