Jazzfan1971 and FloppyMoose's Offseason Preview - Kings
Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 5:39 am
Sacramento Kings
Projected Roster
------------------------
PG - Darren Collison, Ray McCallum, Jason Terry
SG - Ben McLemore, Nik Stauskas, Wayne Ellington
SF - Rudy Gay, Eric Moreland
PF - Carl Landry, Derrick Williams, Reggie Evans
C - DeMarcus Cousins, Jason Thompson, Jeremy Tyler
Trading Block: The Kings are very specific about who they will trade. Everyone BUT their young talent and draft picks can be had. But their future upside is off limits.
Position Battle: Power forward is very murky right now. It's possible that they bring in a player not currently on the roster such as a Josh Smith to man the position. Until then I really can't say which player will see the bulk of the minutes at PF. I could see any of Landry, Williams, or Thompson getting the start. SG is also going to be a battle with two young players in McLemore and Stauskas competing for the starting role.
Mystery Man: Darren Collison. The Kings think Collison fits their team better than the departing Thomas. And they better hope he does because they aren't saving much money to have the privilege of using Collison over Thomas. Reminds me a bit of when the Jazz let Wesley Matthews go to sign Raja Bell for slightly less. A disaster in other words.
Floppymusings:
I'm going to come out and say it: The Kings should trade Cousins for picks/youth and move on. Cousins is a huge talent and can be totally unstoppable when he chooses to be. He chooses to be about twice a year. That isn't going to change. The number of other teams that haven't figured this out is shrinking. Kings should move on while there is still a buyer.
Jazzfansramblings:
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
There are three main ways to get talent in the NBA. You either draft it, sign it, or trade for it. All have their shortcomings.
Drafting talent is hard to do. The draft is a bit of a crapshoot as you are trying to project future talent of players with increasingly less and less data to work from as the talent pool is increasingly younger and more global. Yet another downside is that you have to be a bad team to draft the best players; at least over the long haul.
Signing talent has it's drawbacks as well. You generally have to overpay to sign a free agent, and unless you are a marquee team your odds of being able to sign a star player are very low. On the plus side you generally know what you are getting unlike with drafting rookies.
Trading for talent has the drawback that you generally have to send out value to get value back. Yeah, you can go get a Kevin Love, but, it's going to cost you two recent #1 draft picks. It's hard to add NET talent via trade. It can be done in a variety of ways, but, it's not easy.
Sacramento needs talent like most NBA teams. They are in a position where they want to improve quickly to have a quality product on the floor to showcase their new arena in 2016. This dictate to get better fast makes the draft a poor source of talent as in general you need to be bad to use the draft effectively and more importantly it's not that reliable of a method. They also are not a marquee free agent destination so it's unlikely that they'll be able to sign a star player. Lastly, trading value for value in trades isn't going to get them anywhere. So, they've chosen an alternate path -- A contrarian path.
A contrarian seeks to invest in assets when those assets are undervalued by the market as a whole. It's a fair bit about psychology and Sacramento believes it applies as well to the NBA market as it does the stock market. So they are targeting to invest in players whom the league has undervalued for whatever reason. Mostly it's about being overpaid, but, it could easily be about injuries or off court behavior or simply a player that is being utilized poorly by another team and that is driving down his value.
In short, Sacramento is seeking to add players that other teams are seeking to avoid. It's the ultimate buy low strategy. When most teams are running away from players like Rudy Gay or Josh Smith the Kings are running towards them. (I imagine that Larry Sanders will be next on their list of targets) It's a strategy that's worked fairly well for guys like Warren Buffet but we'll have to see how it works for Sacramento. IF they can use this strategy to make the playoffs in 2016 in the wild and wooly West I'll be impressed. I do like their thinking outside the box and I'll be following their success (or failure) with some interest.
Projected record - 22/60
Projected Roster
------------------------
PG - Darren Collison, Ray McCallum, Jason Terry
SG - Ben McLemore, Nik Stauskas, Wayne Ellington
SF - Rudy Gay, Eric Moreland
PF - Carl Landry, Derrick Williams, Reggie Evans
C - DeMarcus Cousins, Jason Thompson, Jeremy Tyler
Trading Block: The Kings are very specific about who they will trade. Everyone BUT their young talent and draft picks can be had. But their future upside is off limits.
Position Battle: Power forward is very murky right now. It's possible that they bring in a player not currently on the roster such as a Josh Smith to man the position. Until then I really can't say which player will see the bulk of the minutes at PF. I could see any of Landry, Williams, or Thompson getting the start. SG is also going to be a battle with two young players in McLemore and Stauskas competing for the starting role.
Mystery Man: Darren Collison. The Kings think Collison fits their team better than the departing Thomas. And they better hope he does because they aren't saving much money to have the privilege of using Collison over Thomas. Reminds me a bit of when the Jazz let Wesley Matthews go to sign Raja Bell for slightly less. A disaster in other words.
Floppymusings:
I'm going to come out and say it: The Kings should trade Cousins for picks/youth and move on. Cousins is a huge talent and can be totally unstoppable when he chooses to be. He chooses to be about twice a year. That isn't going to change. The number of other teams that haven't figured this out is shrinking. Kings should move on while there is still a buyer.
Jazzfansramblings:
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
There are three main ways to get talent in the NBA. You either draft it, sign it, or trade for it. All have their shortcomings.
Drafting talent is hard to do. The draft is a bit of a crapshoot as you are trying to project future talent of players with increasingly less and less data to work from as the talent pool is increasingly younger and more global. Yet another downside is that you have to be a bad team to draft the best players; at least over the long haul.
Signing talent has it's drawbacks as well. You generally have to overpay to sign a free agent, and unless you are a marquee team your odds of being able to sign a star player are very low. On the plus side you generally know what you are getting unlike with drafting rookies.
Trading for talent has the drawback that you generally have to send out value to get value back. Yeah, you can go get a Kevin Love, but, it's going to cost you two recent #1 draft picks. It's hard to add NET talent via trade. It can be done in a variety of ways, but, it's not easy.
Sacramento needs talent like most NBA teams. They are in a position where they want to improve quickly to have a quality product on the floor to showcase their new arena in 2016. This dictate to get better fast makes the draft a poor source of talent as in general you need to be bad to use the draft effectively and more importantly it's not that reliable of a method. They also are not a marquee free agent destination so it's unlikely that they'll be able to sign a star player. Lastly, trading value for value in trades isn't going to get them anywhere. So, they've chosen an alternate path -- A contrarian path.
A contrarian seeks to invest in assets when those assets are undervalued by the market as a whole. It's a fair bit about psychology and Sacramento believes it applies as well to the NBA market as it does the stock market. So they are targeting to invest in players whom the league has undervalued for whatever reason. Mostly it's about being overpaid, but, it could easily be about injuries or off court behavior or simply a player that is being utilized poorly by another team and that is driving down his value.
In short, Sacramento is seeking to add players that other teams are seeking to avoid. It's the ultimate buy low strategy. When most teams are running away from players like Rudy Gay or Josh Smith the Kings are running towards them. (I imagine that Larry Sanders will be next on their list of targets) It's a strategy that's worked fairly well for guys like Warren Buffet but we'll have to see how it works for Sacramento. IF they can use this strategy to make the playoffs in 2016 in the wild and wooly West I'll be impressed. I do like their thinking outside the box and I'll be following their success (or failure) with some interest.
Projected record - 22/60