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.

Some time ago TZ appointed me to Associate Editor primarily with the intention of serving as the Sactown Royalty business class equivalent of the now retired Rob Iracane at Deadspin. A sort of commentary ombudsman. As with any good state worker upon receiving said promotion I promptly ceased productivity and have spent most of my time subsequently on this blog making boner and pension jokes. Now the need for an ombudsman on this page may seem slightly extravagant, and realistically had I pursued my duties more zealously most of my communication would have been in the form of personal e-mails between myself and Pookie, but the recent rash of high school suicide note quality troll posts has spurned me into action.

So here's question number one, at what point did it become culturally acceptable for fans of over achievingly average basketball teams to comport themselves with smug self-satisfaction? Why have Blazer and Warrior aficionados turned into the fandom equivalent of subprime borrowers (leveraging success against bad teams like Sacramento as some sort of proof of Western Conference contention)? And why have they, all too often, shown the same intellectual capacity of said subprime borrowers?

Now look I'm not going to sit here and say posts need to be intelligent or insightful. The bulk of my writing on this page as of late, as previously noted, involved erections, but there's a sizable difference between a post being unintelligent and unintelligible. If your writing sounds like the ramblings of a smoking Club Raven customer at 11:30 a.m. on a Wednesday and you live in Oregon but are a New England Patriots and Detroit Red Wings fan I am left to assume one of three things 1) You're 16 2) You work at a Foot Locker in suburban Medford or 3) You're 16 and work at a Foot Locker in suburban Medford. And that's not intended to cast aspersions on any Foot Locker employees but realistically to believe any alternative would shake my fundamental faith in the inherent intelligence of any individual.

Now the misguided gloating doesn't entirely shock me coming from Warrior fans. In college when I'd ask classmates where they were from in the Bay Area they'd generally respond "The City," interestingly their interpretation of San Francisco included not just the Mission, the Sunset and the inner Richmond, but Richmond, Hayward, Fairfield and Lafayette. Hell the majority didn't know what the inner Richmond was. But from the Portland fan base this does surprise me. I always liked Portland. I always liked the Trail Blazers, and realistically this page has done nothing if not show a healthy level of respect and even intimidation toward said team. And maybe that's been our mistake. Ever since our post-Bayless thread in June Sactown Royalty has allowed itself to play victim and unreasonably so. No one here questions the fact that Portland is a better team than Sacramento. Christ, you've been in the lottery for most of this decade you'd better have a better team than we do. You've had Top 10 picks in the 3 out of the last 4 years, including what most consider to be the League's next great center and you're claiming to be better than a roster that features Mikki Moore? J'accuse!

Several Blazer fans have had very kind, nurturing, clever, supportive things to say. And it is appreciated. And the truth is well intentioned animosity is always entertaining. Besides the Portland fan base has probably made the most substantive contribution to Sactown Royalty outside of Sacramento fans. So know my intention isn't to generalize, despite generalizing always being easier when criticizing. But I think we'd all be better off giving each other shit than humoring people who write like shit.

One of the inherent problems with sports is that in any other entity what may be the most irrational reaction is the most rational in athletics. How else to explain that this is the most excited I’ve been about any season since Chris Webber was on the roster? Despite the very real reality that this may be one of the worst seasons in a franchise that has had no shortage of them.

 The shoot the hostage answer of course is the absence of Artest. But I never really minded Artest for all his mercurial ball hogging and as Section 214 so eloquently pointed out it’s not like John Salmons is any more aesthetically appealing a ball handler in the waning moments of a shot clock. Diminished expectations have something to do with it to be sure, there is nothing more frustrating than knowing your team is capable of competing for a playoff spot while simultaneously knowing that your team will, in fact, not be competing for that playoff spot. Something else is at play here. Something mildly more complicated, something embodied by the embodiment of all things Kings in the Ziller Era, Kevin Martin. Why do we care for Kevin? Oh sure we care about our franchise, and Sacramento more than any other town has shown an almost Saint like love for every roster filler. Few towns still reflect fondly on Tony Massenburg. But Martin engenders a special affection. One we don’t have even for those hallowed Kings of the Adelman era. See we grew up with Kevin. Lived through the no look between the Brent Barry legs passes and the unending benchings. Continue to live through the myriad slights and blights and back handed compliments. I could never find the proper verbiage for the athletic equivalent of a Stage Mom, though realistically in sports parents are often theatre folks on steroids, but whatever it is that’s how we are towards Speed Racer.

