“Trade Kevin Martin!”

“We don’t need him!”

“He’s destroying this team and their continuity!”

Okay, so the Kings are 0-3 since Kevin Martin returned and it’s starting to bring about the Sacramento Apocalypse. I get it. Things were fun, new and exciting with Tyreke leading the team and now that Kevin Martin is back, the offense is sputtering, the team is losing and Kevin Martin isn’t scoring 30 points per game. In fact, he’s only scored 51 points in three games. But that’s not all.

Kevin Martin only has two steals in his three games back. He has as many assists as he does turnovers (six each). The Kings have only averaged 91 points per game in his three games back. Clearly, this team is suffering from his lack of usual numbers, which is leading to the utter downfall of Kings basketball, Tyreke’s eventual lack of growth and this franchise moving to Las Vegas where they’ll become the new Lakers.

Does that about cover it?

Please do me a favor: calm down and take a lap around the block.

Let’s check out some numbers that don’t suggest Kevin Martin is the reason for the downfall of Western Civilization.

- First of all, he has attempted 22 free throws in his three games back. And he made 20 of them. That’s insanely good.

- Despite the fact that Kevin Martin is assumed to be so ineffective offensively, he has a True Shooting Percentage of 55% during these three games.

- The Kings are 2-11 since they came back from 35 points down against the Bulls.

- The Kings are 0-11 against teams that aren’t the Denver Nuggets since they came back from 35 points down against the Bulls.

- Jason Thompson hasn’t been very good since the Bulls win. In fact, he’s been downright ineffective most nights. In the last 13 games, he’s only averaging 10.8 points and 8.1 rebounds per game. He’s also shooting 38% from the field and 74% from the free throw line. He’s still getting his usual attempts from the field (11) but he’s only getting to the line three times per game.

- Spencer Hawes also has been pretty poor. He’s eclipsed his season scoring average (10.7 ppg) during this stretch with 11.4 points per game. However, if you take away his outlier game of 30 points against the Lakers, it’s just 9.9 points per game since the Chicago comeback.

- Take those two big men, throw them in the middle for the Kings and you’re getting virtually nothing inside during this 13-game debacle. Now, I don’t think +/- is the best measure of how a player does necessarily but it does matter on some level. Jason Thompson’s +/- for the season is -2.2 per game. Spencer Hawes’ +/- is the worst on the team with a -5.3 per game. In this 13-game stretch, Jason Thompson is a -5.1 and Spencer is -5.8 per game.

So what does all of this mean?

I think that Tyreke Evans and Kevin Martin playing together is not the issue with the Kings problem during this bad stretch. Sure, the Kings are 0-3 since Martin came back but their team problems existed way before this. The Kings haven’t been great during the last month. Their inside presence has been nonexistent. They’re relying way too much on perimeter scoring and adding Kevin Martin to the team doesn’t negatively affect this team at all.

If anything, the problem isn’t with Martin’s reinsertion causing issues with Evans’ role. The two of them are fine together. The problem is that the rest of the team isn’t stepping up to join the party. The Kings need to force the issue with getting Kevin Martin comfortable again. Once he is back in his usual Kevin Martin scoring groove, the Kings can then start working on him deferring to Tyreke Evans, which I’m sure he’ll be happy to do. He’s not a number one guy and I don’t think he’d argue with that. Everybody knows Tyreke Evans is the future of this franchise and Kevin Martin fits in perfectly with his style of play. Martin doesn’t have your usual scoring ego that we’re used to seeing.

So cool it with the “Kevin Martin isn’t good for this team” grenades. He’s not the problem. At least, he’s not the problem yet. This team has to fill more of their holes before we decide if Martin and Evans are a match made in backcourt heaven.

(Photo by David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images)

Here’s the video via Kingsflix:

This might get a little out of control so I apologize if you’ve grown tired of these types of articles from me. But Tyreke Evans is a force to be reckoned with and I’m not sure there is enough reckoning in this world to do it.

