Re: Sacramento Kings Total Cluster-fudge
JJ reminds me a lot of Drew. He has occasional stretches where he stuffs stats, but he never makes the team better. His on/off net numbers are always horrible whether he's on a first place team or last place team...GM's know this. Nice to see him stuffing stats again...amazing what being broke and unemployed will do for a guy's motivation.
HICKSON ON/OFF NET
08/09 -19.4 (66 win team)
09/10 -8.6 (HE STARTED 73 GAMES on a 61 WIN 1ST PLACE TEAM)
10/11 -5.5
11/12 -7.3
12/13 -11.8
From JJ's rookie year until yesterday, he is 734th out of 743 players in net +/-...his teams were -801 when he was on the floor.
JJ was living the dream while he was here. He was young, athletically gifted and was getting carried on the Lebron ride to 60 win seasons. He knew that other teams wanted him, he knew we had aging players, he thought he was the future and HE WANTED MAX MONEY.
"The Decision" - BOOOOOM!!!!
Ok, after the decision mgmt had to pick up the pieces and see what they had and how players would react. There were some players that were true professionals, that had a "screw Lebron" attitude, worked hard and tried to make the best of the situation(Andy, Boobie, Parker). There were other players that were like jilted girlfriends, crying in their ice cream after being dumped (Mo and JJ). The Cavs had to purge themselves of the ones that couldn't get over the decision and were feeling sorry for themselves. Mo was a no-brainer. JJ took a little more thought because we had invested a lot in him and he was young. In the end he got lazy, his attitude sucked and he thought we needed him more than he needed us...he was wrong.
Keep in mind the trade was hours before what everyone knew was going to be a long lockout. During the lockout JJ got fat, JJ was broke, JJ signed overseas and got cut before his first game. I think everyone knew that would happen so we took what we could get in a dead market...no one knew what the rules would be on the backside and everyone knew JJ wanted to get paid. We also didn't want him around our rookies. As far as the restrictions go, we have two firsts coming up this summer...it would probably work out best if we got it in 2014 so we'd have 2 firsts then and 2 firsts in 2015. Sacto has some talent, just assembled horribly. One more top pick for them and some chemistry moves and they could be decent.