Fall from Royalty, Part One: The decline of the Sacramento Kings, 2003-05

I think Petrie took the only offer he could get for Webber and that monster deal, knowing that the last two years of that deal would be ugly.  Now he's got a terrible contract on the books for Thomas, but $7m is easier to move than $20m. 

All in all, I am guessing that Webber would have loved playing with Artest in 2005-6 and managed to stay healthy enough to play out the contract 50 games a year and that the Kings would have been a win or two better with a gimpy Webber than with what the received from Philly, depending on how often CWebb suited up.

Looking at the numbers for Webber vs Williamson and Thomas for the 2.5 years after the trade (we'll ignore this year for everyone's sake):

Williamson + Thomas

2004-5, 24/26g, 52mpg, 23ppg, 12rpg, $11.5m

2005-6, 37/82g, 38mpg, 12ppg, 10rpg, $12.5m

2006-7, 68/62g, 43mpg, 14ppg, 9rpg, $13.7m

Webber

2004-5, 21g, 33mpg, 16ppg, 8rpg, $17.5m

2005-6, 75g, 38mpg, 20ppg, 10rpg, $19.1m

2006-7, 61g, 30mpg, 11ppg, 7rpg, $18.2m

All this tells me is that getting rid of Webber in this deal was sort of a statistical wash.

In the end the deal has saved the Kings some cash at the expense of the face of the franchise that they are have yet to replace.  How does Petrie score?  How about charging him a point for sacrificing the soul of the franchise and another for the fact that Kenny Thomas still has $16.5m on his deal after this season.

Well, now I, like you the reader, am getting tired of this article, so I promise to post the more treacherous steps in a new article later this week.  So keep an eye out for my article about the Kings' thug deals that replaced the smiles of Vlade, Webber and Peja with street attitude, in the form of Bonzi Wells and Ron Artest.

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