I know that Paul Westphal just got done coaching his first game as the mind of our Sacramento Kings, but it seems that all of our problems over the past three years have been the result of coaching dynamics which have the unique ability to highlight our already mediocre team. That said, we knew that Westphal was going to bring in Desmond Mason early on this summer. What we didn't know was how P-Dubs would go about alienating his pseudo-veterans, and young players alike. Ultimately it's all part of the rotation, and for whatever reason P-Dubs thinks that he can make two horrible line ups competitive out of one mediocre line up which still struggles to be competitive.

While Westphal was sitting in his mansion lounging about for the last three years, we here at STR have been paying close attention to our team, our new additions, our departures, our youth, and the development of the players we hope to watch rise to league wide names. Of our young team last year we got to witness the development of Spencer Hawes. SHawes grew steadily over the course of last year and once he got the starting job in the post-Miller lineup he developed faster and became a better presence on the court. By no means is this to say that he's an all star caliber player currently, but development and playing time are all part of that motion. What it means is that Hawes is currently our BEST center, and what does it do for a team to explicitly not start your best player at a certain position? What is it that Lil' Wayne can see about SHawes, that is invisible to P-Dubs? Potential?

We are a team full of potential this year, undoubtedly. Perhaps that is all that we have to cling to in 2009-10. There is no one on this team that would start in Boston, LA, Orlando, ahead of their already existing players. We are a team that needs to embrace our potential as a unit and that means putting the best five players on the floor ALL AT ONCE. Currently, and I don't care about history here, our best five players are Evans, Martin, Casspi, Thompson, Hawes. This unit has to be your starting five if you want to have a chance. There is absolutely nothing that will be accomplished by moving a 21 year old to the bench after he has earned the starting role the previous season. There is nothing that is gained by giving a horrible veteran the starting position because he and the coach were friends 35 years ago. There is nothing to be gained by chunneling all of your starting line up's offense through the hands of Kevin Martin, when you have capable wing players who can help stretch and run the floor in Nocioni and Casspi sitting on the bench. You need these stretch players to open up your bigs, and you need bigs that can score. Nobody in this league is giving Mason and May any respect this season. Which means that opposing defenses can virtually run triple coverage on Martin, double Tyreke, and help out on Thompson, unless there's another scoring threat on the floor.

It will be easy for every team in the league to beat last nights starting five. It will be easy for every team in the league to beat our back-up five, WITH THEIR BACK UPS. It is easy to take youth and make it question its ability, skill level, team chemistry, coaching, leadership, talent, and potential. And it is easy to start Sean May and Desmond Mason, while the potential--invisible to Westphal--continues to go unfulfilled. It is easy to devastate a season and lose a team by breaking them apart. It is hard to make the decision that youth will progress faster and farther than experience. And it will still be hard to win games with the Evans, Martin, Casspi, JT, Hawes starting five. But at least we will have a competitive start.

So I'm just thinking this through for the Kings sake. I'd like to get a nice tread going about our summer options, which it seems are quite vast. The basic premise is we've got our first round draft picks, and early 2nd rounder. This comes out to 3 bodies for about $7.2Mill. Adding this to our $46 Mill base(w/o SAR), then adding in roughly 1.3 for SAR which will be in cap and not insurance, brings our working total to $53.8Mill.

Our roster looks like this: Martin, Nocioni, Udrih, Hawes, Garcia, Thompson, Greene, 1st rounder, 1st rounder, 2nd rounder, & our SINGLE expiring contract Thomas.

As noted we've got four seats to fill before the season starts. What can we do with this in Free Agency?

Using THIS LIST and salary info from HERE, I'm asking people to come up with 1) Yr best MLE signings, 2) Yr best Sign & Trade options, 3) Anything else you can think of.

An MLE would look like: McCants(5Mill).

A Sign & Trade would look like: Hedo Turkoglu(4 yrs 15+Mill) for
Thomas(8.5Mill) + Nocioni(7.5Mill).

Note these are just examples that might work: Hedo's a free agent, he gets paid more through Orlando, they don't want to lose him for nothing and they can't sign him for much more than they would be paying Nocioni. And they'd get relief in an expiring.

