Deuce and Mo catch up with The Athletic’s Anthony Slater to talk about the Kings offseason, his chat with Kings GM Monte McNair, the expectations for Keegan Murray, the competition in the Western Conference and if the Kings can be legit Western Conference contenders.
00:00-A big guest coming soon
00:49-Anthony Slater joins the podcast
2:00-On his chat with Kings GM Monte McNair
6:06-Monte’s patience, how he approached the offseason, Kuzma
9:14-On Keegan Murray’s potential and how the team feels about him
12:09-Can the Kings become a better defensive team this year?
14:35-How teams will defend Sacramento after last season
16:03-Kings encouraged by Keegan in the playoffs
16:34-SPONSOR LOOOOVE
18:45-Could the Kings come out of the West?
25:00-Are the Warriors better? Does CP3 want to be there?
32:00-The Kings depth looks really strong
32:46-Will the Kings get MORE national TV games?
35:44-Too much pressure on Keegan taking a serious jump in year 2?
41:20-How will team handle real expectations?
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6 Comments
I think the Kings will continue to improve next year as a team but there record might not improve. We just need to stay healthy. The west is wide open.
Feels like it’s been forever.
Kings are betting on themselves….I have no problem 🎉
I wanna see a Vezenkov/Sabonis pick n roll 😮
My theory is, Monte's stockpiling as much talent as possible to prepare for the trade market, where the Kings might be able to pick up an impact player with a legit two-way/3&D-type of game. I think that's the long game, since Monte doesn't say much publicly, but he did discuss wanting to upgrade the Kings' defense.
It's just that as we saw in discussions about possible trades for OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam etc., the Kings just simply didn't have enough guys to make a trade work without giving up Keegan Murray.
Now, the Kings might have enough guys. Barnes is under contract, Trey Lyles is under contract, you got Chris Duarte, you got Vezzy, Colby Jones might be a guy, and there's always Davion Mitchell. Throw in a couple draft picks, and the Kings have much more trade market ammunition now than they did just a couple months ago.
And thinking about it, that seems like an awful lot of guys with legit NBA-level talent. Some of those guys aren't going to get minutes. I don't think Monte's planning on keeping all those guys for the long term – but it makes a lot of sense to try to package multiple rotation guys into one higher-caliber impact player.
And then of course, talent is always talent, an asset is always an asset, a good player's always a good player. There's a certain point where it's just kind of silly to say "Naw we don't want the Euro league MVP, we want defense." Sometimes you just have to take the good player you can get, and figure out how you succeed together.
Also in fairness to Mo, it did take the Kings awhile to implement Mike Brown's system!
Don't forget, these guys started 0-4, then 3-6, and at midseason they were just 20-18. They weren't instant winners. Then they finished strong with a 28-14 stretch before resting Fox/Sabonis the last two games.
That's why I'm so optimistic about this team going into next season: the team that finished this past season was MILES ahead of the team that started last season. They finished playing like a 55-win team. Will they win 55 games? I don't know. But 50+ is very possible.