Tyreke is special, my only question is will he be a point guard, but either way the only thing that could slow him down would be injury. Plantar fasciitis is nasty stuff, basically your foot becoming rotten from being in a sweaty shoe all day, they need to work out barefoot or something.
IMO the debate about PG vs SG is a bit old and doesn't quite work for this team. There's a specific set of skills that the players on the court need to collectively have, and as long as they can collectively complement each other, I have no problem starting two tweener guards.
If I remember right from the time Peja Stojakovic had it, the only thing you can really do for it is rest. He's healthy now so he should be back to old form (though preferably improved from his rookie year).
I can't help but think that Sacramento will have to add that veteran quality before they're really able to turn the corner and become a playoff team, the best thing would be to follow the Grizzlies and get someone like Zach Randolph, who can actually play in the post, an increasingly rare quality in basketball players. The Pistons as well didn't get payoff on their young core until they brought in Rasheed Wallace, Dallas needed to buy Jason Kidd even after all their previous maneuvering. But i can see Jason Thompson and Cousins becoming good enough that if they added someone like Gasol or Randolph, someone at least on the periphery of All Star status, I could see them competing in a fairly wide open league in a few years.
You're talking about a few playoff-caliber teams that then made the jump to championship contender. We're far from that right now. I agree that we need more talent and leadership in general, though so that's not to discount anything you said. The only problem is that nobody wants to come to Sacramento. In order to attract anyone with talent, we pretty much have to offer a max deal or acquire them in a trade. Generally talented players don't get traded unless they're expiring contracts, so we'd be getting players for a year who would then bolt for the bigger cities.
The new CBA helps somewhat, since the large market teams won't be able to stockpile as much as before, but at the same time every free agent signing is still a huge risk for us because we'll still have to attract players with money. It's like being the rich, ugly kid that knows he's only going to ever be able to bang hookers for the rest of his life.
Not having many high percentage shooters hurts them, teams can collapse and they aren't punished from range, and they don't get many easy buckets from post play. But Evans stepping things up would change a lot of things and open things up for everyone else, he could be the best player in the league one day. But what they really need to do is share the ball, move it around, and make crisp runs, because basketball is about passing, and they do too much 1 on 1, isolation stuff for my taste.
Wholeheartedly agree. And the problems center around Evans on this, IMO. His best attribute is his ability to get to the rim at will one on one. His biggest flaw is his over-reliance on that skill when he's faced with multiple defenders. He was able to use it to great effect in his rookie season, and I suspect to even greater effect in college (though I didn't watch him then). It's close to pure isolation.
Theoretically that's supposed to open things up for the rest of the team. Penetrate, wait for the defense to collapse on you, kick the ball out for an open shot. The problem is that for a long time, nobody besides Udrih could hit those open shots (Casspi could when he was hot, but when he wasn't, the team had huge problems). This improved once we got Thornton and should hopefully improve more with Jimmer. While Salmons is an upgrade at SF, I'd prefer if he didn't chuck up shots like he did the last time he was here. When the ball gets kicked out to a slasher, it would also be nice if they didn't revert to instincts and slash towards the rim where all the defenders are lurking after they all collapsed on Evans. If the ball goes to a big man in the high post, they need to distribute the ball instead of taking a jumpshot.
Anyways, better shooters should help, but Evans also needs to look for them. After it became clear that the outside shooting wasn't great, he's tried to put the team on his back and do it all himself, especially when the team is trailing and that just gets us into even worse trouble and leads to more missed shots and fast breaks. If the team can just consistently execute penetrate-and-kick, it will open up a lot more easy shots at the rim for Evans.
That said, we threw away quite a few games on final possessions because Paul Westphal likes to just give the ball to Tyreke at the end of the game. Granted I don't mind the ball being in his hands, but everyone and their mothers know Tyreke is going to get that ball and drive to the hoop. We'd have maybe five extra wins if we weren't so inept.