The question is really what do you think the free agents and the restricted free agents are going to get paid (obviously hypothetical), and who could this team really use, and what would it take for the Kings to trade for them.

Let's see what y'all got:

I want to echo some of the things I've been hearing in comments and extrapolate a little about the issue of our Ivory Towers, and how that relates to Theus, Rotation, and ultimately why I'm unhappy with Theus currently. That said I too think he should keep his job AS LONG AS THE PLAYERS PLAY FOR HIM, which could arguably not be happening already.

First we need to come to a common ground about who should play at what possition, and yes this relies on everyone being healthy.

Udrih/Brown/Jackson

Martin/Garcia

Salmons/Garcia/Greene

Moore/Thompson

Miller/Hawes

This breakdown alone should emphasize the flaw in Theus' current logic, the move to put Mikki on the bench and, instead of promoting your second string power forward, ineffectively moving your second string center to an out of position starting line up. The ramifications of this move have three effects: there is no one to come off the bench and back up the center position directly, Moore will get more minutes than Thompson because he's a veteran, and Thompson is now burried on the bench because Theus will not play him at center.

We can argue all day about why this happened. Miller's ego, not to be benched; Moore's offensive inabilities; Hawes' development & senoirity; Thompsons inexperience, etc. But the important note is that it takes a simple depth chart and destroys the logic of it. If you want to develop the future center of your team, play him at center. If you want to develop the future power forward of your team, play him at power forward. This is simple coaching, give them a role, have them execute that role. Especially since Thompson is statistically beating Moore in almost every category(shots, free throws, blocks, assists, rebounds, steals, & points).If you sit Moore, play Thompson. (It's not like we're winning now, right?)

I believe the effect of putting JT in the starting line up would be a lot more stability and growth from him. In his starts he's put up better numbers, he has more time to get the feel for the tempo of the game and he provides the energy that our starting rotation currently lacks. (And moving Moore to the bench cannot be a reflection of defence since Theus thinks so highly of Moore's D right?) While we could argue that Hawes does this also, I think Hawes would be better suited coming off the bench at center, knowing his role when he gets out there, and he would enable the offensive load of the second string while playing alongside Moore.

The other effect of this is less playing time for Miller. And while I want to note I love Miller usually, when his effort is lacking he becomes this teams worst enemy. If he's not getting calls his defense becomes more aggressive(in a bad way), he gets more fouls, he doesn't run the floor, he stops playing, he wines, and he does less to help the people around him. Let him know this is not getting him or the team anywhere. When he begins to pout, put in Hawes quickly. Let him sit for a few minutes, put him back in when we need some experience on the floor.

I could go further with all of this but I think these are the major points I wanted to make. My issue with Theus' is that he says he has a system, or a structure, and granted I'm not on the team, in the meetings, at the practices, but Theus' rotation and system seems highly flawed or even illogical. Players are questioning their roles, because they do not understand them, and on this issue he reminds me of Musselman, remember the Miller quote this summer saying he didn't know what he was supposed to do in Musselman's system? How do you think Moore & Thompson feel right now? I'd bet pretty confused.

Thus CONFUSED PLAYERS = BAD COACHING.

If the Kings are currently confused, which can manifest itself in a lack of effort, weak or routine/tired rotations and passes, then the coaching staff is not doing it's job properly. And if Theus can't change that effort he has to go, unless the Maloofs are happy alienating their fan base while simultaneously looking for a better draft pick in the summer of 09.

We all want Martin taking the shot FOR THE WIN, this should be universal in Kings land. But what is the hierarchy of the rest of the team?

I'd say:

Martin > Salmons > Garcia > Udrih(?) > Miller > BJax

Which is why I think we're all so confused as to why Douby came into the game with four minutes left last night. It's universally the dumbest thing we've seen Reggie do, especially in lieu of the magnified scrutiny the Maloofs, media, fans, & us(as community) are all using to consider his relevance as our coach.

But what do you guys think?

We are about one quarter through the season and the Sactown Kings are, as we say, strugg-a-ling. There are plenty of potential reasons for the drama of this "rebuilding" season: Coaching, Player Rotation, Injuries. I'd like to focus our energy on the two controls if you will(coaching & roation) as opposed to the the one variable(injuries), mainly because we have no control over injuries. That said, we can debate the decisions of coaching and we can debate the effectiveness of player rotation because they're both visible and they have consequences. 

