Kelly Dwyer is one of the best basketball writers on the planet. Not on the internet. On the planet. He analyzes the game and league as good as anyone. So when he writes something, I take notice because I feel like it not only makes me a better writer but it makes me a better basketball fan. You can learn a lot reading from his mind.

Today, he figured out the 10 best teams of the decade that didn’t pull off winning an NBA championship. As soon as I saw the headline, I scrolled down until I saw the words “Sacramento Kings 2001-2002,” expecting to see them as the top team on the list. But they’re not. They’re the second team on the list behind last year’s Cleveland Cavaliers team.

Now personally, I disagree with KD’s assessment. It doesn’t mean he’s wrong; I just think the Kings were the best team of the decade to not get the job done. Here’s what he had to write:

2. Sacramento Kings, 2001-02

This team deserved a championship so much that Ralph Nader thought he’d lend a hand in helping them out. The Kings were absolutely jobbed by the referees in a Game 6 loss to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, a series of calls so bad that Nader thought he’d do a little work on Sacramento’s behalf. Honesty compels me to mention the fact that the Lakers were also jobbed a bit in Game 5 of that series in Sacramento, and that the Kings did have a Game 7 at home in their favor to make things right.

They blew that one, though, even as it went to overtime. It tends to mar an otherwise sublime season that saw seven Kings average double-figure points per game (with two, Chris Webber(notes) and Peja Stojakovic(notes), averaging well over 20 per), alongside the sixth-best defense in the NBA. But, you know, maybe if Vlade hadn’t of flopped so damn much …

Also considered: Sacramento Kings, 2002-03, Sacramento Kings 2003-04.

I don’t think last year’s Cavs team could have taken the Kings to a sixth game. I think the Kings were so good and dominant on both ends of the floor.

But I love the recognition that he gives to this team. Even as a Wolves fan, I remember watching this team play and marveling at how easy the game of basketball was for them. They were nearly a perfect team in every aspect of the game.

Yesterday, I wrote an article on Talkhoops about Luxury Tax Bowel Movements. What are Luxury Tax Bowel Movements you ask? Well, LTBMs are essentially when a team trades a player away and receives nothing but a conditional second round draft pick from the future.  Most recently, we saw it happen with the New Orleans Hornets when they traded Rasual Butler and his nearly $4 million contract to the Los Angeles Clippers for a second round draft pick in 2016.

Why did the Hornets give up such a nice, young three-point threat that would be perfect for a system featuring a penetrating, pass-first point guard? They didn’t want to pay the luxury tax on his contract. So instead, they dumped his salary for what is sure to be essentially nothing.

What does this have to do with the Kings?

Well, the Kings are one of four teams that are currently under the salary cap with their payroll and are realistically the only team along with the Oklahoma City Thunder that have enough salary cap room to make a significant addition. The Kings are roughly $6.8 million under the cap right now. So they can add a player making up to that much in a trade without having to give away a single player/contract.

Realistically, the Kings could even ask for a future protected first round pick along with the player and only have to give up a second round pick. The Grizzlies just did this with their acquisition of Steven Hunter from Denver. They gave up a second round pick to acquire Hunter and Denver’s 2010 first round pick. The Thunder/Sonics did this a couple of years ago when they acquired Kurt Thomas and two future first round picks from the Suns for a 2009 second round draft pick that ONLY went to Phoenix if it was outside of the top 55.

While the Kings probably won’t get as good of a deal as the Thunder/Sonics got that day, they can definitely pilfer a future pick if it means saving a team nearly $14 million in salary and the luxury tax penalty that follows with it.

Here’s the list of the most likely available LTBMs that I came up with:

* – Bobcats aren’t over the luxury tax at the moment but hold the restricted free agent rights to Raymond Felton, which technically puts them over because of his cap hold.

If we’re sticking with the idea that the Kings won’t add salary past what their cap room allows, that narrows the most likely possible acquisitions down to Brian Scalabrine, Tony Allen, Raja Bell, Drew Gooden, Brian Cook, Brent Barry, Luke Ridnour, Kurt Thomas, Antonio Daniels, Matt Harpring, and Mike James.

Out of those players, the most valuable future draft picks would most likely come from the Hornets and Bucks.

