Kings Kolumn: Fear

I'm not afraid of much. I'm not saying that to sound tough, there are just very few things that truly instill the fear of God into me. Sure, there are things that scare me. I get uncomfortable around cops even though I generally obey the law. Some days I'm afraid I'll drink myself retarded but that usually subsides after a jack and coke or five. But those are nagging fears, something that I can usually push down inside and worry about later. I'm not here to talk about that kind of fear.

I'm here talk about something that I've been running from for nearly 8 years. Something that slowly eats away at my soul just thinking about it. Even now I'm having a tough time writing about it. It's something I've refused to acknowledge, even though I actually maintained a blog about it for a while. I'm deathly afraid of the possibility that the Kings will no longer be in Sacramento.

I know, it's irrational. It doesn't make any sense to worry about a group of pampered millionaires who play a game. Especially when half of them were just shipped off to other cities in exchange for what amounted to increased monetary flexibility....for a couple of billionaires. When billionaire team owners are making blatant cash driven moves, that's a real "Fuck you" move. Yet I still care. Sure, sports are an escape. But I care about that escape, basketball is my escape dammit. And to be completely honest, that's why my fear is so deeply-rooted.

Yes, I'm well aware that the Warriors are right there. But I don't want to be a Warriors fan. It's nothing against them, I'm just stubborn. My dad's a Warriors fan. Way back when the Kings and the Warriors would scrimmage at the Spanos Center, my dad took me to watch the game he loved growing up. But instead of cheering on the team my dad cheered for en route to an NBA title in the 70s, I fell in love with the Kings.

I honestly can't remember what it was. I couldn't have been more that 10 at the time. But for some reason, I made a choice and that choice was that I was a Kings fan. It's one of the earliest decisions I can remember making on my own. Thankfully my dad didn't try and change my mind. He didn't push me towards the east bay. In better financial times he would even spring for those mini-season ticket packages, even waiting with me outside the parking garage while I stood out there with a sharpie hoping one of my heroes would stop and sign my basketball. Yeah, I have an awesome dad. He respected the sports-related decision of a 10 year old. Considering we live in an age where one hears about overbearing little league parents on what seems like a monthly basis, I don't want to ruin that. As stupid as it sounds, part of me fears I'll have let my dad down if the team leaves. We bonded over becoming Kings fans. I don't want to lose that.

But it's more than that. More than the "If I had known back then that 20 years later you were going to leave me, I may have taken a second look at the Warriors" thing (I said "may" so it's not blasphemy). It's also something that developed a little later on in my Kings fan experience. Hope. During the 90s the Kings were the loveable losers. I remember losing my shit when they snuck into the playoffs as an 8 seed. Now, people are saying "championship or bust". I'm not in that camp.

It goes without saying (yet, here I go saying it) that 2002 changed everything. It wasn't like I was cheering against the team before, I just knew not to expect a long playoff run from the Richmond-led Kings. But 2002 made me think for the first time that perhaps little ol' us could go all the way. NBA Champion Sacramento Kings. It used to be a joke. KHTK even had it as one of their rejoiners that ended with "Sorry, we just wanted to hear how that sounded". But after '02, it was possible. Not only was it possible, it needed to happen. While 2002 brings up a lot of emotions that I'm still not entirely ready to discuss, the one thing it did was give us the hope that a championship wasn't just some silly joke. The Kings, our Kings, could be champions.

Of course it didn't happen. After watching Game 7, there were many thoughts running through my head. One of them was "We fucking need to get back there." But then Webber's knee went kaput and it all fell apart. But things had definitely changed. I was no longer content with just having my team to follow. I need a championship. I'm more patient than most fans nowadays but I still need that guttural, cathartic yell of victory that I was denied 7 years ago. I want to crack open that high end bottle of brandy Bris and I bought and sip the sweetest drink I'll ever taste.

I'm a pretty laid back guy to the point where people think I'm completely unmotivated, that I have no fire and that's not the case. There's a fire that burns deep inside me that can only be put out when I see Kings jerseys covered in champagne (Note to Mom: This is not my only passion, swear. I also love bacon.). One of my biggest fears, is that I'll never get a chance to extinguish that fire. That the team will move away and I'll have this incomplete part of me. A part that can only be filled when the Kings validate my choice to support them for pretty much my entire life and hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy over their heads.

Again, I know this is entirely irrational. I don't expect you to understand because frankly, I don't understand it myself. It's just there.

