I'll tell you one of the problems with the Kings. Stability!!!!! They haven't had any, and if what I'm hearing on this thread has any validity, a lot of you don't want any. Some of you are actually calling for a new coach. Really! I would think that by now you'd be tired of watching one coach after another go in one door and out the other. Watching players go in one door and out the other. As long as we keep doing that, this team will never be any good. Yeah, the Spurs doubled our win total! Guess what, the core of that team has been together for 10 years, and they've had the same coach for the last 10 years. There's a reason the Spurs are good that goes beyond talent.
There aren't any quick fixes. Look at the Knicks and all the money they spend. They keep signing one star after another, but the team never stays together long enough to develop any chemistry. All the Kings have proven this year is that having three 20 point scorers in your lineup isn't necessarily a formula for success. It takes more than that. It takes a team! And right now, we don't have one. We just have parts of one. The rest of the pieces are just spare parts. It's easy to be critical of Malone for poor defense, but last time I looked, I didn't see him out on the floor. Truth is, he can scream and yell all he wants, but if the players don't perform, there's not much he can do.
Oh, he could replace IT with McCallum, and that would improve the defense, but then you'd have Kingster and other IT supporters (you'll note I didn't call them lovers) screaming to high heaven. So apparently they don't regard defense as highly as others among you. Malone doesn't have a lot of options. You don't like the way Gay plays defense, then what, you replace him with Outlaw? After Thornton left, who do you replace McLemore with defensively? Oh, I forgot, we have as much talent as the Bulls and Charlotte. Right! So there must be someone on the team that just bristles with defense.
Good defense is a team effort. But if you don't have players with the ability and the desire to play defense, nothing else matters. All you can do is replace those players. One way is to draft young players and develop them. But that takes time, and there doesn't seem to be much patience around here. Obviously the other way is to sign a freeagent, or make a trade. Of course the moment you get into trading, everything gets more complicated. You need two willing partners and they may not be willing to part with what you want. Point being, that its not as simple as just saying we should do this or do that. I for one, am going to wait and see what PDA gets done in the draft and during the rest of the summer. While I was willing to give him a pass last year since he didn't take over the team until two weeks before the draft, there are no excuses this time around.