 So what you ask? Well the truth is that’s now our relationship with this roster. These kids will develop, assuming they develop, under our watchful eye. They are ours now. Each one has been demeaned or diminished by the powers that be, whether it is Hawes for being…Hawes…Jason Thompson for being a mid-major Messiah or Donte Greene for not being Carmelo. Orange slices be damned were the overprotective team moms and as a consequence the question is, what should our emotional reaction to nights like tonight be? We know, we have to know, that this team just isn’t very good. We’re a sophisticated basketball bunch and no level of homerism changes the realities of youthful inexperience and aged inability. And realistically we need this team to play poorly. No, not poorly, just not consistently. We need them to play young, play confused, play spottily. Those are the hallmarks of rebuilding eras and the expediters of reconstruction. Of course we want this team to win but in good conscience we know it can’t and we know we need more nights like tonight. No one’s saying praying for a loss is a positive. Least of all me. The simple truth is the most rewarding part about being Team Mom is seeing your son compete each night and thinking its shades of things to come without knowing whether said kid is Kevin Martin or me. That should be our attitude this season. It’ll save a lot of us from liver cancer.

(From the FanPosts. - TZ)

I find, as I grow older, it increasingly tough to tell whether my perception of certain cultural phenomenon dying out is legitimate or simply a byproduct of me aging out of a demographic that still cherishes them. If you asked me whether or not MTV has the same cultural pull now that it did a decade ago I would offer an unequivocal no. But the reality is that’s only because MTV no longer has the cultural pull on me personally that it did a decade ago. And that’s not an indictment of MTV’s cultural relevance, or lack thereof. It’s simply a statement on my aging. I bring this up because in the summer of 2006, after the Kings had spent three consecutive draft picks on scrawny scorers with shooting sensibilities, I found myself hoping the powers that be would create a poster that featured Martin, Garcia and Douby in western wear, with basketballs outstretched like pistols and over the three, in some frontier font, the phrase "Young Guns." This is an embarrassing admission. In part because I’m almost 30 and dreaming about novelty sports posters, and in part because I’m not entirely sure they still make novelty sports posters. I’d guess most of you know the type of poster to which I’m referring: Brian Bosworth holding the hand of a particularly curvy Dorothy, sneering below a "The Wizard of Bos" tagline. I’d imagine they went the way of Zubaz pants and those "…the Rest is Just Details" shirts, but I still really wanted that poster.

I was recently reminded of said poster because with the addition of Donte' Greene the Kings just grew simultaneously younger and gunnier. This could be a good thing. We’ve spent the past two and a half years mourning the death of the aesthetically appealing offense Artest's presence seemed to subvert. This could be a bad thing. The D League is littered with guys who assume their ability to score 26 points against Colgate in December means they’re collegiately underappreciated NBA starters. It’s unfair to put a lot of pressure on a 20 year old kid who was picked 28th despite his size, skill set and lottery pedigree. Inversely it’s precisely for those later reasons and that former outcome that it’s very fair to put a lot of pressure on a 20 year old kid who was picked 28th despite his size, skill set and lottery pedigree. If Donte' Greene becomes Donte' Greene, the kid who inspired the rapturous Carmelo Anthony comparisons and the sea of orange Don’te Leave t-shirts at the Carrier Dome then Petrie’s pulled a Petrie. All too often after thoughts in blockbuster trades become unexpected All Stars. But all too often after thoughts in blockbuster trades become after thoughts. And that seems to be the collision course of career paths with Greene. Either he fights through his accused basketball malaise and indifference and becomes Rashard Lewis 2.0 (and while Rashard Lewis will never justify his current contact, roughly the Gross Domestic Product of Belgium, there's no question his presence in Orlando expedited their rebuilding.) Or his insouciance and insistence on errant jump shots follows him from Syracuse and he becomes the perpetual third piece in expiring contract cash grabs the league over.

There is a tendency in the summer, thanks to its lack of relevant storylines and endless amounts of free time, for hoops fans to over think the importance of particular player moves and management decisions. And I don't dispute that what appears pertinent in July will almost certainly not be so in January. But Greene is an exception to this. If for no other reason than he represents what so many fans of rebuilding franchises hang their hats of hope on, potential. Syracuse fans shared those same sentiments for Greene last year. They got a third round NIT loss. The Kings will most certainly function if that's the Greene we get. But there is such a fine line between function and flourish. And no matter how melodramatic it sounds to say now, there is a very real chance Greene is that fine line.