Fall from Royalty, Part Three: The Final Touches on the Decline of the Sacramento Kings

By the 2000-01 season, Geoff Petrie had assembled a championship quality team from the ground up, turning water into wine in the Sacramento Valley. 

For the next four seasons, the Kings played in the Western Conference semi-finals or finals and won at least 55 games a year. 

What has King Geoff done lately? How has the 2002-03 team, which returned 11 players, evolved into the current roster following the Bibby deal? In this three-part article, I will go through the major deals, ignoring the Rodney Bufords and Ronny Prices of the world.

Part one described five key moves through the 2005 deadline deal of Chris Webber.

Part two got us through the transformation from good guys to bad guys that occurred in 2005-06. Part three will finally get us to today's roster.

First a quick recap: In the previous articles I explained how the Kings acquired Kevin Martin, Brad Miller, Ron Artest, Francisco Garcia, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, and Kenny Thomas. That leaves us with only the final touches, up to the Kings most recent decision to give the Hawks Mike Bibby for three expiring IOUs and a second-round pick that just happened to come off the board at number five two years ago.

On to the final chapter...

 

Step 10: Fired Rick Adelman and hired Eric Musselman (Summer 2006)

Despite reeling off a 26-14 record to end the season and creating a new identity for the Kings in the mold of its newest star, Artest, Adelman got the axe at the end of the 2005-06 season. While I am not entirely sure what Geoff Petrie had to do with this, I can only say BOO!

Why would you fire a Hall of Famer in favor of a guy with a 45 percent career winning percentage in the NBA? Perplexing.

With the hindsight of the problems of the Musselman era in Sacramento, I can only say double BOO.

Given all that Adelman did for Sacramento, he deserved to decide for himself when he was ready to leave. I get pretty upset when I realize that he's now enjoying a 13-game winning streak in Houston and keeping that team in the thick of the Western Conference race.

 

Step 11: Draft Quincy Douby (Summer 2006)

If this weren't a draft I would ignore this transaction altogether. Given his lack of playing time, you almost have to consider Douby on a per minute basis. According to Basketball Reference, per 36 minutes he puts up the following poo-poo line: 13 PPG, 1.7 APG, 2.2 TOPG, 4 RPG. In actuality, he's averaging only 4 PPG. Plus, for a guy who could supposedly fill it up in college, he's having a lousy career thus far, 37 percent FG and 30 percent 3FG.

So, what were the options? Well, for starters the Kings have not had a decent backup point guard since Bobby Jackson left (Step 7), so drafting a solid PG should have been the focus.

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