For the Kings, it seems completely worth it to acquire Antonio Daniels from the Hornets and have them throw in their first round draft pick 2010 or 2011. Although I’m not sure how likely this scenario is, a lot of people assume that the Hornets will eventually have to trade Chris Paul due to the bad economy. Let’s say that the Hornets either have to deal Paul or suffer through a season in which he’s injured for a significant portion of the campaign in the next two years. Now, how valuable would that Hornets draft pick be to the Kings? They could use it to add young talent or use it in a trade to acquire a big time veteran.

And if the Kings decided to go after Luke Ridnour, they can trade for him and the Bucks conditional first round pick without having to give up a whole lot in return. The Kings have never been in position to do this financially with the their salary cap usually overflowing with contract but now they find themselves in a position of flexibility. Shouldn’t they take advantage of this while they can?

The NBA has many franchises in no shape to pay any kind of luxury tax penalty and on top of that, miss out on the dispersing of those penalty payments to the teams that didn’t pass the luxury tax threshold. Geoff Petrie could easily learn from the Sam Presti playbook here and try to take advantage of those teams. It’s smart business and a relatively cheap way of rebuilding your franchise with young talent.

If the Kings don’t acquire these expiring contracts that can net them valuable assets, they’re doing their fans and organization a great disservice.

I don’t speak a foreign language, especially not this one. So I have no clue what is being sold here.

It could be a commercial for a certain airline or it could be a trailer for Vlade’s rumored movie, Serbs on a Plane.

Whatever it is, Divac looks healthy and I’m actually shocked that he’s not smoking while flying. Via The Baseline

With the off-season so uneventful and yet, still upon us, there usually aren’t enough links to pass around in order to constitute an entire post of links. It reminds me of this line in Wayne’s World:

I definitely didn’t have many links each day, let alone enough links to necessitate a link rack post.

Something about this clip before I pass on some Kings links:

- Did anybody else get blown away by the fact that Stacy is played by Lara Flynn Boyle? Is that the role that turned Jack Nicholson on to her? Did he watch that and say, “Man….if she lost 25 pounds….and put on a tutu….she’ll be miiiiiiine.” That relationship always made me feel uneasy about everything. The sun wasn’t as bright. My Alphabets cereal didn’t spell as many words. And shampooed hair didn’t have that same intoxicating odor that it once had while they were a celebrity relationship with benefits.

ANYWAY, here are some links:

Chances are that if you’ve never heard of Sactown Royalty or you’re a reader of this site but don’t check out Sactown Royalty on a daily basis then you’re probably a family member of mine or a friend who doesn’t really care about reading sports on the internet but are nice enough to check out my writing. In case you fall into either of those two categories, here are some great pieces over the past couple days from StR.

- Tom Ziller writes about the Deconstruction of Beno Udrih.
- Section 214 puts things in perspective for Kings fans.
- Exhibit G talks about optimism and makes a comparison between the Heat and Kings that makes a lot of sense.

Here are some more Kings links:

- From A Royal Pain, Chris Webber’s Top 10 Plays in the NBA (#4 is one of the most underrated shots I’ve ever seen).
- From Basketball Fiend, Patrick grades the off-season grades of the Pacific Division.
- From Sac Bee Blog, here is Day 4 of Aileen Voisin’s trek to Israel for an international look at Omri Casspi (you should definitely check out the other days as well).

The Kings pre-season schedule was released today.

Here are the dates:

Game 1
Tuesday, October 6 — 7pm (PST)
@Portland Trailblazers in Portland (Rose Garden)

Game 2
Wednesday, October 7 — 7pm (PST)
Portland Trailblazers in Sacramento (Arco Arena)

Game 3
Thursday, October 15 — 7pm (PST)
@Los Angeles Lakers in Las Vegas (Thomas and Mack Center)

Game 4
Saturday, October 17 — 7pm (PST)
Golden State Warriors in Sacramento (Arco Arena)

Game 5
Tuesday, October 20 — 7pm (PST)
@ Phoenix Suns in Phoenix (US Airways Center)

Game 6
Thursday, October 22 — 7pm (PST)
@Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City (Ford Center)

Game 7
Friday, October 3 — 7pm (PST)
Utah Jazz in Sacramento (Arco Arena)

Should be fun watching the veteran backcourt of Andre Miller and Brandon Roy going against Kevin Martin and Tyreke Evans for limited, uninteresting minutes for the first two games of the pre-season. And I’ll be in Las Vegas when the Kings play the Lakers so I’ll find my way to the Thomas and Mack Center.

