Prospect Dong wrote:Yeah, I'm with the birdman. Nothing wrong with the price tag, but you sign your championship-roleplayer-off-the-bench guys once you've got your championship core in place.
The Kings are a couple of all stars away from contention, and maybe Petrie can land them with the 10th/12th/27th pick guys he's been adding, but I wouldn't bet on it, even with his track record. The worst place you can be in the NBA is stuck in mediocrity, and even if the individual pieces are fine, this, along with Udrih and Salmons, strikes me as that kind of signing.
I see the point you guys are making a little bit more. But fortunately, we're still in very good shape cap-wise for where we want to be. With everything factored in, we should still have over 20million in cap space in the '10 offseason, and possibly more (I mean that's assuming that we extend QO's to both Douby and Williams and that we don't trade Salmons).
Also, there is the mentality that if Petrie's drafting record stays as good as it has been, we'll at least get a lot of really good players, if no great players. And while that alone may not lead to championships (assuming it all doesn't fall together perfectly like in Detroit), it could lead to some really good teams that could often be "1 piece away", which isn't a bad place to be when you've got a good GM.
While Doug uses his quickness and good hands and great anticipation to harass his opponents, which creates steals for him or a teammate. and offensively, Doug has excellent vision and top level passing skills have allowed him to excel in the open court. While garcia is good ballhandler and passer, he tends to make poor decisions and force the ball on occasion, and that doesn't sound like Doug Christie..
I think defensively, Cisco is kind of hybrid of the two, but that's besides the point for me. I think Cisco is just as skilled as Doug was in ballhandling/passing and he has great instincts, I just don't think he's the decision-maker Doug was, and I think that's one area where he still has room for improvement.
See, the thing is, guys don't just start playing well when they start, often, they get to start when they are playing well. So a lot of the time, saying "check out his stats as a starter" is the same as saying "check out his stats when he was on a hot streak". A few years back we had bulls fans hyping Jamal Crawford because he posted great stats during the part of the year when he started. Last offseason it was Boston fans telling us how great Gerald Green was as a starter. Sometime it's an indication of what a player is capable of doing full time, sometimes it's just what they can do when they get hot.
Salmons didn't get to start when he was playing well, he got to start when Ron or Kevin got injured. He was thrown in and out of the starting lineup pretty randomly throughout the year, and almost every time, he just looked like a different player. He just seemed to feel more comfortable and was much more aggressive. And it's not even too much about "getting hot" either because Salmons is a player that thrives so much on penetration. So it was really more a matter of getting touches and being aggressive. And you can call it "a stretch" all you want, but it
was half the season.
I love what Petrie's done as a GM, and I'd root for the Kings against 90% of the teams in the league, but bottom-line, the Kings are paying to keep together a core that was, with the help of one of the best two way players in the NBA and a resurgent Brad Miller, and a partial season from Mike Bibby, 11th in West.
Keep a couple of things in mind. First, we have a few young players who still have a lot of room to improve and look to be have really, really nice potential. Secondly, I don't think any of us are really expecting to match last year's record, and that's okay.
You're basically betting on Petrie hitting it out of the park a couple of times running on late-lotto picks, or attracting a couple of marquee free agents for sub-max money. Petrie's great, but it strikes me he's tying one hand behind his back with these signings.
Why "sub-max"? We're going to have more than enough space to offer a max contract in a couple years.