Let me just start out by talking about the fourth quarter and get my gushing out of the way. After closing out the third quarter with a 14-2 run that turned an embarrassing 24-point deficit into a manageable 12-point disadvantage, the Sacramento Kings nearly completed another road comeback by scoring 31 fourth quarter points. 31 fourth quarter points are a nice way to try to close out games. It means the offense is clicking and hopefully your defense is doing the job to go with it. But 31 fourth quarter points isn’t the impressive part of this.

After Donté Greene hit a free throw with 9:26 remaining in the game (which was also the Kings fifth point of the fourth quarter), Tyreke Evans had a hand in the final 26 points scored by the Kings.

Let me restate that on its own.

Tyreke Evans was responsible for the Kings final 26 points.

14 of those 26 points were his own. The rest were the four three-pointers he created with two each going to Andres Nocioni and Beno Udrih. It was a barrage of layups, shots in the key and a jumper at the top of the key for good measure. It was Tyreke Evans taking on the second best defense in the NBA and torching them when his team needed it the most. He’s clearly the best player on the Kings. With all due respect to Kevin Martin, Evans affects the game in a different way.

Kevin Martin is a quite scorer. He’s one of those guys that you look at the box score at the end of the game and are surprised that he ended up with 30-plus points on not very many shots. That’s not the case with Tyreke Evans. With Havoc, you can’t help but feel him changing the course of the game. He saturates the play on the floor with his own will. You can play a man off of him in hopes of slowing him down going to the basket but when he’s in a groove like he was in the final 12 minutes against Charlotte, it’s completely futile. You could set up the Berlin Wall in front of the basket and he’s just going to barrel through it to score a basket and reunite Germany in the process.

With that said, how did the Kings get down in this game?

They played like excrement; that’s how. The interior defense was a complete afterthought for them. The Kings turned the ball over an obscene amount early on. They had three in the first 1:20 of the game, seven after the first quarter was over and had eclipsed their season averaged (15.7) with 16 after three quarters. And the Bobcats capitalized. They had 20 fastbreak points in this game. It felt like they would take long rebounds and turnovers and Usain Bolt their way back down the floor for an easy score. Charlotte plays the 25^th fastest pace in the NBA on average and yet ended up with nearly 20% of their points coming from quick strikes.

Gerald Wallace (remember him?) was an overwhelming force, himself. It seemed like he got to the free throw line whenever he wanted (15 attempts). He finished with just five rebounds but it seemed like he had his hand in every Charlotte board. He also seems to play perfectly with guys like Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw and Flip Murray. These four create so much disturbance on the perimeter that it can flood your gameplan and take over the game without you being able to do anything about it.

As for the Kings players, the usual suspects helped erase the lead and make up for the poor play of the recent suspects. Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes were nowhere to be seen in terms of good Kings basketball. You barely saw them in the deficit-erasing second half and certainly not when it mattered most. You can thank the five of Evans-Udrih-Greene-Nocioni-Brockman for the biggest minutes and the near comeback.

Now, the great play of that lineup might have been the ultimate reason for not being able to close out the game. The Kings couldn’t stop Raymond Felton down the stretch – yes, THAT Raymond Felton. Felton scored 11 points in the final quarter by torching Beno Udrih. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fourth quarter advice of Larry Brown was “whoever has Beno guarding him go the f&^$ing hole!” You couldn’t put Tyreke Evans on him because that would leave Beno to guard Flip Murray and that would have been more of a disaster.

Also, that small lineup for the Kings might have cost them a chance at a desperation win or overtime. Flip Murray shooting free throws with one second left and he missed the second one. Even though Brockman was on the court, the rebound went long, Boris Diaw grabbed the offensive rebound and the Bobcats closed out the game. Can you blame Westphal or the lineup on the floor for doing that? Yes, partially. But you can also blame Thompson and Spencer for playing so poorly in this game (and getting dominated inside by Nazr Mohammed and Boris Diaw) that they weren’t put in for potentially the most crucial rebound of the game.

Overall, it was another close game the Kings couldn’t close out. Had they played the first 32 minutes the way they played the final 16 minutes, this probably would have been a blowout road victory for them. Instead, they were asked to pull another Miracle in Chicago and came up short.

