Welcome back to Chainmail! Over the last week, a few things have happened with the Kings and in the league in general:
- Robert Woodard signed a four-year, $3.3 million deal
- Glen Robinson III signed a one-year minimum, partially guaranteed deal
- Chimezie Metu signed a three-year, partially guaranteed deal
- Vince Edwards signed a camp deal
- Luke Walton refused to acknowledge if he’s spoken to Buddy Hield since last season
- Luke Walton refused to name Buddy Hield the starting shooting guard when the season begins
- Tyrese Haliburton had a close-up of his jump shot mechanics, and they were…interesting to say the least
- Russell Westbrook was traded for John Wall
Before we get to your questions, want to thank our sponsor for the mailbag, Carter Imports! Carter Imports is a Sacramento-based company that imports some of the very best Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Cretan Thyme Honey available in the world today. There has never been a better time to support one of our own than right now!
Now start asking, so we can start answering!
What is your breaking point as a King’s fans (if any)?
Did I mention the power forward thing?
Oh that was not offering harry Giles another year after not drafting Luka for me.
If it weren’t for TKH, I’d have no reason to follow this franchise right now.
You’re asking the wrong people…
What would happen if the Kings got a starting quality power forward? The draft thing we had Tillman for a second .. I went to bed smiling ..
I take it you’re not a big fan of barnes in the role? 🙂
Barnes is fine in the role. Assuming you have him on the cheap and are able to put 3-4 better good-to-great players around him. Including excellent rebounders at SF and C.
In a perfect world, who are we drafting next year?
Cade Cunningham…. at #30.
Picking 30th would be awesome.
What do you think the threshold is for the league to suspend play again due to the pandemic affecting teams? They clearly seem to be indicating that a few players testing positive on teams won’t break the system and disrupt the schedule, but given the worsening state of the pandemic in this country (for a variety of reasons I won’t rant about), it seems unlikely that they won’t face an impact at some point. Just looking at the chaos that happened with baseball and football, it’s hard to see the 20/21 schedule finishing as planned.
This is an excellent question. With no bubble, it will be simply impossible to keep players and personnel from being exposed.
I think something to add to that question, is will there be basketball games played in California if the new regions drop to that 15% available ICU beds. From my understanding at that point the games can’t be played and even hotels are forbidden to have non-essential guests.
Will that Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, and Kings be allowed to play in the state?
Yeah, excellent point as well. The NBA can only have teams play at home as long as the local jurisdictions allow it. Now, places like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee will probably keep things “business as usual,” but what about California, New York, Illinois, etc? It’s one thing for the 49ers to relocate for three weeks (minimum), but the NBA scrambling to relocate 4, 5, 10 teams? There’s no way you work around that.
I suspect the NBA’s arrangement for the new season is unlikely to meet with Dr. Fauci’s blessing, as the bubble did. This thing is getting exponentially worse, as expected.
If a train left Chicago traveling west at 60 MPH at 3:00 PM, and another train left Los Angeles traveling east at 50 MPH at 5:00 PM, would Luke Walton still try to run a base half-court offense with this roster?
Does Buddy bring the ball up or No?
How many minutes can we expect Tyrese, Woodard, Ramsey, DaQuan, and even James to play? I suppose I could throw in Bagley too for that matter.
Don’t throw Bagley in. You’ll break him.
You haven’t seen the Kings alternate uniforms yet?
What in the seven Sacramento hell is that hand sign?
Na-No Na-No
Inverted L using all five fingers suggests a ten game losing streak.
Zoltan!
In Phil Jackson’s day they were more bulky ..
*gently lays Bagley into the conversation*
For the PF position, it seems we are locked with BJelly, Bagley and Parker….
How possible would the rotation be in the PF position…?
(as I think it would be a complete waste of talent of Parker (a true #2 pick), if he stay in the bench-end)
I forgot that Parker was a #2 pick along with Bagley. Are we cornering the market on failed #2 picks from Duke?
Well, Danny Ferry WAS in the initial brainstorming for new GMs.
Seeing a trend…
Fairly certain Bjelly gets traded to a contender for a pick or in a package to make someone believe they’re actually getting a good deal taking on Buddy
Yeah, a team that needs shooting for a playoff run will certainly require a sweetener thrown in to convince them to trade for a career 41.1% three-point shooter, who in a down year managed to make 39.4% of his threes.
Buddy may have worn out his welcome around here, but ultimately, he’s on a good contract for a player with a truly elite skill. McNair isn’t going to dump him for nothing.
Im actually semi-excited for some jabari Parker small ball 5 minutes this season.
