The Official We're Talking Playoffs Thread

Sarcasm is always easier to comprehend in person. It often doesn't translate well in written form.

Sucks, Denver is tied with the Kings for 8th and they play the Philadelphia 76ers tonight in Denver.

We could be looking at slipping to 9th spot by tonight.

Our own fault.

But more realistically why I was going to hold off on this thread for as long as another month is that we are going to get brutalized for another month here, and then suddenly the sun comes out on Feb 1 and it will be time for us to make a run. If we actually were standing in #8 come Feb 1, I would go so far as to say that the #8 is ours barring injury. We will have the weakest schedule in the league for the next 6 weeks after that date, be able to run away from all the other struggling teams who are just hoping to reach .500, maybe.

More realistically we are going to have to fight and claw all month just to hang close, then make a rush from behind. As long as its only a few games behind I think we still make it. But holding down the #8 straight through a month of elite teams and the nightmare 20 games in 20 nights EC roadtrip during the second half of the month would be a heck of an accomplishment. We do that, and you might even be able to start taking a peek up at #7 or #6.

We don't have enough offensive arsenal to make it out of the 1st round of the playoffs(if we made it). Cousins is going to get face-crapted doubled-team. What do we counter that with? 3pt shooting? With Koufos, DC, and Gay? I don't think so. Both DC and Gay can shoot the 3ball, but it's not a strength. McLemore would be our best 3pt shooter...which isn't enough in general.

This means we'll be forcing Cousins out into the perimeter to provide floor spacing.

We have more than enough bench fire-power to be a playoff caliber team... as long as it's Lawson-Temple-Barnes-Tolliver-WCS. I think Temple is a player who could be a solid starter come playoff time due to his defense.

Rudy would be a good player for the playoffs, but he makes no sense to keep on this team if he isn't planning on staying here. I think we should try to ship DC+Gay out for at least a #3 player.

I'm not going to get serious about the playoffs unless Vlade surrounds Cuz with real talent. A bunch of role players just won't cut it. It's exactly what we have right now.

Pelicans have won four straight and are 14-13 since that horrid 0-8 start. They are a different team with Holiday and now even Tyreke is back.

Welp Denver lost to philly hehe

Well, Philly just beat Denver.

James Ham ‏@James_Ham 20m20 minutes ago
Both the Nuggets and Trail Blazers lost Friday night. Kings alone in the 8th spot again heading into Saturday's game against Grizzlies.

Yeah, as of right now the teams to be more concerned about are Minnesota and New Orleans. New Orleans is nothing special of course, but they do have a star liek ours. And Minny will always have the talent. Signs of life both places, and its not like we have a 10 game lead over them.

I'm most worried of New Orleans making a run for 8th. Portland's defense is horrible, Denver is mediocre without an All-Star to lead them to 8th and Minny is too young to start being a true contender for playoffs.

I could care less about what other teams are doing. The only thing I care about is the Kings winning the game in front of them and doing it frequently enough to get us back to .500 ball or better.

In fact, if I had to choose I would rather have this team reach 41 wins and not make the playoffs than have them win 37 and make the playoffs.

I do not see that winning 4 more games make the difference in the big picture.
Playoff does.

Playoffs forces change of the media narrative and put Kings in the spotlight, 41 wins not as much.
Playoffs mean more games, more coverage, longer lasting excitement among the fans, 41 wins do not.
Playoffs mean more experience for Cuz that he currently does not have, 41 wins do not.

All the positive coverage and exposure we can get, helps us keep Cuz and makes Kings to stop being the laughing stock... and 41 wins just do not do that as much as making the playoff.

With all the talk of who we should be worried about, I thought it would be interesting to assess our schedule and compare it to our three nearest competitors to try and forecast the standings at the end of January.

Sac
Total Games - 15 (7 Home, 8 Away) with 4 back-to-backs

My Prediction- The next two games cold be pivotal as the schedule gets brutal following the Miami game. It would not be surprising to see the Kings go in to Feb on a 4 game losing streak. I was interested to see what the situation would be if we did have a bad month and the others didn't, so I'm going to take a slightly pessimistic view and say we go 5-10 in January.

Projected final standing 19-29

Portland Trail Blazers
Total Games - 14 (8 Home, 6 Away) with 3 back-to-backs.

My Prediction - Portland have a real mixed bag. They have a couple of potentially easy ones (Orlando, 76ers), but mainly face middling teams and I'd guess those will be the games that will make or break their January. There are around 4 games where they should be massive underdogs (GSW twice and Cleveland and Boston on second nights of B2B's). Overall I'm going to assume they've recovered from their blip in December after wins vs us and Minnesota recently.

Projected final standing 22-28

Denver
Total Games - 13 (7 Home, 6 Away) with 2 back-to-backs

My Prediction - Mostly, Denver's games either look very winnable, or just definite losses. Denver have a tough start to the month, with the next four games being us, Spurs, Okc and Indiana. The second half looks a bit kinder in places, as they do have winnable games vs the Lakers (twice), Orlando, Minnesota and Phoenix twice. I think I've been a bit generous, as I wanted to see what worse case scenario might be.

Projected final standing 20-27

New Orleans
Total Games - 13 (7 Home, 6 Away) with no back to backs

My Prediction - Firstly, no back-to-back's are you kidding me! Grrrr. Start of the month looks quite nice for the pel's when you look at the teams, however they are on a 5 game road trip after their first against the Hawks. This does mean they are home for practically the rest of January where they have a spattering of top teams (Cleveland, Spurs and Raptors) with some less good ones thrown in (Nets twice, Wizards, Magic). Overall, I think they should have a winning month.

