Do you consider Lynsanity a major player in the FA market next year? And if so, do we go after him? For the first week or two, I kept telling myself that Lin wasn't the real deal. That teams would adjust to him. But with each passing (slight pun intended) game where teams focus on him and fail to stop him, I wonder more and more if he is the passing and shooting PG we need. I'm a fan of both IT and Jimmer, but Lyn seems to be in a while other class. I mean Dallas was doubling him right and left today, constantly trying to trap him and he puts up 28, 14, 5, and 4.

Obviously he is benefiting from D'Antoni's system, and equally obvious, the Knicks will do whatever they can to keep him. He is a huge fan favorite and a big reason they are winning. But they are well over the cap and don't have an easy way to get under it. Also, he is from Northern California, so might actually come to the Kings if the numbers were right. I know it's a big stretch having a player bolt New York for Sac. But we will have the money. And they wont.

So the question is, how much would you pay to sign Lyn as a free agent next year?

Okay, I'm going to keep this pretty short. Mostly because it's hard to argue with what people think they see. And what we are seeing from the Kings right now is pretty pathetic. 27th in offensive rating. 29th in defensive rating. 24th in PPG. Last in opponent's points per game. It is definitely ugly.

Now you could argue that we are a very young team, that we had a coaching change, that we've had our starting center out for a good chunk of the season. All very good points, and I think most would agree they have had some impact. But let's step past all that for a moment and look at wins and loses. How many games should we have won to this point compared to how many we have actually won?

It turns out this is a pretty easy number to figure out. Let's start by looking at our winning percentage last season. Okay, close your eyes, this is going to bring back painful memories. Last year we finished with a dismal .293 winning percentage. We had to improve over that, right? Right! But by how much? Would a ten percent improvement be good enough? Twenty? What if we improved by 25%? Would that make us feel a little better about life? I'll tell you what, let's go for broke here. Let's improve by a whopping 30%. Any company that improved it's performance by 30% would be doing awesome.

So, in order to accomplish that, we have to play .380 ball. Some of you are rushing off to check the stats right now. Don't bother. We aren't there. We're at a measly .316. But what if we were to compare the .380 we are shooting for with the winning percentages of the teams we have faced so far. Forget about road/home. Forget about injuries. Forget about youth. Bottom line, let's compare the winning percentage of the teams we have faced so far to our goal of .380. How many games should we have won? Ten? Eight?

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So LPA and I are coming out from Utah for the week between Christmas and New Year. We decided it was time we bought new Kings gear for each other for Christmas. So we called the Kings store on Friday. (No one ever accused me of being a timely shopper) and of course it was nuts down there. The woman we talked to was awesome. LPA got a black Cuz jersey, I got a white Jimmer jersey, (Okay, no racial jokes here.) and my 14 y.o. got a Casspi jersey, since that was his favorite player last year. (Funny side note, they offered it in Hebrew which I thought was cool, but didn't think the son would want. He was in the back seat of the car at the time, and started yelling, "Yes, yes, I want it in Hebrew") So he gets a Hebrew Casspi jersey (Can't go wrong with $20 either)

And possibly best of all, when the woman got to shipping, I told her we would be at the game on Thursday and needed it before then. She asked me if I knew my seats. And it turns out you can have it delivered to your seat in the 2nd quarter of the game--more than likely by a Kings dancer. 14 yo was wayyyy cool with that. Dad didn't mind either.

Then I asked her how crazy it was with Jimmer Jerseys.

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From the FanPosts this weekend. Excellent look by SavageBeast. -- TZ

If you think the Kings have been in a lot of close games this season, it's not just your imagination. Defining "close" as a game ending with a point differential of five or less, only five teams in the NBA have played more close games this year. You might also have noticed that we have lost quite a few of these games. (So far you are two for two.) Based on this, you might conclude that the Kings are chokers--that they don't know how to close out close games the way other teams do. But is that really true? Are the Kings worse at closing out close games than most teams in the NBA? Do they lose more close games than they should? Well let's bring out Mr. Spreadsheet and have a look.