Why do I bring all this up? Well, tomorrow the NBA and the State of California present their plans involving Cal Expo as the site of a new arena for the Kings. Which is conveniently 2 days before the deadline for teams to file for relocation for next season. If it's good news, ignore this whole post. If it's bad news...well...there's always tequila. Lots and lots of tequila.

Kings Kolumn: An argument against tanking

We're 43 games into the NBA season. The Kings have won 10 of those games. To say it's been a long season would be an understatement of epic proportions. I'm pretty sure I've aged more this year than in the past 5. Yeah, I expected the team to suck. Just not this horribly. They were down by 20 to the Wizards at one point. The fucking Wizards. At home! The Wizards are one of the few teams with a worse record than the Kings! And those bastards in purple and black had the audacity to be proud of themselves for cutting that lead down to 3 by the end of the game. They played 12 minutes of decent basketball. The other 36 minutes were spent inviting the former Bullets to waltz down the lane for uncontested layups. Nobody should have felt good about shit after that game.

Of course, in losing to a team with a worse record than them, some Kings fans started talking about how it was a good thing. They were talking about tanking. Losing on purpose to increase the number of ping pong balls in the draft lottery. And while I've been an advocate of finding the silver lining in what's otherwise a throwaway season I gotta say, fuck that.

Tanking does make sense, but let's face it, it's no fun whatsoever. Hell, technically we're still trying and we lost to the Celtics by 50 and most recently getting absolutely butt fucked by the Nuggets just 3 days ago. Do we really need to fucking tank?

The thing with tanking, besides the fact that I find it karmically abhorrent, is that it changes the culture of a team. It poisons the tiny amount of team chemistry we have. Yes, I'm aware team chemistry is an overrated intangible, but we're a young team. Chemistry is a lot more important with younger players. And it's not even the whole culture of losing thing because we suck without tanking. But if the fans start openly cheering for the team to lose (even if they don't do so during games), it's going to kill their confidence and they won't develop into the elite players I know they can be.

Don't believe me? Just look at Quincy Douby and tell me I'm wrong. Do you want a team of Quincy Doubys? I didn't think so. Our youthful team is at it's most fragile right now. And if we turn our backs on them now they might never come back. That would fuck up this whole future brigade for tommorwland shit. If we don't support these guys, who will? Nobody else knows how secretly talented our team is. Spencer Hawes, Jason Thompson, Kevin Martin, Francisco Garcia, Donte Green; we're going to be sneaky good...in about 2 years.

But that's just the thing, nobody's fucking patient anymore. People (coughthemaloofs!cough) want results right away, and shit just doesn't happen like that. But no, everybody wants to be the fucking Celtics. Worst to first in a year. But what nobody wants to realize is the reason last year's Celtics team was so special is because that shit doesn't happen every year. Hell, it doesn't happen every 5 years. You can't pin the hopes and dreams of your team on a fuckin miracle.

You have to look at it from a realistic perspective. We don't have this history of a Boston Celtics. I don't see 17 banners hanging from the rafters. We don't have a former player as the GM of another team to make a borderline shady trade with. And we definitely don't have defensive role-players to help out like the Boston Three Party does.

That's why teams like the Celtics and the Arizona Cardinals are bad for sports. They keep alive that notion that every team is just a year away from a championship game. And we're not. We're a good 5 years from even thinking about being a championship contender. And even that seems a little short.

This draft sucks, it's the Pervis Ellison draft all over again. I don't see I single player in this draft that makes me think "Man, if only we had him we'd be a playoff team in 2010." (And I'm including Ricky Rubio in that statement) It just isn't fucking happening. So instead of pretending the answer to all our prayers is just around the corner, everybody needs to sit back and think if they really think that the result of tanking will really help us that much. I'd much rather cheer for Spencer Hawes and Jason Thompson than half-ass it and secretly hope the team goes down the tubes. Remember, this team has 10 wins and is losing games by 20-30 points and they're trying (I'm excluding Brad Miller from this statement). I don't think I can sit through another 39 games if they stop.

Kings Kolumn: Khristmas Kome Late

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Kings Kolumn: The impromptu, barely-coherent ramblings of a frustrated Kings fan in which I somehow argue for and against the firing of Reginald Theus

(Ed. note: Yeah, sorry for the late start. Hopefully we've conditioned you to not expect much on Mondays by now.)

