Three weeks ago, John Hollinger's ESPN.com projection hit the web. It wasn't pretty.

Hollinger predicted 23 wins for the team, and 14th place in the West (ahead of only Oklahoma City).

ESPN.com's full Daily Dime previews came out this week. Every last one of the .com's pundits — folks like Ric Bucher, Scoop Jackson, Marc Stein, Jemele Hill, Jalen Rose — put the Kings in last place in the Pacific. No one had the Kings above 12th place in the conference, and two picked the Kings 14th.

Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus has a background similar to that of Hollinger: he's a writer with a statistical bent. He's long been one of the top writers of this mold, and really deserves a bigger audience. And no, I'm not just saying this because his Kings projection makes more sense.

Don't get me wrong: Pelton still projects the Kings to be awful (33 wins), worst in the division and close to worst in the conference. But all the little ticks he tosses into his dispatch actually make sense.

To be fair, Hollinger admits this is a rebuilding season and things appear headed toward the right track. But looking at each player's projection comes off more likely to be reasonable than do those of Hollinger.

And it seems incredibly weird to me that two guys with similar methods could come up a full 10 games apart on a projection for a team in which only one major player moved.