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From the FanPosts -

Okay, you know my opinion pretty well by now. I don't think we have enough information or reason to fire Westphal yet. We have an extremely young team who is playing like an extremely young team. However, after reading Section 214's great post comparing records of teams that changed coaches in mid-stream, before and after the change,I thought I'd take it a step further.

Knowing that we are one of the worst ten teams in the NBA this year (at least by record) and knowing that we are about 20 games into the season, I thought I'd compare the records of the ten worst teams for the last three years, 20 games into the season and the remaining 62 games.The idea was that by using bad teams who did not change coaches, you would have a control group to compare to teams that did change coaches in mid-season.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, as a whole, teams winning percentage for the first 20 games of the season and the last 62 are nearly identical. However, there is a difference between teams that change coaches and teams that do not.

The lengthy table after the jump.

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I know I should take my green glow on the other DMC thread and walk away into the sunset. But quite a few good points were raised and I'd like to address a few of them, while at the same time, looking forward to what we can and should expect from this year’s Kings.

Several of you accused me of making excuses for DMC. You say that as though it's a bad thing. And yet, that's how we come to determine realistic expectations. When Omri's shooting collapsed toward the end of last season, did we decide that Casspi was a head case who didn't care? Did we blame him being too fat, or pouting?

No, we made excuses. He was exhausted. He was a star everywhere he went. He expended too much energy early in the season. He had the weight of an entire nation on his back. And the fact of the matter is that all of those were true. On the other hand, rookie like Tyreke, Jennings, and Curry didn’t hit the same wall. And Omri wasn’t playing any more minutes than they were. And they had high expectations and played high energy ball.

We decided Omri was just tired, because we had no previous reasons to believe otherwise. But what if we knew that Omri had a reputation as being a hot head? Emotional? Hard to coach? Might that have changed our minds?

Let's look at a couple of quotes, about a "problem" player.

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So as most of you have heard by now, the Rocket's announcers were making a big deal out of the flash of red they spotted on Landry's shoes. Word was that they were actually Rockets shoes, but covered over with black marker by an anonymous Kings staffer. There are various and sundry theories about why this occured:

1) Landry really is still a Rocket at heart and this is his way of showing it.

2) The Maloofs are so broke from their losses at the Palms that they can't afford new shoes for their players.

3) The Kings are planning on moving to Las Vegas, and so are actually getting ready to unveil new unis in the Running Rebels black and red.

Fortunately the ace detetective Doratio Kane was put on the job and has produced photographic proof that the tiny splashes of red are the result of none of these. Using advanced photo-imaging thechnologies, he zoomed in on the image and discovered . . . . .

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We all knew this was going to come up. So I might as well be the first one to say it. We’ve added a new player. Well, not a new player. He’s actually been here for quite a while. And I have to admit, he’s been very productive. I can absolutely see why management has been impressed enough to make him a starter. The new guy is tough, he’s funny, he posts up regularly. He doesn’t back down from anyone. And after his recent weekly production, you could call him a true three-way player.

But the big question is, can he play with the guy who’s been giving us solid minutes as a starter?

The vet was brought it because of his creativity. I have to admit he’s amazed us all with his talent, and occasionally brought tears to our eyes. When I heard he was our new starter I was pretty dang excited. I mean management has a good eye for talent. And he has delivered. Some of his post-ups have been, well you could even say lyrical. But what has he done for us lately? Is his production beginning to drop?

The trade deadline is coming fast and management has to decide. Can these two play together? Does one plus one make three, or are they going to start fighting for minutes? It’s your call STR. Let the owners know what you think.

Three players:

Player One is listed at 7-1, and 245 lbs. In one year of college play, he averaged 15 pts and 6.5 rebounds in 15 minutes in the PAC 10. In two years of NBA play, he averaged 13.5 pts and 9 rebounds per 36 minutes.

