Note from TZ: As you may be able to ascertain from the title, this post by Mr. Biegler has strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.

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I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with the movie Reservoir Dogs. In high school I pretended to like it because in high school I pretended to like a lot of things (smoking, Sonic Youth) I really didn't, to pretend I was cultured. In college I actually started to like it because in college I generally started to like the things I pretended to like in high school (smoking, still had trouble with Sonic Youth). As I got older I always thought it was an interesting movie but also always thought that being interesting is different than being entertaining. It was on recently, and while re-watching it I concluded that part of the reason the movie will always be so compelling is exactly the problem I have with it, that the whole is never quite equal to the sum of its parts. You have the ear cutting scene. Steve Buscemi. Michael Madsen. Madonna. The opening credits. There are some wonderfully iconic characters, performances, moments. But overall it's a movie that's about a heist gone wrong. It's been done a half billion times. It's a transcendent movie because of transcendent scenes, not because it's actually a transcendent movie.

It reminds me a bit of this Kings' season. As much as anything transcendent can remind anyone of this Kings' season. There is little to no question why we as a fan-base care so much about this team. We're fans. That's what fans do. And given where we were last year around this time there's an Anthony Soprano "every day is a gift" like quality to this team. A quality that maybe doesn't make us appreciate the performance of a John Salmons, but a quality that maybe prevents us from going completely apocalyptic regarding the performance of a John Salmons. That interest, that care I understand.

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Biegler waxes on the underlying narrative and risk of the lockout. -- TZ

ESPN: The Magazine publishes an ongoing piece entitled "Show Us Your Closet" or "Out of the Closet" or something to that effect that features professional athletes taking readers on a tour of their wardrobe. A recent edition showcased Joe Johnson and his shoe closet. A shoe closet that had literally thousands of pairs of shoes, many of which Johnson admitted he had never worn, and was protected by some combination of code, handprint, eye scan and Rachmaninoff piano solo. I thought at the time, as did many others, that it was a humorously unfortunate piece to run in the midst of a protracted labor dispute between NBA owners and players. And it was a particularly unfortunate player to have featured as Johnson, more than anyone with the possible exceptions of Eddy Curry and Rashard Lewis, has personified the excess of recent NBA contracts.

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June is probably my least favorite sports month. Because baseball is boring and baseball in June is watching AI: Artificial Intelligence boring. However June also has my single favorite sporting event of the year, the NBA draft. Now my brother, who is a dick, reminded me that it doesn’t bode well for your (our, he’s also a fan) basketball team when the draft is your favorite sports event of the year. But even when the Kings were relevant I loved the draft. Christ, I was enthusiastic when Dan Dickau was on the Kings’ roster for 5 minutes. However I also consider myself a pretty educated college basketball fan and usually being an educated college basketball fan and evaluating a draft are antithetical, as inevitably almost anyone you liked or thought highly of in college turns out to be a terrible pro (Dan Dickau!) So usually my pro potential predictions suck. Thankfully, though, there’s this year. The worst, most confusing, most subjective draft in recent memory. So everyone’s predictions suck and since misery loves company here are mine.

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“Today we spell redemption R-O-N.”
- Wes Mantooth, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
- Luigi Bertini, Via Text Message Earlier Today

The problem with writing a reflective piece about an event as it’s actually happening is that you’re never really allowed time to contextualize. Alternatively if you wait to contextualize your reflections may have all the relevance of an According to Jim joke. It may take days, weeks, months, years before we fully understand what today’s Ron Burkle related revelation means to the city of Sacramento and its sports franchise long-term. In the short-term, however, we know exactly what it means, relief, hope, and vindication.

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Dedicated to Drew Magary.

This page has gone out of its way, and admirably so, to avoid name calling, blame laying and general mean spiritedness in regards to the Kings’ potential departure. Some of this is due to the general quality of the people and writing that frequents this page. Some of it is due, I think, to at least a subconscious belief that if we are kind to the powers that be, as opposed to antagonistic, perhaps it will appeal to the better angels of their nature. I respect this, I appreciate it, I applaud it. But fuck it. Let’s be honest. The Maloofs are fucking idiots. Half-wits. Fat, tan, sweaty, party shirted douche bags.

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The current conventional wisdom regarding what fan response should be for the 2010-11 season is what I would call a tempered enthusiasm. This is altogether logical. That the Kings will be better than they’ve been the last few years, while encouraging, does not meant that the Kings will actually be any good, given just how objectively bad they’ve been the last few years. And while the roster is young and exciting and talented that talent is mercurial. As fans we should hope that what we see from REKE DMC and Doratio Kane and Omri and the rest indicates a certain lack of polish, a jangly edginess reminiscent of Axl Rose singing My Michelle. We’re aware were watching an unfinished product. We’re aware, for the near term, that the whole will probably not be equal to the sum of its parts.

