Normally, covering a player like Jimmer Fredette would be a bit of a nightmare.  What can you ask a player who has been the center of media attention for so long?  Well, with the lockout in full effect, we have an opportunity to get to know the Jimmer Fredette story via interviews, college highlights, maybe even a few home videos- yes, it’s all out there.  This is the information age and this young man out of Glens Falls, New York is all over the web- as in Justin Bieber all over the web.  So while some of you folks out there may have seen some of these clips, the good people of Sacramento probably haven’t.

ESPN- “Jimmer Fredette Played Prison Ball – Bond Of Brothers”.
 

I blatantly took this from Matt Moore in the DDL.

I just decided to put it to the comic meme of CSI: Miami puns.

It’s stupid, I know. But it cracked me up.

Look at how well he handles youngsters!

(via – SB Jake Whitacre)

Good to know he’ll be able to make Kyrie Irving smile next year.

… in the middle of the night when you’re getting a glass of water?

Go get the DeMarcus Cousins fathead right now.

David Thorpe follows the rookies of the NBA closer than anybody. He’s updated his Rookie Rankings and DeMarcus Cousins is shooting up the charts:

This is the point, however, in the overall story. Cousins can still be a mess from game to game. He may have the worst body language in the NBA, overreacting to everything, including his own mistakes. And he does not yet value winning enough to take fewer jumpers and dribbles. Yet he’s performing much better than he was, and with more consistency. He’s also getting in good enough shape to make more defensive plays above the rim. This is the kind of talent the Kings (and everyone else) were expecting.

As he succeeds more often, he will be tested anew. We’ve seen how he dealt with failure in November — with marked improvement. How will he deal with his success this month?

Check out the rest of the article here (ESPN Insider).

With most fans, they don’t really pay attention to what guys like Cousins are doing. They rely on national columnists to tell them what’s going on. So instead of just getting the “Cousins made a choke sign” or “Cousins has a bad attitude because he fought with the coach” type of stuff, they’re reading about how he’s progressing.

It’s nice to see Thorpe giving him credit here for adapting, playing better and showing he’s more than a tabloid waiting to happen.

Andrew Nicholson, Mitch Germann and Joe Fernandez of Klout.

Here at Cowbell Kingdom, we concentrate most of our efforts on the action on the court.  On Saturday evening, before the Kings took on the Dallas Mavericks, we were asked to do something a little different, which was to cover an event put on by the Kings PR department.

As many of you know, the three cogs that make up Cowbell Kingdom- Zach Harper (@talkhoops), Noam Schiller (@noamschiller) and myself, James Ham (@jjham15), as well as Cowbell Kingdom, the site (@cowbell_kingdom), can be found on twitter.  As bloggers, we count on social media tools like twitter to promote our product, get the latest in breaking news and network globally with others.  Little did I know, there is a website that can analyze and track how much influence you or I have on twitter and other social media websites.

Klout.com is a company based out of San Francisco that uses advanced analytic tools to take the raw numbers (followers, retweets, tweet ups, etc.) hiding behind your social media accounts and give you a score.  That score will hopefully represent the standard measure of influence your account has on others.

Why is this information important?  Because it can help you not only improve your own way of promoting your product, it can lead you to new, untapped resources that are already thriving in the art of disseminating information in your area.

Led by entrepreneur CEO, Joe  Fernandez, Klout has began to carve a niche in the social media world.

“Disney, Virgin America, all these great brands come to us to connect with people that are influential in social media. It’s really exciting.”

-Joe Fernandez, CEO Klout

The Sacramento Kings are on the cutting edge as far as professional sports teams and new social media is concerned.  To date, the team has over 59,000 facebook followers and they are approaching 20,000 followers on twitter.  They use both social networking sites to promote their product, offer exclusive deals and keep fans informed of all kinds of events.

As the event was getting under way, I was able to chat with Kings VP of Marketing and Communications, Mitch Germann about both Klout and the importance of the Kings using social media as an alternative source of building their client base:

“We are looking to spread the Kings’ game experience to an audience who might not know about it or might not have experienced it in person.”  Germann added this, “We are always on the lookout for the next thing that is good for our fans.”

One of the more interesting aspects to this particular event was that the invitees were chosen for their overall Klout score and not for any allegiance to the Sacramento Kings.  The range of people in attendance was wide, but they all had one common denominator, a local following/voice amongst the social networking platforms and the ability to hopefully reach new markets for the Sacramento Kings.