Two years ago we had a team falling from playoff potential and looking to establish a new identity in the western conference. To facilitate this we parted ways with Adelman and an offensive system that created fireworks when it functioned properly and let ineffective offensive teams look like the D'Antoni SSOL Suns when it fell apart. But no matter what, the games were entertaining and we had a chance to win. With the move away from Adelman to Musselman (A-man to M-man), that hope quickly faded despite our desires for it and we realized quickly with the DUI that things we're not going to be the same in Sactown for a few years. The Maloofs brought in Reggie Theus in an effort to create some solidarity on the coaching front and bring some effort back into the team, and last year, I think we'd prolly agree, Theus accomplished this. Yet here we are in early 2008-09 questioning the Theus effectiveness.

We all knew Theus had a harder situation this year than last year. Last year he was fresh, new and energetic. He had a new system and asked his players for different things than Musselman did and from what I gather the players were happy for the change. That said we never really figgured out what Theus' system was last year and in his sophmore year it seems we're still wondering what that system will be. During the summer we were gonna run a "hybrid-triangle", currently its a "high-post-elbow-turnover", and we all know that when it gets him points reggie love the "on-the-block-single-pass-take-the-shot-run-back-on-defense" (or as I like to think of it Rember-Ron), although I'm not sure that's how he would initially diagram it. On top of that he wants his players to run both zone and man on man defense, which isn't a real big deal in and of itself, but if we add up all these things we've got five systems tallied, and I'm sure other individual plays Theus likes to call out as well. What we need to note is that if nothing else his system is complicated and it relies a lot on someone calling out the system to use or in other words it relies a lot, drum-roll please, on HIM.

It is because of his weight in these various incarnations of offense defense that I have to hold Reggie accountable. And this was brought to my attention mainly last night in the 4th quarter of the Dallas blowout where Reggie was calling plays to our rookie line up in a game that didn't matter, with a line up that will rarely play together this season in a competitive game, and most importantly slowing down the offensive effectiveness of our arguably effective players by making them run half court sets. What we should take away from this is if your first team can't run the sets you want them to run, shouldn't you have what you'd consider the first team at least practicing the sets you want them to run in a blowout? This is like an extra practice at this point right?

To add to this Theus is not holding his players accountable when they fail him defensively, see BM52(yes, BM=Bowel Movement), and then leaving them in the game to essentially do nothing while effort guys, though raw, ride the pine. When a BM happens you wipe it up with a rookie until that BM can become the B-Rad we've come to know and love again. But we should not have to keep watching the BM take place over(Utah) and over(Dallas) when it's obvious where the defensive liability is. (Yes I'm mixing metaphors, just roll with it.) And this is where Coaching officially breaks down. If you can't yell at your players when they need to be yelled at and maintain their respect, see Tim Duncan-Greg Poppovich, then is the answer not to yell at them at all? Or has Reggie yelled at BM too much already this young season? Or is it too little?

This then ties into rotation, and here I'll be quick. The season is not going anywhere soon. We've got a lot of ground to make up if we're even hoping for the playoffs(and we should really be thinking draft picks by now), but that said we still need to remain entertaining for the Maloofs to sell tix (and for us to care about each other I guess). So from here on out the call should be starting Thompson with BM-hoping he is B-Rad, and subbing in Shawes asap if anything starts going badly. Then MM can run the starting sets with BROWN at the point, not BJax, when you want to play with the second unit. And to add to that I'd advise not playing a second unit. I'd try to keep a member, or TWO, of the starting line up on the floor at every moment to help ease in the rotations. Stop forcing things, pass the ball, make the drawn cuts, and take the open shots. It's almost like this team needs a three or five touch rule right now, don't dribble the ball yourself, waste the clock, and take a contested 18 footer with five seconds left.

And finally I'd make the point that part of this entire issue is that WE DO NOT HAVE A BACKUP TWO GUARD behind K-Mart. Salmons or a healthy Garcia can move over and we can go big, but for this team that appears to be a defensive liability, and presently an offensive liabilty as well.