Shareef and Petrie

Now it's time for the post about the Kings getting Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

This is a great pick-up. Leaving aside the fact that the Kings got him for what passes as a bargain in the NBA -- $5 million a year for 5 years -- he should really fit nicely with the Kings. One thing that the Kings were just blatantly missing last year was any sort of scoring threat inside. Vlade's body was falling apart in 2003-04, but he could still score a little inside with his bag of up-and-unders and little hooks. Webber seemed to have given up on the idea of being an inside player after he got back from his injury -- I guess not being able to jump had something to do with that -- and he always seemed to like playing pretty on the outside better anyway. For some reason that escapes me, while Brad Miller has many, many great skills, he seems to have no ability to put the ball in the hole from five feet with his back to the basket. (Please, Brad, learn a jump hook.) Finally, once Vlade left, Webber was traded and the annual plague of injury locusts descended on the Kings in the form of Miller's freak broken leg, they were reduced to a team basically running around looking for open jump shots. Not surprisingly, they couldn't get back into sync in the playoffs when they are started to approach health.

Shareef seems like a big help on this. He can actually score when he's close to the basket. This is nothing but good. In addition, while Shareef isn't known as a great passer and the Kings' offense requires that their big men pass, Shareef's personality seems to be such that he probably would be cool with the idea of getting four or five assists a game. He's also supposed to be a good rebounder -- please, please, please be a good rebounder. I don't know if I can take another defensive possession like the last possession in regulation that the Trailblazers had against the Kings in one game that I went to last year. The Trailblazers missed four, count 'em, four, shots in like the last 30 seconds and got the rebounds and then that damn Nick Van Exel made a three to tie the game with a couple of seconds left. THAT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. The Kings won in overtime, but, jeez, GET A REBOUND. (What is the deal with Nick Van Exel's name, anyway? He certainly doesn't seem like the dashing 18th century Dutch painter that his name suggests.)

To me, one of the big, big upsides with Shareef is his background. He's played for 9 years, I think, and has never played in the playoffs. He is a guy who has been an All-Star while playing in the dregs of the NBA. I'm guessing that he is going to play like crazy to win. Remember 2001-02, when Mike Bibby lit it up in the playoffs and everyone went bananas about him? He was coming out of 3 or 4 years of losing like crazy in Vancouver. Guess who his teammate was? Shareef. There's a nice undercurrent of guys having something to prove with the new Kings team. Shareef should want to prove that he can win. Miller probably feels like he will always have something to prove after how he had to start playing in Turkey or Bangaledesh or something like that when first came out of college. Bonzi Wells should want to show that he isn't a self-centered jerk (hopefully). If nothing else, it's a contract year for Peja. And Bibby is Bibby, The Man, Maker of Clutch Jump Shots and Epicure of Pressure.

Enough about Shareef, what about Geoff Petrie? They say that it is better to be lucky than good. What about if you're both? Petrie is very good, of course. Mike Bibby for Jason Williams straight up. Drafting Peja in the first round in 1996. Drafting Hedo. Webber for old Mitch Richmond. Three-team deal for Brad Miller, where Hedo went to San Antonio and didn't stay a year and Scot Pollard went to Indiana. Two guys who didn't contribute anything last year (man, that hurts to say, but Bobby Jackson only played like 25 games last year) for Bonzi Wells, who has averaged 19 a game before. A second-round draft pick for Darius Songaila. Picking up Jimmy Jackson off the waiver wire. The guy is a genius.

With Shareef, though, Petrie was just straight out lucky. The Nets offered the Trailblazers more than the Kings could in a sign-and-trade, so Shareef was headed to New Jersey, but their doctors got scared and Petrie swoops in. That's luck. Moreover, because of the Nets, Petrie gets the Kings a discount on Shareef. Even if Shareef's infamous scar tissue causes him problems at some point down the road, look at it this way: (1) if the Kings win a ring next year, it's worth it; and (2) it could be worse -- you could be Philadelphia being on the hook for Webber at $20 million a year for the next two years.

With the acquisition of Shareef, you have to step back and look at the magnitude of what Petrie has pulled off in the last year or so. He has remade the team from a declining borderline contender back into a contender on the fly while dumping two big salaries -- Webber and Christie -- and spreading the salaries around a little more so that they are more easily moveable. You have to look at these maneuvers in the context of what it has taken for other NBA teams to remake themselves. Jordan retired from the Bulls in 1998 and it took until this last year for them to show a pulse again. Phoenix, Orlando, Atlanta and other teams have basically gone into whole seasons with the intent of just surviving to create cap space the following summer. That's kind of what Portland is doing now. Petrie, however, remakes the Kings on the fly and ends up with what looks like one of the better teams in the NBA. (I think that there is probably one more big deal left in the next several months. It would be completely unsurprising if Petrie trades Kenny Thomas -- a very talented guy with a big salary who may not fit very well with the Kings -- at the trade deadline next season to some team that thinks it just needs a little bit to make the playoffs or get over the top or something. That would clear cap space and probably get some draft picks or good young guys in return.) Long live Geoff Petrie.