Projected final standing 21-28


To be honest, I think we could just about live with that and as others have pointed out, we'd still be within touching distance rolling into an easier stretch in the schedule. The only thing that would worry me is the moral/culture with losing that much. Can the team keep it together and recover when the supposedly easier teams come to town?

Good win for seperation I'm expecting Portland to take that L against GS tomorrow

The power of 15-19.

Here is the power of 15-19 right now compared to our competitors for #8. Here are the records each team would need from here on out to reach 41-41 by the end of the season:

Kings: 26-22 (44win pace)
Blazers: 26-20 (46 win pace)
Nuggets: 27-20 (47 win pace)
Pelicans: 27-19 (48 win pace)
Lakers: 28-16 (52 win pace)
Mavericks: 30-17 (52 win pace)
Timberwolves: 30-17 (52 win pace)
Suns: 30-16 (54 win pace)


Now we still have to hold up our end of course. But if we do you can see that teams behind us are going to have to go on a real tear.

I thought this would be the most appropriate thread to post this in-

Carmichael Dave tweet:

"In his 1st year as the coach in Memphis, Dave Joerger was 15-19 thru 34 games.

In his 1st year w/ Kings he is 15-19.

Griz finished 50-32"

@carmichaeldave should know better, but perhaps he doesn't.

It's pretty apparent that one would make a comment such as this one to insinuate the Kings can do the same thing as the 2013-14 Grizzlies when, in fact, the situations are very different. Marc Gasol didn't play in 21 of those 34 games. In the 13 games he did play in, they went 7-6 (on pace for 44 wins). In the 21 games without Gasol, they went 8-13 (on pace for 31 wins). In the 33 of the 34 games that Cousins has played in this season, we have gone 15-18 (on pace for 37 wins).

That tweet is very misleading to say the least. This team does not have the talent level that the 2013-14 Grizzlies had (Gasol, Randolph, Conley, Lee, Prince, Allen, Miller, Koufos, etc.). Feel free to believe this team can turn a corner like that and make a run to not just reach .500 but exceed it (it's your right!), but I wouldn't get your hopes up...

I think 24 wins the rest of the way gets the Kings the 8th spot. It's doable.

I think the take away is they improved as the season went along. Your numbers don't refute that. The Grizzlies played much better than 7- 6 with gasol in the second half of the season.

I expect the kings to improve even if is not at the level of the grizzlies.

Is having your best player get healthy again considered "improving" in your book?

I'm not saying the team can't get a little better as they continue to learn each others tendencies & the coach's system, but that's not what the tweet is insinuating. The tweet is saying that Joerger took a team from our current record (15-19) to a 50 win team in his first season as a head coach which to me reads that he can do the same thing here in Sacramento. If Cousins missed 62% of our games and we were 15-19, then yeah, I can see how it could potentially be a similar circumstance. However, Cousins has played in 97% of the games this year. Hence this sort of "factoid" has no relevance to our situation.

The tweet was just a joke.

Was it? Did he follow it up with a "JK" or something?

he did not follow his tweet with "I am dead serous" either
It is tweeter, Dave is a serious guy and the statement is just funny.

Normally people don't have to follow everything they say with "I am dead serious." What an annoying and inefficient world that would be...

If you're going to say something on the internet and not throw a "wink" or a "JK" in there, it's mostly going to be taken as a serious statement. Nothing in his original tweet made it seem like he was trying to be funny. I think you're the one that may be misinterpreting it as a joke.

I was hoping to avoid math, but ....

You say the Grizzlies were 7-6 with Gasol in the first 34 games and the reason their early 15-19 record wasn't better was because Gasol was injured and not able to play in many of the early games. Fair enough. Let's just go with the games Gasol played. 7-6 is a .538 winning percentage. The Grizzlies played the last 48 games at a .729 winning clip. A big improvement.

I don't think Dave was joking or expecting to be taken literally (i.e., he doesn't expect the Kings to finish 50-32). My take, however, is that he was suggesting that we may have reason to think the Kings will improve the second half of the year.

It is possible that it was neither serious or a joke. Just a statement of fact. In his first year at Memphis he had the same record as the Kings do in his first year here. The Grizzlies ended with 50-32 and everything else should be taken as a grain of salt in a open hand.

They also made a trade for Lee & Allen in the middle of the year that helped improve the roster so that may not really say what you want it to say.

All I'm saying is that we shouldn't be expecting a sudden jump in team performance due to Joerger without adding more talent to the roster.

Great post!

I could see the Blazers or the Pelicans reaching those benchmarks. However, I don't think any of the other teams can. I think the Wolves have a good young team but I'm not sure they are ready for are 52-win pace.

The Pelicans are playing significantly better with Holiday and Davis. I could definitely see them hitting that mark especially with Tyreke coming back. Basically the Kings have to continue to play better and keep that momentum up or I believe one of those two teams will catch the Kings.

Which I would say that the Kings have sustained a good record without Gay so our team wasn't necessarily in the s****er when he was out (unlike when Gasol was out with the Grizzlies). Of course one can argue that we would have won even more games with Gay, but that's a risky bet to make.

I know, I know... I took the comment seriously again. Just a curious joke to make on twitter, but to each their own!