Welcome to the inaugural edition of eDraft’s NBA Season Preview. We turn our attention to the Pacific Division, covering everyone from the pretenders to the contenders. Today we take a look at the Kings. This is a talented team, but do they have the right chemistry to make to the playoffs?

Who’s Coming: Aaron Brooks (G), Thomas
Robinson (5th overall, F)

After blowing up the exciting nucleus that took the NBA by storm in the late-1990s, the Kings begin rebuilding by drafting  shoot-first guard Tyreke Evans (11.6PPG-3.2APG-5RPG-12.16PER) to be their playmaker. When Sacramento selected Evans with the 4th pick in the 2009 draft there was genuine excitement in Sacramento, but also real questions about what position the hyper-athletic 6’6” Evans would play. Evans put up outstanding overall numbers in his rookie campaign, but never looked totally comfortable running the offense, and the Kings were forced to try Evans at shooting guard and even at small forward. His key statistics deteriorated across the board over his next two seasons, and his poor shot selection and shooting percentages became a major concern for the team.

Luckily the Kings seem to have found their point guard in Isaiah Thomas (10.8PPG-1.9APG-12.68PER), a nice player, with a fantastic name and a solid mid-range jump shot. While he probably won’t ever make an all-start team Thomas can at least run an offense. But what they will do about Evans, who is a free agent next year remains unclear.

True to their nature, the Kings would only compound matters this summer. Already logjamed at the point, Sacramento inexplicably sought out another shoot-first point guard in China and brought him in to compete for backcourt minutes with Thomas and Evans, to the confusion and dismay of just about everybody. While I remember Aaron Brooks (6.3PPG-2APG-8.44PER) as a fine player before he took his sojourn to Asia last season, he is a poor fit for this club. Brooks needs to come off the bench for a contender at this point in his career, he does not need to be chucking up shots for a perennial cellar-dweller and taking time away from promising young players. The Kings ownership is operating under the logic that more talent is always a good thing, without regard to how that talent might fit together.

A case in point would be the Kings decision to build around power forward DeMarcus Cousins (16.1PPG-10.7RPG-18.92PER), a player who is like Derrick Coleman in so many ways. And how might the young fan recognize a player in the DC mold? Well, does he fight with his coaches? Does he look like he hates his teammates? Does he jog up the court (nearly all of the time)? Does he look like he might be the very best power forward of his generation with just a little bit of effort? Of course the Kings knew what they were getting in Cousins long before they drafted him: an eminently talented and enigmatic player who left an enduring impact on and off the court in Kentucky, and who slipped to number five in the draft mostly due to questions about his character.

While it’s quite possible to win games with surly players, it’s difficult to do so with guys who don’t put in maximum effort every night, and that is unfortunately what the Kings have in Cousins. Put this man on a veteran team, and the sky’s the limit, put him on a bad team and he’s a headache.

When President Obama was trying to sell his health care overhaul to a sceptical American public, he admitted that his proposal was perhaps not ideal. He went on to explain that some kind of single-payer, Medicare-type universal system might be preferable to his hybrid publicly subsidized private insurance initiative, but that sometimes change is difficult once the established infrastructure is set. It would be impossible to tear down the private U.S. insurance healthcare arrangement and build a new system in its place, he said, so a hodge podge proposal would have to suffice. To a great extent, the Kings face a similar infrastructure problem (or “path-dependence” in social science speak).

We have before us a dreadful team that was constructed over time with logic that now seems obscure. The roster cannot simply be wished away and replaced by something superior as much as fans and ownership would otherwise like. Further, there is no plan or model for turning bad teams around. There are options, none ideal and none guaranteed to work. The risky options are to either: bottom out and hope for a string of good draft picks (which may never come), or hope to attract stars via free agency (but small markets inevitably lose out to larger cities). For the more risk adverse teams there is the Obama plan, build on the old and hope for the best. The Kings have followed this path, and it’s been disastrous.

Reason for optimism: There are two actually. Keith Smart is a coach’s coach—he has a proven track record and will work hard to right this ship. I also love the Thomas Robinson pick, he’s a double-double waiting to happen.

Reason for despair: Jimmer Fredette looked very, very bad last year. The national fawning over this man that took place before the 2011 draft proves that all is not just in this world. 

Projected wins: 26-56