The young Kings don’t lack offensive options: Evans, center DeMarcus Cousins, new forwards John Salmons and J.J. Hickson, who were both recently acquired in trades and Fredette and Thornton (assuming he’s re-signed). The question is whether they will fit together.
Via Marc Spears, “Evans Ready for Fredette’s Arrival,” 07/30/11
Let’s do the glass-half-full thing with the Sacramento Kings for a minute. Tyreke Evans was hurt for much of last season and had to adjust his game. Instead of making the expected sophomore jump, he regressed. With an offseason regimen aimed at getting himself into the best shape of his life and improving his still-wonky jumper, it’s only logical that he’ll be far more productive when NBA games are played again. If DeMarcus Cousins cuts down on the jump shooting and takes care of the ball a bit better, we could be looking at two immensely talented players making important progress. That should lead to lots more wins, right? Probably.
The rest of the currently-assembled roster, though? Ugh. I like John Salmons. Really, I do. Wing players who can create for themselves and others aren’t that easy to find in today’s NBA and I think it’s cool that he puts his thoughts in a diary rather than on Twitter. But as versatile as he is, this acquisition still makes no sense to me. I already had questions about the long-term viability of Tyreke and Marcus Thornton sharing the floor. If they’re keeping Thornton, how does Salmons not get in their way? If they’re letting Thornton go, then they’ve just replaced a 24-year-old Thornton with a 31-year-old Salmons coming off his worst season since before his first Kings stint. Oh, and he’ll make $24 million over the next 3 years. Yay.
The Kings ran the simplest plays in the league last season and I was hoping they’d enter next season with a more balanced roster. They needed a real distributor, better role definition and some defenders. Instead, they traded their starting point guard and their hard-nosed small forward and acquired a bunch of guys who want the ball in their hands. There are unfair expectations on Jimmer Fredette, J.J. Hickson thinks he’s better than he is, and on a team that wasn’t the model of cohesiveness on the court or off it last season, I wonder about the direction they’re going here. They had a hodgepodge of young talent + Samuel Dalembert last season and it looks like they’ll have a hodgepodge of young talent + John Salmons next season.
You can’t get too down on a team’s outlook when it has two building blocks as talented as Tyreke and DMC. In the big picture, they’re nowhere near title contention so acquiring talent is more important than how the talent fits. Still, it’s important to put a solid foundation around them so they’ll want to stick around. If we’re just talking about next season, I’ll be excited to watch them on League Pass — there are plenty of intriguing pieces and I’m legitimately curious about how it will work. This is similar to how I felt about the Timberwolves entering last season, though, and we know how that turned out.
