WHAT THEN ZILLER?!

Then I stopped reading and ignored the asterisk. So, it looks like you’re in the 8th Seed Mafia after all.

Was to an area of his body that would have little long term impact on his ability to play basketball. And he’s still a very young player, and he’s extremely dedicated to keeping himself in shape throughout the year.

Needless to say, I have my doubts that his body has degenerated to the point that his game will regress. The simplest answer is probably the most accurate – that he’s struggling to get his shot back after being out for an extended period of time.

Its one thing to say “Kevin’s sucked since he came back compared to what we expect from him, I wonder what’s up and when its going to get better?”

Its another to say “Kevin’s sucked, is a heartless loser that never makes shots in the 4th quarter, can never be 2nd fiddle, is jealous of Tyreke, never plays defense, when he gets steals is being a selfish asshole that hurts the team by gambling and doesn’t play hard.”

I’m pretty sure there’s not many that disagree with the former, its the latter that gets people riled up.

I wouldn’t say Martin has gotten a free pass in the press. Here is a recent quote from Voison in a story where she says Martin and Evans can’t play together.:

So assuming that none of these dire circumstances apply to Kevin Martin, what happened to turn the Kings shooting guard/good citizen/good guy into a sullen, slumping shell of himself? His features are frozen. His voice is flat. His body language is that of a guy who was just dumped by his fiancée, or worse, by his fiancée who plans to marry his best friend.

As far as starting the game. K=Maret starts for the same reason Evans starts. As long as they are on the team, they are your starting backcourt. Ten or so rough games do not make up for what K-Mart has shown his whole career. He has earned the right to start and PWknows it’s only a matter of time before he gets his groove back. However, his minutes have fluxuated based on his play since he came back.

Too many doubters (like Peaches) wasnt to say you can’t blame the injury any more. So let me return to an example I’ve used before. A player who has a career average of 20 pts per game is injured. In his first nine games since he came back, he is averaging under 11 pts per game. He’s been back for nine games, but he was only out for twelve games. Do you bench him?

If so, you just benched KG. The injury is healed but the timing of an elite NBA player can take longer to get back. Give him time.

I am not looking for a war, but he has shot poorly since he came back. His body language has been poor.

I think he has gotten out of the mental part of his funk based on his body language and facial expressions in the last game. He seemed more relaxed, more confident.

PW has repeatitly looked at present playing time as a judge as playing time.

This sentence makes no sense to me whatsoever. I can only suppose that you mean he repeatedly has looked at performance to determine playing time.

Yes and no. Tyreke hasn’t been stellar every game, but he’s started every game that he hasn’t been injured. JT has only recently been coming off the bench despite a severe slump.

I get that you’re not a Martin fan, nrnr, but do you really think that 13 games is a sufficient sample size to throw the team’s best scorer under the bus?

I would consider this period his training camp/pre-season stint. He’s still trying to fit into the offense in a new system under a new coach with new players and an entire paradigm shift that means he doesn’t necessarily have to score 30 every night.

And remember, it was his WRIST that was injured. It might, just might, have affected his shot some.

He scored over 20 points in Toronto? How many of those were layups and backdoor cuts? Nothing from the perimeter really.

Are you really criticizing how Martin scored 20? Really?

You’re right, Martin has stunk (for the most part) since he came back. Has anyone, anyone, denied that? Absolutely not. But as TZ’s graph shows, it’s 13 games compared to 269 previous games.

You want to blame Evans? Get that idea out of your head because he ain’t going anywhere.

Personally I still believe that Martin and Evans will be able to work together. But even those that don’t can blame Martin’s struggles on Evans. Evans ain’t going anywhere (ain’t going nowhere is a double negative, champ), but that doesn’t make it any less valid if you believe that Evans has contributed to Martin’s struggles.

And Martin is being criticized. Perhaps the Bee is easier on him since he’s been a great player for this franchise, but until Amick writes a story saying “Kevin Martin has been great since coming back from injury!”, save me the “he gets a free pass” rhetoric.

If every other team in the NBA is willing to see him as a scorer in a slump, why aren’t we?

totally agree

If every other team in the NBA is willing to see him as a scorer in a slump, why aren’t we?

Because us fans know more than those 29 NBA GM’s.

Just about 75 percent.

That if you are counting on Kevin Martin to be your best player, you’re probably bound to be unsuccessful in the long run. However, the fact that Kevin was thrust in that role is not his problem, it’s Geoff Petrie’s.

The real issue here is that you equate Kevin’s status on this team the last few seasons as the be-all, end-all of what he should be. I think most of us see that Kevin’s strengths as an NBA player can be pretty valuable to the team, once they’ve upgraded the remainder of the talent base (and Tyreke is a great start in that regard). You would have us just chuck away the guy for expirings.

Point is, Kevin has abilities that are coveted by many NBA teams, and should be by the Kings as well. So waiting a while longer before determining Tyreke/Kevin as a failed backcourt experiment seems like the smart move for the franchise.

Kevin was the 26th pick in the first round of his draft, not exactly where superstars are born. Kevin is about the 70th highest paid player in the league, so he’s not really overpaid. What he gives you on the offensive end of the court (when he is right) is pretty damn valuable – and not replicated by many other players in the league.

I think the real problem here are your expectations.

if this is the case, which it does appear to be so, this would be a good reason to trade someone. But we don’t know the chemistry of the locker room or how KMart is interacting with the players. We can see signs and jump to conclusions, but Petrie has a better idea than we do if Kmart is hurting the teams with a poor attitude.

That’s not even close to the reason. [RETRACTED] The weaknesses in his game, the injuries, and the feeling the young, rebuilding Kings will develop better without him are more important, expecially if a trade brings back a big that addresses our needs more than Kmart does.

If that was all you said, I don’t think you’d being doing this back and forth all day unless you really to.

Number one, you have a whole lot of factors to deal with there, least of all the differing schedule difficulties. Number two, unless you are godlike and have the capability of seeing some alternative universe where Kevin wasn’t hurt – you don’t know that the team would have been worse with him, or whether they would have won a few more than they in fact did.

But I look at it this way – the team started to play well when Kevin was out – but they also started a significantly easier portion of their schedule (including some easy games at home). Alternately, the team was playing pretty abysmally leading up to Kevin’s return, and they have played pretty abysmally since. How anyone can satisfactorily pull data from those samples is mystifying to me.

I’d like to see how this shakes out over the remainder of the season before deciding that Kevin is the problem here.