I hadn't planned on doing a Kings Kolumn today, but news happened so I felt compelled to. The following isn't very good. At best it's the ramblings of a Kings fan who was forced to go from "relaxed, whatever happens, happens" mode to the end of his rope in about 15 mins. It's what our friend B at the H2O Poetry Slams would call "organic". And it still contains more original analysis than what Highfill will give you tomorrow. What should be the topic of his entire column will be a bullet point so he can make a joke about St. Mary's that roughly 15 people will get. If they're feeling frisky they might reprint Amick's column. I wouldn't hold my breath. So feel free to print this up, bust out the glue stick, and paste this right over Ol' Bulletpoint's ramblimng mashup of topics. The following may be rambling, but at least it's about a single fucking topic. Which brings us to our topic...

Fuck

If you haven't heard by now allow me to shit in your salad. The Kings fired Reggie Theus this morning. It wasn't a particularly surprising move considering he's been on the hot seat before the season even fucking started. It's just frustrating. Frustrating and infinitely fucking depressing.

It's frustrating because, as I've said before, Reggie Theus did not injure this team. He didn't sprain Kevin Martin's ankle. He didn't peer pressure Brad Miller into smoking that joint. He didn't trade our best defensive player during the offseason. Reggie Theus did the best that he could with what he had (which right now isn't much) and did a passable job. We've beaten two of the best teams in Western Conference without our best player. If that's not a passable job, I don't know what is.

I've spent the past season and a half on various Kings sites talking about expectations. I consider last season to be successful because the team exceeded my expectations for the year. I knew they weren't going to make the playoffs and I just wanted them to play an exciting brand of basketball. Go ahead and be bad, but be entertaining while you do it. Sure that may seem like a low set of expectations, but anybody who witnessed the year under Musselman knows that asking for entertaining ball from a team that was largely unchanged from the Muss year was asking for a lot.

This season I had similar expectations. Only the most optimistic fan thought we were going to make the playoffs. In the 07-08 season 50 wins was the threshold for making the playoffs in the west. I'd have danced in the street if we hit 41 wins. With the trade of Ron Artest the message was clear to most fans, we're going young. But apparently everybody forgot what "going young" meant after the season started.

Going young means sacrificing traditional measures of success. This season's success was never going to be measured by the number of wins and losses. This season was supposed to be measured by player development. Player development that's all fucked to shit now because team brass was impatient. That's perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of this whole thing. They took an uncertain situation and made it even uncertainer. We all kind of got the hint that Reggie wasn't long for this world after the team didn't pick up his '09-'10 season option. We really knew he wasn't when Joe Maloof tore apart his defensive prowess (along with now interim coach Kenny Natt's) on KHTK.

By the time we reached the Laker game last Tuesday we all knew that barring some sort of miracle Theus wasn't going to be coaching the team next season. Theus was for all intents and purposes his own interim coach following the debacle against Utah. Then some sort of miracle happened and the Kings beat the Lakers, and then hung around with them that Friday and everyone pretty much declared Reggie's job safe for the season barring some sort of apocalyptic collapse at home against an east coast team they should be able to handle. Oh fuck.

And like that, he's gone. Patience is at a premium in sports, especially with head coaching jobs. But this has to be one of the rare instances where the owners showed less patience than the fans. Like I said before, the Maloofs haven't seen a team this bad before. We have, we had to suffer through the Gary St. Jean years. The Maloofs are different fans than us. For them, this is the lowest of the low. For us, this doesn't even touch the '89-'90 season. Maybe that's where the problem lies. Our expectations for the "bad" part of "bad, but entertaining" were different than the Maloofs' expectation of bad. They see "Remember the Spartans" and go "Wow, that's the worst thing ever" and then we go "You think that's bad? Here's a dvd of 'A Walk to Remember.'" (Fuck, that movie scarred me for life. I still haven't forgiven that ex. Yes, I was whipped beyond whipped back then.)

Now, I'm not saying Theus didn't deserve any of this. His end of the season clusterfuck where he wouldn't stop talking to the media probably accelerated matters. The team also was sorely lacking in areas that can really only be attributed to the coach. Effort and motivation. That's how a team can beat the Lakers one night, then go down by 25 in the first quarter to the Knicks on another. While you can blame a lot of the teams inconsistency on youth (and I do, a lot), the team's inconsistent effort can solely be blamed on Theus. If you can't motivate your players to give 100% every game then...well, you get fired. I just don't think he should've been fired now.