Andrew Nicholson, Jason Thompson and Joe Fernandez.

Andrew Nicholson, the Kings New Media Director was the MC for the event and Kings starting power forward Jason Thompson, an admitted twitter fanatic, came up and spent some time with the group before the game.  Overall, the event seemed like a success, with the Kings showing that they are willing to use cutting edge technology to reach the people of Sacramento.

It is this type of forward thinking displayed by the Sacramento Kings at this event, which has led to the amazing access that both Zach and myself have been granted as bloggers.  Very few professional sports franchises open their practice facility, locker rooms or media boxes to non-mainstream media sources like the Kings do.  Although they may not be winning on the court right now, off the court the Kings are doing a great job of stepping into the new age of social media.

Open up the Sunday paper and you’ll see another article by Ailene Voisin trying to convince you that Tyreke Evans isn’t a point guard.

Luckily, the Sacramento Bee properly labeled this column as “Opinion” and nothing else.

Because that’s what it is. It’s her opinion on a player she’s been less than kind too over his brief career. The reasoning in her piece is simple: the Kings are trying to trade for a point guard so the idea that Tyreke IS a point guard has clearly run its course. However, I’m wondering if that’s just a matter of circumstance in the league than it is an indictment on what Tyreke is or can be. Read more…

Andrew Unterberger of The Basketball Jones is touring all of the NBA arenas in 60 days and was in town for the Kings-Hornets game on Sunday.

I got a chance to talk to him about the team and arena after the game. I couldn’t be more envious of his project right now.

Here is a snippet of the piece and link below:

From the stadium, the marketing focus behind the team is fairly obvious: Tyreke Evans and DeMarcus Cousins. The Kings certainly seem to believe that they have their contending core of the future in ‘Reke and DMC, and rather than try to square the focus on team, city and community like several of the other stadiums I’ve visited, Sacramento places all of its chips on these two young’ns. The two are on all the posters, overwhelming all the jersey stands, and getting the biggest sells from the PA announcer. The Kings especially waste no opportunity to remind you that Evans won Rookie of the Year last season, which after a while begins to make him look like one of those random Best Supporting Actress nominees who film promoters forever get to bill as “Academy Award Nominee Juliette Lewis.” It’s understandable that a team hurting in attendance and in the standings would want to get fans pumped about its new young players, but the Kings better just hope that the duo improves enough to not make those signs seem cruelly ironic in a couple years’ time.

Click here to read the entire piece. It’s really a cool thing he’s doing.

I’ll be honest…

I watched this video a couple of times and really don’t know what happened in it.

But you get to see some of Tyreke’s workout from the summer, him throwing alley-oops to a guy who can’t dunk and a nice video presentation of a lot of things Tyreke.

Enjoy.

(Via – SLAM Online)

Maestro Knows – Special Edition (Tyreke Evans) from Maestro Knows on Vimeo.

Our friend James Ham at The Purple Panjandrum talked with Samuel Dalembert on everything from defensive communication, watching tape, and being named the starter. Here’s a snippet, followed by the link:

TPP: Last night you guys got killed on a handful of alley-oop dunks by the Lakers – is that a communication issue because you guys just haven’t played that much together?

Sammy D:  It’s both.  I would say it’s communication and positioning.  A lot of times when you’re playing, you got to get down a little bit and see where the ball is at and see your man.  It happened to us like a few times and I was the victim of one of them.  I was very upset at myself and that’s why I started to communicate a little bit more out there and trying to get everybody going and communicating.  As you can tell, they are a very experienced team.  Kobe Bryant saw it, I saw it and I should have anticipated it because I seen them talking, going like this (points to his eyes).  You know, with my experience, I should have been vocal quicker and I blame myself on one of them or two of them.  But we worked on that today.

Check out the rest of the interview here.

Dalembert taking over defensive communication on the court might be the biggest key for what this team does moving forward. They’ve been a pretty atrocious defensive unit in the first five games. Yes, they make defensive runs and have gotten key stops in their victories but overall, they’re giving up way too many points, way too easily.

If you look at what a team like Boston does or what Chicago does, they have one man at the back of the defense barking out all of the communication and letting his teammates know what is about to happen. Kevin Garnett does in Beantown. Joakim Noah does it in Chitown. And now Samuel Dalembert will do it in Sactown. Knowing what’s going on and what is about to happen (calling out screens, cuts, etc.) is huge for being a good defensive team at anticipating the opponent. I think Dalembert taking it upon himself the responsibility of being communicative will be a great addition to the team.