Can the Kings Avoid the Dreaded Culture of Losing?

As the Kings enter the full rebuilding phase and attempt to rebound from their worst season in franchise history, there are legitimate concerns about where the franchise is headed and whether we are entering a prolonged period of stagnation.

The Kings have been mediocre in the past, but the purchase of the franchise by the Maloof family and the chain of events following the 1997-98 season put them on the NBA map and made them relevant. Unfortunately, the team has now fallen on hard times again and they face more problems than ever as they are on their fifth head coach in four seasons and are operating amid threats of relocation to a new city without a future arena plan in place. I’ll save the arena talk for a latter day and instead focus on my main concern for the upcoming season. I’m worried that this will become a franchise that accepts mediocrity once again and slip into an accepted culture of losing.

On the floor, there are some serious things lacking that have me concerned about this. They are a team that lacks leadership on the floor or in the clubhouse and that is critical for a young team trying to turn things around. Where will that leadership come from? Their best players are all young by NBA standards and there is no clear front-runner for that leadership role. Somebody will need to step up. Having a veteran presence like Bobby Jackson was nice, but you need a leader that is the heart of your team and Bobby really ended up playing too many minutes last season out of necessity for this very reason. Is Kevin Martin ready for that type of role? The Kings just really lack those types of personalities at this point, so where will it come from?

That is why now is a critical time for the young franchise and the front office knows it. Their youth movement is extreme by all accounts as they have blown up the roster in the last few years in a major effort to reshape their team and get rid of excess contracts by next season. Next year will be even more telling as the Kings will shed enough salary to make a play for potential free agents, but will it be too late by then if their players accept losing as the norm and are just waiting for their own free agent status to come up?

The sentiment seemed to hit home yesterday as Spencer Hawes opted not to take part in the Las Vegas Summer League. A decision that set off the normally quiet Geoff Petrie as he responded with the following to the Sacramento Bee’s Sam Amick:

“He obviously was invited to participate and at this point has chosen not to, and we’ll go from there,” Petrie said. “It’s the middle of the summer, and the invitation was there. The knowledge about it was there. If he doesn’t want to play, he doesn’t want to play.”

“We have, for the most part, five roster players here, and we’re going to be a young team and having a new coach and a new staff,” Petrie said. “Certainly a good part of what we were trying to accomplish is to prepare those (players) better for the start of training camp and let the coaching staff get their first feel of them as players, and they can start to put in things that they’re going to do in fall camp. I think it’s valuable and completely productive.”

It was just summer league and I don’t want to make a mountain out of mole hill, but this is the type of response that is disappointing for a player that the Kings are counting on to step up. It was discussed at length at Sactown Royalty  yesterday after a post by Tom Ziller. The third year is critical for NBA players as usually that is when they make the biggest jump in progress. It’s disappointing to see Hawes skip it, but as Petrie said, it is his choice.

There is another thing that concerns me other than the fear of accepting mediocrity and that is the complete lack of competition for the Kings young players. I believe that competition is an integral part of developing young players and pushing them. As I watch former Kings like Gerald Wallace and Hedo Turkoglu flourish in other programs, I can’t help but think about how they barely cracked the starting lineup at times during their tenure in Sacramento. They were pushed to be better players. Are the Kings currently able to push the new crop of youngsters hard enough to get the most from them? It’s a legitimate question. If they hand out jobs and the young guys know that they aren’t pushed for playing time by equally skilled players, this could be a problem in the future. There is no easy solution to this problem. The Kings likely aren’t going to sign David Lee tomorrow to push the big men for minutes, so my only hope is that the players push each other and don’t just start accepting a paycheck and waiting for their time in Sacramento to expire.