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I've never really bought into the belief that sports are somehow analogous to life. At least not any more than I buy any number of other myopic individuals’ convictions that their careers correspond to humanity’s collective condition. I’m sure estheticians, with very valid reasons, see their waxing of unibrows as symbols of our lifetimes of suffering.  And those estheticians aren’t additionally getting paid millions of dollars to speak at some conference with the hope that retelling how they were able to sign LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade will somehow make you a better manager at a Ft. Worth Staples. However one circumstance with which sports is an unquestioned canvas for chronicling the human condition is adversity, how one responds to said adversity, and the consequent outcomes of those responses. This, ultimately, was much of the reason the LeBron melodrama and its subsequent fallout were so intriguing, the solidification, fair or not, of a “when the going get tough, the tough go” attitude often exhibited by LeBron. And in no other situation presently are the varying consequences for how one reacts to adversity more clinically depicted than in the differing career paths of Aaron Rodgers and Matt Leinart. 

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It is an indication of just how bad, both in conception and execution, the LeBron James’ ESPN special was that a day later the only person who seems to be defending The Decision (and it should be noted defending The Decision is distinctly different than defending the decision) is Stuart Scott. A man so nihilistically, cynically dedicated to aggrandizing the celebrities he covers for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement that he makes Billy Bush blush.  Multiple people, admittedly me included, are seemingly fine with the decision, understand the logic of a lifetime of harsh knees and harsher winters, know there is in Miami, in a backcourt of Wade and James, the potential for something transcendent, even if said transcendence is manufactured. LeBron out big timed the Big Apple. New York and its history and geography and basketball legacy were going to bring LeBron to the world. Instead LeBron, and Bosh, and Wade, brought the world to them. At, what most contend, is the expense of not just Cleveland but the global casual fan base that empathize with their loss. That is the supposed schadenfreude of last night’s announcement, the irony that LeBron James, in an attempt to solidify his brand-name, instead did his Christian name irreparable harm.  He won’t be forgiven for what he did to Cleveland the thinking goes. He’ll never be able to go back to being LeBron. The reality, of course, is that this is wrong. He will and he can. Unless you’re from Cleveland.

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Full disclosure, I had intended to write this prior to the draft but, out of an irrational fear of the Kings subsequently selecting Ekpe Udoh, and further remembering a premature piece I’d attempted to write several years ago about the Kings having representatives from 4 of the 5 NYC boroughs on their roster in anticipation of their drafting Joakim Noah, only to watch him land in Chicago, I decided to hold off until post-draft. Of course writing now, realistically, there’s the risk of irrelevance, but when the options are Cousins or irrelevance, given that the alternative, not taking Cousins, could have been a harbinger of the Kings’ irrelevance, I’m comfortable immersing in the now immaterial.

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 I Believe, Now Do It, So Let’s Get It On!

Your 2010 NBA Draft Preview

“I Believe, Now Do It, So Let’s Get It On!”

-          Sign Man, Circa 2005 Playoffs

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Over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend I re-watched the documentary Man On Wire. Because, apparently, at the threshold of 30 you spend your holiday weekends watching artsy movies alone. I was hung-over, if that at all increases my street credibility, I suppose if I was concerned about increasing my street credibility it’d be better not to mention, of course, that I was drinking alone the previous night. Man On Wire is about Philippe Petit who, in 1974, spent close to an hour walking across a high wire strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. When Petit is discovered and subsequently arrested for his crime the NYPD and assembled media immediately ask why he did it, a question, Petit subsequently observes, uniquely American. Petit laughs and responds to the assembled "Why? There is no why."

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I am bad enough at enough occupations that it’s often more efficient for me to list those things I’m actually good at. I am good at getting girls who were supposedly interested to ignore me. I am good at working while hung over (in fairness I work for the State). I am, as any number of readers of this blog can attest, very good at referencing quotes, titles and motifs I remember from college English courses. And I am, occasionally, able to accurately predict the outcome of a given sports’ franchise’s season. This last one in particular isn’t particularly a talent, particularly when the team whose performance you’re prognosticating is your team. I would guess of the percentage of people who had George Mason in their Final Four nationally, 99.9% of those people were either George Mason enrollees or alumni; the other .01% confused George Washington with George Mason or were lying.