Andrew Nicholson sat down with Omri Casspi in Vegas to discuss everything from the moment he was drafted to his position of being the first Israeli basketball player to Michael Jordan and more.

I absolutely love the type of person Omri is and his personality and humbleness makes it impossible to not root for him.

I thought it was great to put in the video of his family and friends reacting after David Stern announced his name. Just a cool moment captured. Can’t wait for Part 2 of this interview.

With a 17-win team you’re always wondering how they’ll improve and how long it will take for that improvement to come to fruition.

In fact, you’ve probably gone over the possibilities of the schedule already and how it will play itself out. Can the Kings improve on their six road wins last year? Is it possible for them to get worse? Will Tyreke Evans make as big of an impact his rookie season as Derrick Rose made for the Bulls last season? Will Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes make improvements that greatly impact the team? If the WLAF comes back and the Sacramento Surge look to win another title, should Jon Brockman be an inside or outside linebacker?

These are all questions that I’ve been asked and/or pondered myself.

Well, in trying to figure out how good this team could possibly be next season I came across two excerpts from national writers that don’t bode well for the Kings.

The first came from Sean Deveney at The Sporting Blog in a piece in which he was discussing the various challenges posed to all of the new coaches this coming season.

Paul Westphal, Kings. Chance at succeeding: Longshot. Westphal is walking into a tough job. He is the team’s fourth coach since Rick Adelman left in 2006, taking over a group that won 17 games last year and finished 29th in attendance. He’s also the lowest-paid coach in the league. The Kings have eight players who are 25 or younger and whether Westphal (who is 58 and didn’t exactly excel in his tenure at Pepperdine) is the right guy for such a young team is questionable. He also carries a reputation as an offensive coach, which doesn’t seem to address the Kings’ most pressing concern—their utter lack of defensive ability. “I really try to deal with every player as I wanted to be dealt with,” Westphal said. “I hate to be characterized as an offensive coach, but I know I am not characterized as a defensive coach. I think I coach the whole game. The idea is to be ahead at the end of the game.”

Personally, I don’t think his experience at Pepperdine has much to do with anything related to his potential success or failure in the NBA. I’ve never put much stock into college coaches making the leap to the NBA. Guys like Mike Montgomery, Larry Brown, Tim Floyd, P.J. Carlesimo, and Reggie Theus (he’s going to hate me for mentioning him) have all experienced varying degrees of success.

I’d put much more stock into Westphal’s stints with the Suns and Sonics before I worried about his coaching ranks (although I guess to a degree, it’s worth noting).

The second excerpt came from John Hollinger as he assessed the pecking order in the Western Conference. As you can probably guess, he wasn’t high on a Kings team that won 17 games last season and didn’t make any significant signings or trades outside of their draft selections.

Shell-shocked by increasingly horrific economics in Sacto and the woefully outdated Arco Arena, the Kings locked down financially while they wait to find out where their next home will be. If it’s a new building in Sacramento, great, but if not, San Jose, Anaheim, Kansas City and others await with open arms. Either way, they won’t spend a nickel without some certainty on this front.

The Kings did pick up a potential star in the draft in Tyreke Evans and a low-budget breakout possibility in Sergio Rodriguez, plus Kevin Martin should be healthier. That should keep them run-of-the-mill bad rather than historically awful, but optimists won’t find a lot of ammunition here.

Now, maybe I’m becoming secretly enamored or more forgiving with this team over the course of keeping my eyes more closely on them throughout the past two months but this doesn’t look like a historically awful roster to me. Does it look like a good team? Absolutely not. But historically awful makes me think of the Thunder under P.J. Carlesimo or the Mavericks of the mid-90s. The current makeup of the Kings at the end of last season wasn’t THAT bad.

In trying to figure out how big of an impact Tyreke could have on this team and how history would dictate if this team would improve or decline, I first decided to look over the schedule with a careful eye and based on road trips, back to backs, and other factors for their opponents throughout the season try to figure out a rough estimate of this team’s record for this coming year.