This type of thing is when you know you’ve been quarantined too long.
I want your drugs and I want them now. Except for your AMPM silliness, my bowels are unhappy with me just the right amount atm.
LOL Parker was actually good on offense last season! I think putting him at center actually hides some of his defensive limitations as odd as that sounds. They did it in the bubble a few times, and it wasn’t horrible.
That was…uh…over 80 minutes. I suspect you’d see a reduced rate of return over a larger sample set.
I didn’t say that means he will be good this season! I just liked what I saw in limited minutes at center last season, and I’m semi-excited to see more of it this season. It’s the type of “let’s get weird” stuff that I enjoy.
Now that most(or all) of the final free agency moves have been made:
Who do you predict makes the final roster?
And
What is your predicted depth chart to start the season?
How many days will it take for Justin James and Jabari Parker to be cut?
How much money can the community raise to buy a Chipotle gift card to be given to the person (anyone, including KH staff) who makes Richard say something optimistic about the Kings?
Richard can’t be bought!
We’re not buying Richard, we’re starting a competition to trick him into saying something positive!
Paying for Richard is just sad. Take a shower and clean yourself up, it’ll happen.
Not with Chipotle. A few crunchwrap supremes would do it though.
Will we be able to get out of this basketball hell or are we just pawns for the eventual suffering of the human race as a whole?
Also, who did Sacramento piss off that put us in this hell in the first place.
I have been eager to see the article on commenter analytics, not just the round numbers of who has the most comments and the most likes, but also maybe which reader likes the most comments. You can drill down a bit to see in those round numbers of most comments and most likes, who is the chucker and who is most efficient? Who averages the most likes per comment? Who is the most replied to? Who replies the most to other comments in a thread? Who has commented on the highest percentage of articles? Who averages the most comments per article? I am sure there are plenty more that Tim and Will are tracking.
I have my thoughts on what these respective leaderboards are gonna look like.
Only thing I can say about this is I’m not #1 on any of these leaderboards. Which is just alright by me. Just as Jesus is. But I digress.
Well, I did delete the suggestion of who has the highest average word count per comment, I know your distaste for accolades.
Zebra could give me a solid run for the money on the word count per comment Mike!
Klam has TWO nostradumbass medals. (And they were back to back championships!)
This is the stuff right here. I totally forgot about whose gif/meme game is strongest.
That award would definitely go to Rob or Kosta.
OT: New Amick article is up at the Athletic (paywall). It is worth a read, but I’ll just leave this little tidbit here. Discuss.
I just…..I don’t even know what to say at this point. How stupid do you have to be to turn down a 1st round pick for a RFA that your GM doesn’t think is part of your future plans (despite the fact he is a NBA player)?
All I have here is expletives for Vivek Ranadive and his crew running shit. You cost your team an asset because YOU’RE FUCKING INCOMPETENT. Thanks dipshits. This story had better not be true or parts of it are being embellished. Because otherwise, I just don’t even understand why you would say NO to a S&T with a 1st round pick AND an okay sized TPE (9million) coming back. WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Motherfucker.
Especially with the war chest of cash Atlanta had going into the offseason, it would’ve been too obvious that they were gonna run up the cost to wrest Bogi from Sac.
Precisely jwalker.
Was the previous S&T offer before or after the Milwaukee deal? If it was before the Bucks topic, then I could see turning down the Hawks offer. If it was after the fiasco with the Bucks, did the Hawks offer the same S&T offer? Is this a “better deals two days ago” incident again?
Will be interesting to see if the Bucks basically choosing Jrue over BB8 will affect Giannis signing his super-mex.
Shit, just when I was starting to simmer down from all of this a week or so ago. I was just starting to get some excitement going again. My anger over how Bogi was handled or not handled or not chosen over buddy was subsiding.
I’m not even mad.
I’m just sad.
how depressing
My reading comprehension must not be very good. I don’t really understand the timeline on this. Did they discuss the Hawks S&T after the Bucks deal fell through, but before he signed the offer sheet?
I was wondering the same thing…the timing certainly matters on this.
While I’m willing to throw Vivek under the bus for….well anything….I’m happy to see this is probably what happened. It makes sense and probably why Vivek wanted to match once the Hawks offered up the offer sheet. He’s horrible at dealing with people but he’s not completely stupid.
I just wish my first assumption reading these things wasn’t “What did Vivek fuck up this time?”
I’m curious how you put none of this on Monty?
when stupid shit happens it’s Vlade and Vivek. When we pick Haliburton it’s Monty.