Final Game Notes
- Evans 34 points were a career-high. The most impressive part for me? It’s a hybrid of doing so on 13/20 shooting with 10/12 coming at the basket. 10/12! When Tyreke has it going like that, it feels like the other team is playing 4-on-5 defensively.

- Kevin Martin had a bad game. And he really hasn’t been himself in the three games back. I’m going to cover that briefly in another piece but let me just say this. Getting shut down with nine points on nine shots against Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson is nothing to be ashamed of. Those are fantastic perimeter defenders when they want to be. And give him a break. He’s played decently coming back from injury and still needs to find his rhythm, which will happen sooner rather than later.

- Jon Brockman is insane. The Bobcats allow the seventh lowest offensive rebounding rate for their opponents and he grabbed seven offensive rebounds. He finished with 14 boards in 30 minutes off the bench. He had 10 rebounds in the second half. There is flat out no excuse for Westphal to not give him 25 minutes per night the rest of the season. He doesn’t have bad or ineffective games. He comes in, rebounds, and bangs bodies with bigger opponents to wear them out.

- 35 points off the bench between Beno, Noc and Donté. It’s impossible to expect that from them every game but when it happens, the Kings are going to win more games than they lose.

- Hilton Armstrong’s first game as a King was to be expected. 10 minutes off the bench and he blocked one shot. He also didn’t grab a single rebound. He’s basically the opposite of Brian Skinner.

There is a lot of really good stuff in today’s Gameday post by Sam Amick. Some good quotes from Kevin Martin highlight the post.

There is also this video of a Mario Elie-Francisco Garcia shootout.

Mario Elie can still shoot the lights out. Why didn’t they make him a player-assistant coach? He would have been perfect for last second situations…

Apparently, Tyreke Evans has not taken a single three from the left corner this season. Not one. In fact, he’s only taken one corner three the entire season and as you can see below it came from the right corner.

Not only that but from now on, I think it’s safe to start screaming, “NO!!” when he takes a shot from the right side of the floor.

But back to the point – he hasn’t taken a SINGLE three from the left corner. You would think he’d take one of those by accident.

Hell, even Sean May has taken one!

I don’t have many words that can describe this video so I’ll just let it speak for itself.

The winner of the game show was Jon Santiago of the brilliantly done Davis Sports Deli podcast.

You can follow all of the participants on Twitter too:

Jon Santiago is @ITSJonSantiago.
Jason Thompson is @JTtheKid.
Donté Greene is @dontegreene.
And of course “Bill Peterson” is @A_Nicholson and the mastermind behind @sacramentokings.

Sorry, I don’t have any follow/Twitter info for Bessie. You’ll have to stalk her the old-fashioned way.

because he just completely undressed the reigning Defensive Player of the Year last night with this crossover.

Someone check Dwight Howard’s ankles, please. Can ankles get whiplash?

I don’t really know what there is to say about this game.

Remember the Dwyane Wade commercial with him driving to the basket? He’s going through his thought process of what to do in the form of two different personalities on his shoulders giving him advice?

Yep, that’s the one! Okay, the nerdy Dwyane is advising a jump shot while the rougher Dwyane is demanding a poster. Nerdy Dwyane sees Paul Davis in the lane and says, “that’s a large man, Dwyane.” And he was talking about PAUL FREAKING DAVIS! Imagine Dwight Howard standing in the middle of the lane. He must look like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And that’s basically what he was in this game. He was a creature that a mere mortal wasn’t capable of handling. I actually liked the Kings plan to defend him. They bodied him up early, fouled when the position was too deep and perfect for him and made him use post moves instead of pure, brute strength. They put him on the free throw line and made him make them. The double teams were good and by the correct personal. They had Ime Udoka come down and swipe at the ball after the first dribble. Other guys did the same. The problem was that none of it worked. Dwight Howard did what he’s supposed to do.

Sure, Spencer Hawes got eaten alive by Dwight. Jason Thompson got eaten alive by Dwight. But they’re supposed to get eaten alive by the big man in Orlando. So you can live with it as long as you stop their three-point shooting.

