Why Jokic, Kings, Bucks, Nets must be shamed

... Shame on Kings for stunting growth of promising, young roster

The Kings had a breakout season in 2018-19, their best since 2005-06, with second-year guard De’Aaron Fox and third-year shooting guard Buddy Hield emerging as stars. Entering the summer, they had plenty of cap space to improve the team. But they've flubbed almost everything since the end of the season.

Instead of locking up Dave Joerger, their best head coach since the Rick Adelman era, Sacramento (2-5) inexplicably fired him and hired recently fired Luke Walton as his replacement. The change from a top-notch basketball mind in Joerger to an unproven, player-friendly coach in Walton made little sense for a young team that needs strong leadership from the top-down.

The Kings' young backcourt especially needs a coach with a strong vision and assertive personality. Joerger has both. Last season he unleashed Fox by pushing the pace (fifth fastest in the league in 2018-19), which, in turn, led to more open threes for Hield and Bogdan Bogdanovic as well as open-court run-outs for Marvin Bagley. This season, the team is playing the fourth-slowest pace in the league, Bagley is injured, and every player is under-performing. Walton, the former Lakers coach, won’t make it to All-Star break at this rate.

The Kings' idiocy didn’t stop with the firing of Joerger. Instead of extending their four most important, young players (Fox, Hield, Bagley and Bogdanovic), they spent money like there was no salary cap. The Kings overpaid for ball stopper Harrison Barnes (four years, $85M), washed-up veteran Trevor Ariza (two years, $25M), average backup point guard Cory Joseph (three years, $37.2M) and average backup center Dewayne Dedmon (three years, $40M). Sacramento was nearly capped out and almost unable to extend Hield. Although they eventually got a deal with the guard done, they angered him and effectively forfeited the opportunity to re-sign Bogdanovic. If the Kings don’t get their act together soon, Fox and Bagley won't be long for SacTown.

... Shame on Bucks for not keeping Malcolm Brodgon

Book this: The Bucks will have one of the top records in the Eastern Conference. They have the most dominant regular-season player in Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has flashed improved play-making ability (7.4 assists per game compared to 5.9 per game last season) to go with his customary 28 points, 14 rebounds and two blocks per game. But because of the limitations of their second- (Khris Middleton) and third-best (Eric Bledsoe) players, the Bucks won't win the title.

A fringe All-Star like Middleton (19 ppg, 6 rpg) can be a contender’s second-best player if the rest of the roster resembles last season's Raptors, who had Kawhi, Pascal Siakam and seven or eight high-end role players. A player like Bledsoe (14 ppg, 6 rpg, 5 apg), whose playoffs struggles are well-documented, is not the kind of third banana a championship team can rely on deep in the playoffs, but the Bucks don’t have much of a choice with their present roster.

Do you know whom Milwaukee could use when Bledsoe struggles in April and May? Former Buck Malcolm Brogdon, a guard averaging 23.7 points, 9.4 assists and 5.3 rebounds for the Pacers. Brogdon left the Bucks in the off-season for Indiana, who signed the restricted free agent to a four-year, $85 million deal that Milwaukee should have matched. Yes, the Bucks would have had to pay the luxury tax. No one likes additional taxes, but why should Milwaukee worry about that when it has a Hall of Fame talent in Giannis, an unrestricted free agent in two summers, in his prime? It wasn’t like the Bucks were hard-capped and had to choose between re-signing Brogdon or spreading the money among other free agents.

You can’t cut corners when you have a generational talent like Giannis. Shame on Milwaukee for not being bold.

Shame on Nets for already hinting at having buyer’s remorse with Kyrie Irving

There’s Latin phrase that comes about in contract law known as caveat emptor, which translates to “let the buyer beware.” The actual language of the max contract between the Nets and Irving may not explicitly reference this phrase, but such a warning was more than implicit for Brooklyn, who undoubtedly watched Irving’s actions in Cleveland and Boston from afar.

 Yet days into the young season, the Nets were already raising concerns anonymously to ESPN’s Jackie MacMullen about Irving’s behavior and the negative impact he might have on their regimented program and culture. This sounds a lot like David Griffin’s comments this past summer about how “miserable” he was as LeBron’s GM.

My take: Bleh. Riddle me this, anonymous Nets source:

Do you want a happy-go-lucky, college-like program in which you win 42 games, get a bunch of compliments from NBA Twitter, and lose in the first round of the playoffs? Or do you want to plant the seeds for competing for NBA titles with a mercurial superstar who is averaging 31.7 points, 7.7 assists and 6.1 rebounds?