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As has been discussed previously on these pages, when I’m not not fulfilling my duties as Associate Editor of Sactown Royalty, I am "working" for the state of California. There are myriad reasons why working for the state is a sterling job. Four furlough days a month immediately comes to mind (and yes, I realize we’re all over paid anyway, I read the comments at the Bee, it should be noted my family writes a bulk of those comments) but in close competition is the painfully Catch 22esque bureaucracy I am forced to navigate on an hourly basis. Even if you aren’t in civil service you’re probably all too familiar to that which I’m referring. It’s the sort of painful Colonel Cathcart logic that comes down from Administration and tells you the soda machine in the basement that’s been broken for a decade can’t be fixed because of an outstanding contract or that your reimbursement request for the EconoLodge in Riverside can’t be processed because Econo Lodge is actually two words, not one. Think cover sheets on TPS reports. The point is no one likes a yard duty, or as Michael Scott’s relationships have shown us, only a Dwight Schrute likes a yard duty, and as a consequence I’ve always been a bit uneasy about being this page’s ombudsman, even if that title and task were self appointed.

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Uncertainty is a particularly unique human emotion. Realistically it could be argued uncertainty isn’t an emotion at all, but for the sake of this, imagine if you will. Uncertainty’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it is a rather cohesive collection of other disparate emotions: apprehension, anticipation, fear, hope. It is uncertainty that makes often otherwise mundane activities consistently exciting: public speaking, sex, finance. And it is uncertainty that we were unfairly thrust into last night. What exacerbates this specific uncertainty is our inability to control it. We could not control the Lottery and we can not control the Lottery’s consequent results. These aren’t necessarily bad things, but to a fan base looking for some sort of cathartic outcome to a brutal basketball season in an otherwise brutal year, they sure don’t seem like particularly positive things either. But as the bitter disappointment of last night dissipates a bit let's sift through the wreckage and examine certain certainties.

This is not the end of basketball in Sacramento. Now I’m not saying the end of basketball in Sacramento isn’t a possibility. But it isn’t going to be because of last night. No offense to Blake Griffin, who is without question a unique talent, but missing out on him isn’t exactly missing out on LeBron. And no offense to Kings’ fans, who are some of the more adroit in the NBA, but there wasn’t going to be some sort of onslaught at the Arco Arena Box Office this fall to see some 20 year old kid from Oklahoma. This team and town’s issues are more complicated and deep seeded. It seems like the potential selling of Cal Expo or the collapse of the residential real estate market and consequent adverse effect on our discretionary income may be a bit more damaging. Kevin Durant didn’t exactly save basketball in Seattle. But wait, you’ll say, the Sonics issues weren’t related to attendance. Even with Sacramento’s attendance swooning, neither are ours. And unless Blake Griffin is an expert on urban infill development his presence wasn’t going to change that. If bad draft luck and subsequent attendance apathy expedited team moves the Grizzlies would have been sent to Austin 5 years ago.

We’ve spent, in fairness I’ve spent, the past few years waiting for Petrie to become Petrie again. Since the Artest trade he has largely been unable to be that. Handcuffed by both Maloof meddling and his own questionable contracts. Now the coaching decision is his (and the Thibodeau interview shows reassuring flexibility in his own dogma) and that 4th pick has afforded Petrie the one thing he’s always thrived with, options. To Petrie this draft is now a blank canvas. Rather it is his blank canvas. And given the probable volatility of this draft (discussed quite insightfully and exhaustively in this space in the past two days) Sacramento’s situation is not nearly as Edvar Munch like bleak as it appeared last night. Rubio isn’t a certainty, but he’s not not a certainty either. Which makes his drafting a certain uncertainty.

Lastly we’ll all be here, working ourselves through this. All’s not lost. Of course I spent last night drinking my youngest brother's Natural Light while watching DeMar DeRozan clips on You Tube.

In fairness, though, that's how I spend most of my Tuesday night's, but yesterday it felt particularly poignant.

I’m sure many of you have wondered, and by many of you I of course mean none of you, why I am referred to as "Associate Editor" of this site. I write pieces sporadically, my comments are usually reserved exclusively for the contribution of double entendres and the only Kings jersey I own is of Jason Williams. Part of the reason, at least the part of the reason not related to under the table payouts, is that I am supposed to be this Blogs comment commentator. A job I have not pursued with the zeal necessary in part because of my actual job. But now my ass may be getting furloughed and, given that admission, the perception on this page will from today forward be that I don’t work anyway (isn’t State Worker an oxymoron?) so I’ve decided to attempt a State of the Mid-Season for this page’s participants. I am doing it today because next weekend I will be in Phoenix for the All Star break attempting to convince girls I’m Luke Ridnour. Which is a terrible idea, in part because I look nothing like Luke Ridnour, and in part because it’s Luke Ridnour.