I came up with a record of 27-55 – a 10-win improvement from last season. I had them improving to 10-31 on the road from 6-35 last season and 17-24 at home after six fewer wins at the Gas Pump in 2008. It seemed like a good, fair improvement in my eyes as I tried to be as objective as possible in figuring out if they had the goods to win most nights in the NBA.

But does history agree with that estimate?

I decided to poor over some data, transactions, and anomalies over the previous 10 seasons in order to see if the Kings improving 10 wins seemed logical or not. I took the five worst teams from each season since the lockout shortened 1999 campaign. Then I threw out the improvements to the five worst teams in the 2003-2004 season because the impact of the additions of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Carmelo Anthony seemed unlikely to repeat itself with the 2009 draft class. So that left us with 41 teams in the other eight seasons (I took six teams from the 2007-2008 season because the Knicks and Clippers tied for the fifth worst record) and I came up with some interesting facts:

- Only 11 of the 41 teams (26.8%) failed to improve on their record the next season.

- The average win total improved by 11 (including the Boston Celtics in 2007 who improved by 42 wins with the KG and Ray Allen trades otherwise).

- On average, the team with the fourth pick in the draft only improved their record by 5.6 wins.

- Excluding the 2003 Cavs (LeBron addition) and the 2008 Heat (since they missed Dwyane Wade for much of the previous season), the team with the worst record in the league improved by an average of 11 wins the next season.

- Only the Memphis Grizzlies finished with the worst record in the league and didn’t improve their record the next season.

- Four teams, that finished with the worst record in the league and then brought in a new, full-time coach, improved by an average of 10 wins.

Now, focusing on the teams outside of the ’03 Cavs and the ’08 Heat that finished with the worst record in the league, I decided to look at each team and determine if their success could be a good measuring stick for predicting how the Kings might improve their record in the 2009-2010 season.

The chart below shows the win total of these seven teams and their improved win total from the next season:

As I stated above, the Grizzlies were the only team that didn’t improve their win total. But they were (barely) on pace to eclipse their 22 wins from the 2006-2007 season before they traded Pau Gasol and their collective souls to the Lakers for Javaris Crittenton, Pau’s brother, someone pretending to be Aaron McKie and a former number one draft pick that Michael Jordan often referred to as a female body part. As for the other teams, only the 2001 and 2002 Bulls teams didn’t improve their record by double digit wins the next season.

So can the Kings add double-digit wins to their 17 victories from last season even though they were extremely quiet in the off-season due to being “locked down financially,” according to John Hollinger?

Of the seven teams from the chart above, only the 2002 Bulls and the 2007 Grizzlies had minimal roster turnover in the off-season following their league’s worst record. The ’07 Grizzlies added Mike Conley with the fourth pick in the draft and Juan Carlos Navarro in the off-season. They also added a new head coach in Marc Iavaroni before suffering through a poor first half of the season and eventually trading Gasol to the Lakers. This version of the Grizzlies definitely is not an encouraging example for the Kings next season. Luckily, there is the 2002-2003 Bulls team.

The Bulls came off a 21-61 record and only added Jay Williams (2nd pick of the draft) and Donyell Marshall to the roster along with having Bill Cartwright as the new full-time head coach. Through some growth of young big men (Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry) and the play of their young guards (Jamal Crawford and Jay Williams), the Bulls improved to 30-52 the next season. Doesn’t this sound much more encouraging for the Kings? Hell, doesn’t this sound a lot more like the Kings situation?

There’s a huge similarity in the quality of guards drafted by the ’02 Bulls and the ’09 Kings. Jay Williams was a terror on the court who didn’t exactly play like a traditional point guard in as much he played like a small shooting guard (people forget how scary good this guy was in college). The Kings picked up Tyreke Evans who is allegedly a point guard in a shooting guards body and capable of completely taking over games. Even though they’re nowhere near the same body type, their impact on the court seems to be pretty similar.