What does firing him now accomplish? Well, fucking nothing. It just breeds more uncertainty after everybody thought we had just gotten through all of that bullshit with the Laker win. If anything, the team played poorly because they had that air of uncertainty around them. Vanquishing the Lakers was supposed to lift the air of uncertainty. Now it's even more uncertain than before. We just got finished with a guy who was a massive media distraction (Artest) and now we have to deal with questions about the next coach. Did Martin give the team and ultimatum? Had the team tuned him out? Did Jason Levein have anything to do with it? Our nice, quiet, entertaining season is now the same uncertain bullshit as it's been for the past 3 years.

As fans we were able to accept the team sucking because at least we had a plan, develop young talent and clear up cap space for 2010. Sure it was the same plan every other team has but it's a fucking plan. We knew where we were going and Geoff Petrie was executing the plan exactly how we all thought it was going to go. Now? Who the fuck knows. The outlook is bleak. Am I being somewhat of a fatalist? Yeah, but you look at the list of available, experienced head coaches and you try and have a sunny outlook for the team's future (I accidently thought the words "Coach Flip Saunders" and threw up in my mouth a little bit). At least with Reggie we always had the hope that he'd grow out that glorious mustache.

Kings Kolumn: In which I suggest replacing a horrible idea with a slightly less horrible idea

Oh hey, I'm supposed to have a sports column on here aren't I? I haven't read Bob Highfill's column today,but I'm going out on a limb and saying it sucks. Speaking of sucking, that brings me to the topic of this week's Kings Kolumn...

Ailene Voisin can go suck a fat dick

Last week Sac Bee columnist Ailene Voisin penned a column that suggested the best way to save Reggie Theus' job is for the team to take on former Monarchs coach John Whisenant as an assistant coach. She was 15 different types of wrong, but if you tell her that, she'd probably just say you're being sexist. It's the great catchall of the WNBA, if you say anything negative about it you're labeled a misogynist. Trust me, I know. But if the WNBA ever wants to be truly accepted they have to realize that they're game is going to be held in equal standard with the men's game, and that's where the WNBA truly fails. There is no comparison.

Voisin opines that adding the Whis would help the Kings because he was a defensive guru for the Monarchs. And that's just the point, it's the fucking Monarchs. It's way easier to develop a game plan to shut down Diana Taurasi or the corpse of Lisa Lesile than it is to develop a defensive strategy for the likes of Chris Paul and Dwight Howard. Fuck, I'm pretty sure I could come up with a defensive scheme to shut down Lisa Lesile. You don't even have to guard down low. What the fuck are they going to do? Dunk it?

That's not a sexist statement, that's a realist statement. The disparity between the two leagues is too great and anybody with even a little bit of basketball knowledge knows this. Which is another reason Whis shouldn't get a shot, he would be the least respected coach in the NBA. And that would still be true even if PJ Carlesimo was still around. Ignoring the fact that Reggie Theus would try and undermine him at every turn because if by the grace of God the team shows marked improvement under Whis then Reg is still out of a job, there's a precedent. The Nuggets brought in Michael Cooper to coach the fledgling Nuggets in 2005. He was the first coach to make the jump from the W and was a former player to boot. As an interim coach he went 4-10 and was replaced mid-season by current Nuggets coach George Karl. Do you know how often a interim coach gets replaced mid-season? Almost never, it's the interim coach's job to suck and eat up all those losses on their record that the guy they plan on hiring during the offseason doesn't want affecting his lifetime win percentage. Again, this guy was a former championship player in the NBA, and lost the respect of all of his players by just being a former WNBA coach. And people are trying to position Whis as the savior?

Perhaps most damning of all is the subject brought up by Sactown Royalty's Tom Ziller, we've already been down the Whisenant road before. When the Kings fired Adelman (or if you're the Maloof bros. "Just didn't renew his contract") the Maloofs pushed for his replacement to be Whisenant. Geoff Petrie, the man responsible for all those successful teams we love and are nostalgic for, was so vehemently against the idea that he pushed for the team to sign Eric "no really officer, I swear I'm of legal drinking age" Musselman instead. If ever there was a sign as to how little respect the WNBA has in NBA circles, it's the fact that one of the smartest GMs in the league hated the idea of having a WNBA coach so much that he pushed for a guy who was replaced in Golden State by Mike Montgomery.

Is it wrong? Maybe just a little, everybody deserves a chance. John Whisenant just doesn't deserve this chance. His presence, even just as an assistant would undermine the entire coaching staff and would absolutely kill any shred of team chemistry that we have left. Yes, the Kings need help defensively, but Whis isn't the man to help us. So who is? (Watch as I destroy any shred of credibility I have!) The man Theus replaced, Eric Musselman.