I am breaking this down into relevant sections, lest it read with all the coherence of Pookey’s profile quote.

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Know when I knew Theus wouldn't last through this season? Saturday. But not when the Kings were getting drubbed by Zach Randolph. Earlier Saturday, during the Georgetown-Memphis game, when I saw Greg Monroe dropping passes out of the high post like a junior Chris Webber and thought "God I wish the Kings had this guy. This is the quintessential Petrie player" and I subsequently wondered what exactly would he be doing on the Kings? Standing in the high-post watching John Salmons dribble for 23 seconds before receiving a handoff in just enough time to let off an errant jump shot?

Petrie has continued to draft his type of players, versatile, sweet shooting, solid passing guys that can execute his offensive vision with sophistication. But he has done so for a coach who I don't think understands the basic concept of any offensive system, let alone one with the subtleties of the Princeton. Which is why all this talk of eventually bringing in an Avery Johnson is so silly. Petrie is at his most savvy selecting offensively minded players. Kids with mental as well as physical tools. And we're as a fan base blessed by this, without Petrie we'd end up with a roster of Brandan Wright's and Mouhamed Saer Sene's. Petrie will never change his spots, and he shouldn't.

And Theus, ultimately, I think lacks the basketball sophistication to fully understand the value of said spots. He's a street smart, charismatic guy, a good leader, ingratiating with the media, and the reality is this roster would be good for 20 wins with a coaching staff of Bob Knight, Chuck Daly, Tex Winter and the ghost of Pete Newell. But Petrie needs someone who can appreciate the substantive presence of Pete Carril. And Theus is by all appearances a guy enamored with appearances. And that fundamental philosophical difference will not change no matter how healthy the roster, how high the lottery pick.

One of the unique qualities of an individual NBA game is its ability to function as a finger nail universe. When a team plays 80 some odd times over the course of the season there tend to be two trains of analysis when breaking said season down, either you look at accomplishments in their entirety (record overall, record against above .500 teams, record against sub .500 teams, record on the road) or, inversely, you break individual, situational statistics into sub-atomic particles and reconstruct those in the hopes of creating some more intimate, informative picture of the whole. Very rarely, in either of those forms of criticism, does a Tuesday night game in December strongly factor in. This is only logical for a season that stretches into the summer. But to due so may ignore the galaxy flourishing, or floundering, in our keratin. In May when asked, no matter how the season shakes out, who Sacramento’s best player is, my answer, the logical answer, will be Kevin Martin. But the honest answer, the one from that December Tuesday, will be Spencer Hawes.

At some point in his career Spencer Hawes will be the sort of statistical anomaly that garners you first or second pick fantasy draft status and Team USA first or second team invitations. Realistically this could be said for any 7 footer capable of delivering more than 5 assists intentionally. But with Hawes what’s revelatory isn’t the content of his eclectic statistics but the context with which those statistics are attained. Tonight Hawes was a funnel for this team, the game ran through him - when it ran through him - fluidly and fluently. The no look passes, the defensive rebounding, the 3 point shooting (which was not in action tonight) are all intriguing parts but the Hawes whole seems to be greater than those parts’ sum.  This can’t be said for any other player on the current Kings roster. Martin is a great player, Sacramento’s best player. But he’s still a better player objectively than he is subjectively. Hawes is the inverse. And it is on those players that Petrie built his previous foundation.

Is this overstatement and overconfidence? Perhaps. But remember where we were with Hawes a little over a year ago. The 10th pick in a draft considered 9 All Stars deep. The alka seltzer to our Joakim Noah hang-over. 18 months later he defies any accurate analogy. He’s Brad Miller, sure, but Brad Miller was never able to find a synergy between his rough and tumble Pacer days and the high post Princeton Kings. Hawes has. He’s LaMarcus Aldridge if Aldridge could pass like Divac. He’s Christian Laettner if Laettner had slept with Tim Duncan. He’s Andrew Bogut without having to use your first over all pick. Is some of the above tongue in cheek? Clearly. But what’s wrong with inspiring hyperbole in the early goings of a make or break Sophomore season?

Tonight was not pleasant, and the good thing about the NBA is that a loss on a Tuesday in December does not a season make or break, and consequently it is quickly forgettable. But occasionally actions of the seemingly slightest significance mean much more than we realize. And for those actions it is the reaction that reverberates.

So we wait.