There’s also a decent similarity in the progression of the big men with the Bulls’ Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler and the Kings’ Spencer Hawes and Jason Thompson. Now, I’m not talking about the types of players that these guys are. Hawes and JT are far more skilled than Curry and Chandler were/are still. But as Curry and Chandler made leaps from the previous season in terms of effectiveness, the Bulls became much better and a much harder team to beat. You can definitely see that happening with the Kings young big men this season. Thompson and Hawes will have another year of experience under their belts and with the pressure strictly on them to be a collective presence in the paint (no more Brad Miller), their progression will directly influence an improve or decline in last season’s record.

The ’02 Bulls’ nine-win improvement looks much more likely than the zero win improvement the Grizzlies gave their fans in 2007-2008. It’s also worth mentioning that the Kings are historically a much better home team over the past few non-playoff seasons than the Bulls were as they attempted to rebuild their once proud franchise. I think that still holds to be true in the quaint confines of Arco Arena and gives the Kings a boost of a couple of wins.

Throw all of that into a smoldering pot with the addition of Paul Westphal, the tough veteran presence of Andres Nocioni for a full season, and a healthy Kevin Martin and all of a sudden the 10-win, rough estimate of improvement that I originally came up with doesn’t seem so out of line. It looks more like a “run of the mill bad” team that John Hollinger expects instead of the god-awful 17-win season that Kings fans suffered through last year.

A 27-win season isn’t something that any fan base should be ecstatic about. Fans, especially Kings fans, want to win more than anything and see their team back in the playoffs. But when you’ve hit rock bottom, watching your team improve is what you should hope for and expect the following season.

And I think we can all realistically expect a double-digit improvement next season as the front office rebuilds the culture of Kings basketball.

LaMont Peterson is the strength and conditioning coach for Tyreke Evans and Andrew Nicholson caught up with him for Kings Connect.

Tyreke has known Peterson since he was in the ninth grade when he started working with him as Evans began working towards the NBA. It’s kind of crazy to think that he’s been training with strength and conditioning since he was just past puberty but at the same time, the great ones and players that make the NBA always seem to have that extra drive to go with their genetics and talents. Here’s the video:

I’ve already established before that I think he’s going to be the first Tyreke Evans instead of the next whomever but his described manner of being “shy” and “keeping to himself” reminds me of the quite demeanor that Kevin Durant has. Both seem sheepish in a way but completely seem to transform into killers on the court.

Good work by Andrew for getting this interview and really enjoyed the insight from LaMont about Tyreke’s progression/process.

50 days until training camp opens.
79 days until the season starts.

This mix was shared with me and various other Kings bloggers over the weekend from Ryan on Twitter (@Kings2k9). Why did it take me so long to post it? Because I was throwing a bachelor party this weekend for my friend, Andrew, who takes the plunge in 11 days.

Love the choice of music and some pretty good clips in this video. Great work, Ryan.

So I was perusing Sactown Royalty (as I am apt to do when Google Reader informs me that there has been a new post there) and I came across this link about the Kings possibly inquiring about acquiring Ramon Sessions, the semi-coveted restricted free-agent point guard from the Milwaukee Bucks. Here’s the quote from the Journal Times piece by Gery Woelfel:

There have also been rumblings the Sacramento Kings have recently inquired about Sessions. However, the extent of the Kings’ interest isn’t known.

This comment is kind of just thrown in at the end, in passing, and yet it gets the wheels going in fans minds (especially when it’s a slow news month).

Personally, I think that it’s complete conjecture and probably isn’t true. Do the Kings think Ramon Sessions is someone they’d want on their team? Absolutely. I don’t think they’d kick him out of bed, just like you probably wouldn’t kick Megan Fox out of bed. And I’m sure they’ve inquired about him just to see if they could steal him for a couple million per season. However, this piece of info from Chad Ford makes me think that the Kings don’t have any REAL interest in paying Sessions the close mid-level exception (probably what it would take and about what they have left in cap room this off-season) in order to get him in a Kings uniform:

The Kings should be somewhere between $9 million and $10 million under the cap. But given their financial woes of late, they might not be as willing to spend it as would some other teams.

If they potentially aren’t willing to spend the cap room next year on a supposedly better player then why would they acquire Ramon Sessions? What would that mean for Tyreke Evans? Would the Kings really have four point guards on the roster? Would Sergio Rodriguez be on his way out because it’s a little too quiet out here?

Geez, we need this season to get here already.