Player Two is listed at 6-11 250 lbs. In four years of college play, he averaged 16.5 and 9.5 in 32 minutes in the MAAC. In his first year of NBA play, he averaged 14 and 9.5 per 36 minutes.

Player Three is listed at 6-9 266 lbs. In three years of college play, he averaged 16 and 10 in 28 minutes in the ACC. In three years of NBA play he has averaged 16 and 9.5 per 36 minutes.

Player 1 has played a total of 150 NBA games. He is 21 years old. He shoots 46% from the field.

Player 2 has played a total of 84 NBA games. He is 23 years old. He shoots 49% from the field.

Player 3 has played a total of 84 NBA games. He is 25 years old. He shoots 46% from the field.

I think you know who these players are and where this is going, but more after the jump.

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I started this as a response on the Boozer post and realized it was really too long for that. I keep reading that we shouldn’t sign this player or that player because we are "rebuilding." By its very nature, rebuilding is tearing something down—or starting with it torn down—and making the same thing or something newer and better. Clearly we are rebuilding. But what phase are we in?

There are two kinds of demolition—intentional and unintentional. The Clippers would be a great example of unintentional demolition. They don’t mean to give away all their best talent, they just do. I think most of us would agree the our demolition phase started unintentionally when Webber injured his knee. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had reached our peak and began the decent. The process sped up as we lost Vlade, Christie, Peja, etc.

A few of us clung to the hope that we had already hit bottom, and keeping players like Artest would help us rebound more quickly. Clearly Kings management didn’t feel that way. Last year we went into full blown, intentional, damn-the-torpedoes, wrecking ball teardown. I would say the last part of that process will be complete when K-9 (woof) goes bye-bye. Since Webber got injured, we have replaced every player on the team. (Yeah, we got B-Jax back, but now he’s probably gone again.) You don’t get much lower than worst in the NBA.

This would put us in the "building" phase. The goal of building is to get us back into the playoffs and hopefully ring contention. How we do this—especially how quickly we do this—depends on what we want to have when all is said and done, which I’ll explore shortly. First we need to know what our base and is, how we can build on it. Let’s take a look at what we have to work with.
(Continued after the jump)

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via i898.photobucket.com

My STR brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A draft may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of Fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of crafty GMs and unsure point guards, when the players we want get chosen before us! But it is not this day! This day we pick! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand, men of the West!"

Okay, this is totally self-serving and only peripherally related to the Kings. But hey, it's my 2 minutes of fame, so I'll take it. And the book is quite likely the only young adult fantasy novel to mention the recently departed Ron Artest. I did try to slip that in on the interview, but they cut it. If this embedded video doesn't work, I'll put a link in the next reply.

Okay so the embedded video won't embed, but you can see it here.

Unfortunately no appearance was made by the lovely LPA.

The video is on the right side.

From Sam Amick's Blog 7/21

Detroit: Could this be why Artest was so interested in interviewing brawl instigator John Green a while back? It would be a brilliant PR move if the Pistons were looking to put a package together for Artest.

And from what I was told from one source close to the Pistons, they are. I've yet to get this info from more than one person, so stay tuned. But much like the Mavs' situation, this could be one of those where the player the Kings want (perhaps Tayshaun Prince) would be different than the one offered (Jason Maxiell, anyone?). Pure speculation on my part in terms of the potential pieces.

 

Tell me that wouldn't be the ultimate irony. Back where it all started. It's just crazy enough to work!

Charley Rosen of Fox sports on Ron saying not opting out was a big mistake

This statement either means that Artest's brain-power is of the lowest wattage possible, or he's a genius since he's guaranteed himself a nice fall-back paycheck while at the same time forcing the Kings to trade him. Don't be surprised if he lands with the Lakers.

It should also be noted that the first option is the most probable given Artest's last-minute plea to be included on the USA Olympic basketball squad. After bragging on his skills, Artest added "my character speaks for itself," according to ESPN.com.

Exactly.

So he's not crazy, he's just--what do they call those dim light bulbs?--energy efficient.