If the Kings were to hire Muss as an assistant (and I hear he's available), he could bring that defensive mind of his back to the team and not be distracted with developing that pesky offense (which when Muss was head coach meant Ron hucking up prayer threes for half the game). Taking the pressure of being a head coach off of Muss's tiny, childlike frame would possibly rejuvenate his currently dying career. Plus he may have already earned back the respect of players everywhere by tagging sideline reporter Danyelle Sargent. And perhaps best of all, nobody would be wondering when Muss was going to supplant Theus as head coach. There would be no locker room divided between Camp Theus and Camp Muss because nobody wants to see Head Coach Musselman ever again. Although, I'd still rather have Coach Muss than Coach Whis.

Kings Kolumn: Slow your role Joe Maloof

When I heard Joe Maloof's comments about Reggie Theus on the Rise Guys radio show last week, one thought popped into my head. Welcome to being a Kings fan Joe.

The Maloofs bought the Kings at the tail end of the 90s and got insanely lucky when the '99 lockout ended. In the years before the lockout, and coincidently before the Maloofs owned the team, the Kings flat out sucked. They couldn't rebound, they blew games in the 4th quarter, they turned the ball over constantly and they barely played anything resembling defense. Sound familiar? You think Brad Miller's bad defensivly? You've obviously forgotten a time when Olden Polynice patrolled the paint.

As most people know, the post-lockout team differed vastly from the Kings of the 90s. We drafted White Chocolate, traded Mitch Richmond for Chris Webber, finally lured Peja over from the Greek league, and signed walking chimney Vlade Divac. I was at the first post-lockout game at Arco. I recognized one player from the 90s (Corliss Willamson), if there was one thing I took away from that game it was that change might finally have come to Sacramento.

Fast forward 9 years or so and change is once again arriving in Sactown. One of the big offseason storylines was the impending youth movement. The last few people holding onto the glory years of the early '00s finally realized that it's over. I get the feeling one of those people was Joe Maloof.

Now I don't fault Joe Maloof for saying what he said. It's his team and he can say whatever the fuck he wants. I just wish he didn't think what he thought. But I understand why he thinks so. He's not used to his team reeking of sucktitue.

Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a die-hard vs. bandwagon debate. I'm just pointing out that Joe Maloof is pissed because this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel for him. Sure, the team sucked when he bought it, even if not for very long, but at least he could always count on a sold out Arco bringing in revenue. Now? Notsomuch.

The result? A Maloof freakout of epic proportions. They gave us what we wanted! Ron's gone, Bobby Jackson's back, no more playoff delusions, double the amount of $10 tickets. What more could we posisbly want? Why aren't we showing up to games? This is Reggie's fault! Fans would show up if we could defend better from behing the arc! Quick! Someone call up the Kevin Nash so we can do a basketball version of Fuse's "Redemption Song"! (Unfortunately "Rebuilding the Kingdom" will probably be hosted by Angela Tsai.)

Well, I'm here to offer Joe and the rest of the Maloof family some advice from a lifelong Kings fan. Calm the fuck down. For one, I don't know if you've been paying attention but the team's actually not that bad. Sure things started out kind of ugly, but we're a young team. We still have to find our rhythm. Plus, we're injured. El Flacco hasn't played a game this season and Kevin Martin's been out. We've played pretty well considering our best player and our best 6th man have been out most of this short season.

Why be negative? Reggie didn't sprain Kev's ankle. He didn't take a golf club to Cisco. The only thing Reg is guilty of this season is denying us his glorious lip warmer (and posisbly leaving Mikki Moore in the starting lineup way too long).

Attendence will pick up too once people see the exciting brand of basketball the team can play when at full strength. You saw that New Orleans game last night right? That was fucking awesome. Remember the game before that? Yeah, it blew. That's how this entire season is going to be. Highs as high as Brad Miller and then lows as low as Kenny Thomas' self-esteem with a bit of Shock and Hawes interspersed throughout. Yes, it's frustrating. Consider it your right of passage. You want to be accepted instead of regarded as the outsider billionaire from the Carl's Jr. ad? Take your lumps like I had to in the 90s and you'll be fine. Trust me, the past couple years have been a cakewalk compared to the 90s. The 90s had the youthful frontcourt combo of Brian Grant, Yogi Stewart, and Mike "The Animial" Smith. The 00s has Jason "Shock" Thompson and Spencer Hawes. Your lumps aren't that bad. But still, welcome to being a Kings fan.