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Key Acquisitions: DeMarcus Cousins, Samuel Dalembert, Hassan Whiteside


Key Departures: Spencer Hawes, Andres Nocioni

Best Case Scenario: 39-41 wins, no playoff appearance

The Kings have followed the Thunder's small-market mold almost to a tee.


They found a potential superstar in last year's draft (Tyreke Evans) and quite possibly landed something similar this year (DeMarcus Cousins). Cousins is far from mature but many scouts touted him as having the most overall talent of any player in this draft class.


Now they have a solid nucleus to build around, quality role players like Omri Casspi and Donte Greene, and plenty of cap space for the future.


All that said, they probably don't have enough to make a playoff push this year—there are just too many talented teams out West. But many of those teams are aging, and once they hit the wall, the Kings will be primed to make the leap.

Worst Case Scenario: 33-35 wins, no playoff appearance


The Kings have enough talent and are on the up-and-up, so they won't regress any from last year's 25-win team. Even if they only win six or seven more games (and they should get more), they'll be at 31-32 victories and will continue heading in the right direction.


But long-term, they need to look out for Cousins. Make sure he doesn't develop any negative habits during games.


Keep his head on straight and don't let him hang with the wrong crowd.


Have veterans like Carl Landry take him under their wing and teach him how to represent himself on and off the court.


Basically, Sacramento needs to find a glorified babysitter for him. Because if he starts to pick up bad habits, it could hinder his development, prevent him from fulfilling his talents, and set back the Kings' future.

Best case scenario is 8th seed. The west is still tough but not many teams have gotten better this offseason and it looks as if denver will be worse pretty soon. It all starts with tyreke improving on last year. And if DMC has a ROY year along with everyone else meshing we could make the playoffs. I dont really expect it but it is possible. Worst case is that DMC really does have as bad as attitude as some predict and we show that we are still far too young to even be considered as playoff contenders.

If you put a gun to my head and asked the best POSSIBLE outcome I might say 8th seed. As it is now I think I'd bet my house this doesn't happen, but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

As for worst I think 5th is vastly underrating how bad things could POSSIBLY be. If Tyreke were to have a sophomore slump, maybe even outright regress in a couple of areas, Cousins has a hard time adjusting to NBA talent big men and the busy NBA schedule, Omri starts off significantly slower than he did last year, Donte/Jason don't show any improvement, you could see maybe 20 wins.

Right now the most likely possibility is somewhere in between, I figure an all around improved team with 30 to 35 wins.

BEST

8 seed and beating the Lakers in 7 in first round

WORST

9th seed cuz we get probably the 14th pick and have no chance at Brandon Knight.

Best: Increase in defensive efficiency/rebounding & +15-20 win increase

Worst: Slow start to the season with a couple of winnable games, injuries & struggles on offense

Kingsforlife wrote:
9th seed cuz we get probably the 14th pick and have no chance at Brandon Knight.

you mean Harrison Barnes right??

ive never seen Brandon Knight play but i looked through the top 14 of nbadraft.net and i really liked his ratings and his nba comparison is a great fit for Tyreke.

http://www.nbadraft.net/players/brandon-knight

Barnes is a top 3 pick, maybe if we finish a lil worse than we think we would be like the 6th worst in the league maybe we could pull what Portland did in the lottery when he drafted Oden.

If we're talking absolute BEST case...7th seed.

Worst case...25 wins.

Best case: We are the 9th seed and win the lottery

Worst case: We are in the top three and lose the lottery (again)

I'm done with the lotto.

Unless we totally whiffed on DMC (and i just don't see that - the kid has a great support system in his family and Hughley obviously has his ear), there is little to no chance of being worse than last year UNLESS there were to be some sort of season ending injury to a key player (either Tyreke or Beno would be this guy because we are deep everywhere else).

Best case is that:
1) NO made a BIG mistake in trading away Collison because CP 3 gets hurt again
2) Houston treads water with a Yao that is either hurt again or a shell of his former self
3) Denver - well, this one's pretty obvious - it's rebuild time
4) Phoenix suddenly realizes that it really DOES need Amare with an aging Nash who doesn't have
the horses around him any more

Even if all the other playoff teams stay status quo, this view looks a lot like there will be two spots that us, Memphis and possibly GSW or Minny can compete for. None of this is unrealistic because all of the above scenarios are ones that we have seen again and again over the past two to three seasons and most all of those teams ARE aging rapidly. The other factor is the same situation that both OKC and NO saw for a couple of years running. Key improvements in talent and depth and subtle manuvers to plug the big gaps (i.e. - size/defense for us, we added Daly and DMC/Whiteside), and then a sudden improvement jump into the gap left by those other teams.

I don't see us being a playoff team.

It's just a best/worse and everybody can pick it as they see fit.

I don't personally BELIEVE that we are READY to be a playoff team yet - we're too inexperienced at key positions and there are a LOT of vet teams in the West ahead of us.

however, if something even CLOSE to the perfect storm that I wrote above happens, we might find ourselves there earlier than otherwise predicted. And the fact is that playoff experience for young players trumps another mid-first lotto pick any time.