I know we want him to be good and all but we don’t need to lie to ourselves about him.
he’s done some good things so far and some not so good things.
depending on the details here this could be really really bad.
Well, what can I put on Monty? What did Monty do exactly to make you believe he’s committed a sin here?
The real guilty party is I think Bogi and his agent specifically. His agent played the Bucks and Hawks off each other, and caught the Kings in the middle. When that happened, I think Vivek and Aneel believed the best thing they could do is match rather than let a crummy agent dictate things.
The problem is when you do that now you’re throwing away your leverage. And ultimately, that’s where I think we’re at. If Vivek scuttled the deal AFTER the Milwaukee S&T (which is how I initially read it), there’s a major problem. If that happened at the same time as the proposed S&T and the Kings chose DiVincenzo, okay, I get that. I would have disagreed and preferred the 1st rounder to DD but that’s relatively minor asset wise. There’s nothing wrong with preferring a NBA player to an unknown.
So while I’m not a fan of Vivek or his managing style, I can’t really blame him for things he doesn’t have control. I certainly can’t blame anyone for my misinterpretation. That said, Vivek has a body of work that suggests you can’t trust him. Until Monte develops that same reputation (and I’m willing to give him a chance until I feel comfortable stating what I think about the guy), I’m going to give Monte McNair that benefit of the doubt. What’s unfortunate about this is they felt the need to leak that there was back and forth between Vivek and Monte about matching/not matching. If Monte is going to turn this thing around, he needs to be allowed to execute his vision. That includes doing things that are unpopular like the non-match in Bogi’s case.
So, if that doesn’t answer your question, I don’t see what will.
I don’t want try to make excuses for McNair, but there has to be more to the story. Saying nah we’re cool we don’t need a FRP, you can just have Bogi for nothing just doesn’t make any sense. The thing that immediately came to my mind was the other thing Amick said about the situation after the offer sheet was signed, but before they decided not to match:
There’s a couple of plausible scenarios that I see:
If #2 above is true, then I’m hoping that there was some sort of “either I get full autonomy like you promised or I’m outta here” conversation between Monte and Vivek/Spawn.
You would think that by now Vivek would have learned that his sum knowledge of NBA basketball amounts to the combination of jack and shit.
Alas…
Dude is one of the dumbest smart people on the planet.
Number one is not a thing.
this no trade market for buddy has to stop. John Wall just got traded. There’s a trade market for Buddy Hield. Period.
if someone comes calling for buddy you can leave with the better end of the deal. If you call shopping buddy then the other team is likely getting the better end of the deal. It’s leverage.
It’s always been my take that we needed to trade Buddy and keep Bogi. We didn’t need to win on a Buddy trade two weeks ago. Whatever the return, there would have been value in some form. Either draft picks or talented players. Now, with Bogi walking for nothing and committing to Buddy, we HAVE TO WIN any future Buddy deal. Sadly I think that’s going to be really hard to do.
this could be where Monty redeems himself
Both of these scenario’s are just….oh my goodness so many levels of bad Rory. I don’t even know where to begin.
Yeah there’s just no good way to spin it.
Yeah the timeline is pretty key here. If this was before the Bucks deal fell through, then it’s entirely plausible they valued Donte over the pick. If not, it leads me to believe there had to be something else going on (Vivek meddling) or Monte is just as dumb as Vlade. I don’t suspect a guy with his resume is as dumb as Vlade but I’ve made that mistake before.
1. Have you guys paid any attention to the ’21 draft class and who do you like in the 4- 8ish range? I say 4-8 because I try not to get too hopeful for guys where we are unlikely to be selecting.
2. Any early thoughts of ’21 free agent class and who would you want the Kings to pursue?
My answers:
1. I really like Zaire Williams, Evan Mobley, Terrence Clarke, Scottie Barnes, Jalen Johnson.
2. I think Kelly Oubre would be a good fit and obtainable with a contract similar to what we let Bogi go for.
What kind of numbers do you think De’Aaron Fox has to average to make him worth the max extension? And rather than make this just individual numbers, you can add win totals and the like. What does a successful extension look like from the Kings perspective in your mind?
Pete D – Isiah Thomas
Vlade – The Philly deal
Monty – Bogi
A text exchange with my Kings buddy that we’ve probably written dozens of times went, Kings need to completely overhaul their broadcast team. Well, here we are. How are you feeling about things?
What color “Jerry Christmas” sweatshirt are you buying?
All this outrage about the trade they didn’t make is hilarious. The Bucks deal was much better and I’m glad Monte tried to get more. Bogi or his agent screwed the Kings out of the better trade. If they don’t want to be in Sac, better that they move on.
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