Well, the Kings also did a good job of doing that too. Orlando was just 8/27 from three. The problem was Orlando often didn’t settle for the three (which sounds odd considering they attempted 27 of them, right?). They drove the ball to the basket a lot. And they scored inside a lot. It wasn’t just Dwight, either. He was 9/12 inside of 10 feet but the rest of the team was very efficient too at 17/22 inside 10 feet. That’s really good. They simply were too quick for the Kings’ defenders when they needed stops.

However, while all of those things seem pretty damning, the entire problem with this game was the offense in the fourth quarter. Yes, the defense was bad in giving up 33 points but a lot of that was predicated by the fact the Kings couldn’t make a single shot. 4/22 shooting in the fourth quarter isn’t going to get it done. 10 points in the fourth quarter isn’t going to get it done, either. The Kings played right into the hands of the Magic in the most crucial stretch of this game.

For a while, it looked like it was the lineup Coach Westphal had thrown out there. Kings needed Tyreke Evans back in the game more than they needed anything. Unfortunately, when he returned after just a couple of minutes sitting in the fourth, the problems still persisted. Stagnant offense that led to slow defense.

I’m sure everyone is going to write this tomorrow, but wouldn’t Kevin Martin fix fourth quarters like this? His style of play seems to be engineered in a lab to perfectly coexist with the offensive efforts that Tyreke Evans throws at opposing defenses. They’re like a bio-dome backcourt combination – built to coexist in perfect harmony. Kevin Martin may not have won this game for the Kings tonight but he definitely would have helped them stay in a position to win this game after the first 36 minutes.

He returns Friday (at the earliest) and everyone will finally get to see what the rest of the basketball world questions – can Kevin Martin and Tyreke Evans coexist in the same backcourt? We already know the answer because we’ve seen both of them play and know their styles complement each other.

It just would have been nice if they could have had that tonight when the offense died and they were left in the towering shadow of Dwight Howard and his brooding prowess.

After all, that’s a large man.

Final Game Notes
- Jason Thompson is STRUGGL-ING! When does this end? He played another terrible game tonight. Six points and five boards in 19 minutes of play. And it wasn’t even foul trouble. He just was completely ineffective. He’s making bad decisions on offense. He’s playing foolishly on defense. His jumper is horrendous. His dribbling and passing are tricking only his teammates. I wonder if you need to sit him for one game or just punt the first five minutes of the game and go exclusively to him. Just see what pounding it in to JT does. Maybe it breaks him out of this slump. Something has to break his way though.

- Tyreke Evans had a really good game but he couldn’t finish around the basket so it ended up looking like a terrible game. 5/16 shooting happened but he started 0/7 so it could have been a lot worse. He got to the basket whenever he wanted. A couple of times, he was simply too slow putting up his shot and you could tell Dwight had watched his game before. He anticipated his moves perfectly twice. But other than that, he just couldn’t get it to roll in. Also, his defense is pretty special. He still struggles to stay out on shooters but you simply can’t get by him one-on-one in an age in which hand-checking is a no-no.

- Jon Brockman had nine points, six rebounds and five offensive rebounds in 12 minutes. Why doesn’t he get more time? He was throwing Rashard Lewis around on the boards like he was Adam Morrison.

- One blocked shot the entire game. This is where the Kings are lacking so much. Hilton Armstrong won’t be the answer. But imagine if they had a shot blocker? How much would that change EVERYTHING for them? It doesn’t even have to be a good one. Just a guy who is enough of a threat to make guys reconsider for a second.

Here’s the link to the Sac Bee Blog and Sam Amick’s reporting that Kevin Martin is cleared to play.

As early as Friday?

Impossible to Guard Backcourt… ENGAGE!

EA Sports is bringing back NBA Jam. It’s going to be on the Wii sometime this year.

And you have until January 18th to vote on which three Kings you would like to play with in the game. The options are Tyreke Evans, Jason Thompson, Spencer Hawes, Beno Udrih, Kevin Martin and Andres Nocioni (No Casspi?!?!).

Vote early, vote often.