There is a general consensus of players that I have heard.Some that people want, others not. Despite whatever people think, here are 6 players that some fans want. I do not want all of these guys, but they vary in quality and reputation. The whole idea of this is to figure out which guys you want.

Player A is a guy I want, but am not in love with. Player E is the guy I really want, the Kings have forsaken player B already, Player C is not a player I'm keen on due to age, Player D I like and have an infatuation with but won't be heartbroken if the Kings don't get him, and Player F I also like but don't really see why the Kings really need him at this point. Also, his production has dramatically dropped off the last several years.

That should be all the clues you need to know which players I'm talking about.

Right now, just about anywhere in the Kings fan universe, their is cursing about the Kings not signing Ryan Anderson. (And probably Nicolas Batum too, but that was pretty unrealistic given the circumstances.)  I understand that, but I don't agree with it. I knowthat I wrote about this a couple days ago, but I feel that more needs to be said.

Let me make this clear: I'm not defending the Maloofs. Read Marcos Breton's column from this morning, and tell me that you don't disagree. I know I agree with him. Not signing Ryan Anderson has nothing to do with the Maloofs; there are better legitimate reasons involved.

The biggest reason? You can't pair up Thomas Robinson and Ryan Anderson for big batches of minutes together. Now if the Kings had drafted Andre Drummond? I would have argued Ryan Anderson would be the perfect move for the Kings instead of Jason Thompson, but the Kings didn't want to take on that kind of project remember? Remember that? Or has too much time passed and 10 days that long ago?

This is about not only Thomas Robinson, but maximizing Ryan Anderson's value too. If you sign Anderson to a 4 year 36 million dollar deal, something that is fucking reasonable beyond doubt and then some (never have said I don't like RA), then the answer is of course Ryan Anderson has value. The better question: How do you maximize that value? By playing him minutes. How many matchup's can you play Robinsona and Anderson together? A third of the league? Maybe? Neither are Centre's and neither guy have ever been either. Neither guy has been a SF for that matter. Neither will be moving forward. There's nothing wrong with that. It just makes it hard to sign a veteran to a big contract when you have a talented young player whom you just used a sigifnicant asset on, the fifth pick (remember? 10 days ago?), to bring into your organization. Now you want to spend significant cap space on a player who plays the same exact position because he can shoot the ball?

The question posing towards Kings fans, and probably Kings management, is can Ryan Anderson offer more long term than Jason Thompson?

First up the stats of Jason Thompson advanced stat wise:

Here is Ryan Anderson's advanced stats:

Now, here is the Kings 4 Factor stats for last season:

And for the Magic:

Esseentially, and while these things are hardly perfect in terms of total measure, one could conclude that Jason Thompson is slightly better than the team DRtg, and Anderson is slightly worse than the Magic's DRtg. What does this mean? Hardly anything at all in of itself.

First, let me start with the bad. The bad is that the Kings could have taken a talented player at 36, such as Will Barton or Quincy Miller, and it would have been well worth the Kings time to do so. That said, I'm not that disappointed but I do think it illustrates how difficult the overall situation of the franchise is at the moment.

Selling the pick doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, and there is the fact that the Kings could easily resign Terrence Williams, a Free Agent, and Tyler Honeycutt could be ready to play at least backup SF minutes next season. So it's not like it's completely  out of the realm to believe that the Kings did something crazy. It's just disappointing that a chance to maximize production out of a cheap NBA contract was not taken. That's how teams like the Kings improve as a franchise and get to where they want to go. But I digress.

Let me get to the part of the post I really want to get at.

Thomas Robinson. I love him myself. While I don't think Robinson is the best player the Kings could have gotten necessarily (I think Damian Lillard and Andre Drummond have the same kind of talent with more upside), I do think Thomas Robinson is the perfect fit the Kings could have gotten from this draft, and, outside of a few NBA players, anywhere else either. Repeat after me: PERFECT FIT.

Just because of Thomas Robinson, the Kings had a great draft. Robinson will be one of the 10 best players in the draft, and while I don't think he'll be top 5, I bet he'll be top 6-7 at the same time. That's the bad news. I think Robinson has a limited ceiling. That's the worst thing I will write I promise. It's all upside from here.

This will be brief. As of this writing (which means nothing), the Kings have 2 picks: #5 and #36 overall.

At #5, the usual names bandied about for the last several months might be in play when the Kings select at #5: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Thomas Robinson, and Harrison Barnes remain the 3 most likely guys taken at #5 of the bigger names.

There is speculation that Damian Lillard might be the guy if none of those three are available.

In otherwords, welcome to the NBA Draft where the uncertainty of the one team that holds the key to the draft for the Kings, the Charlotte Bobcats, is in play. Yeah.

What do I expect? I expect a player will be taken at the 5th pick and a NBA team will wind up with that player at some point of time. I know I know, what a limb I went out on there. In truth, predicting what will happen a few hours from now seems worthless given how active Houston has been in the last couple of days, and the Kings could change their mind on the 5th pick depending on who is selected.

If a trade is what Petrie ends up pulling the trigger on, I just hope it's a trade that makes the Kings better. Would I prefer the Kings take Drummond and trade other players on their roster to get something done? Yes, but I doubt that happens honestly.

Because I've not commented on the many Kings newsworthy items (for lots of reasons), I'm going to recap what I think here in some paragraphs. That's all about the thoughts I have these days anyway.

The Memphis Grizzlies sell for 350 million dollars

How does this effect the Maloofs decision to sell? In of itself, it probably does not. But it does effect potential purchaser costs of buying a team. I've said before I think it will take an incredible offer to buy the Kings, and I stand by that. After the Grizz selling for 350 million, pending NBA approval, this will only make it more difficult for the Maloofs to get the purchase price they are really asking for: At least 400 million before the Grizzlies purchase. Now? Could be as high as 500 million dollars (won't happen), and certainly won't be a lot lower than 400 million at the end of the day. Here is the Forbes evaluations of each the Grizzlies and Kings at the beginning of the year.

I could see the two parties starting at 500 million and 300 million, and meeting somewhere in the middle, or, and this is always possible, the new ownership agrees to 425 million IF there is a new arena deal in place with the city of Sacramento. Or, some other stipulation that no-one can see at the moment. (Anything at this point is possible.)

Does this mean the Kings will get cities like Seattle to compete with Sacramento to make their bid more beneficial to the NBA? Maybe, maybe not. It's certainly plausible. But there is only so much a bid can have before it becomes counter-productive. Remember that the Sonics themselves sold for 350 million dollars to Clay Bennett and the OKC ownership group in 2006.

Anyway, at this juncture, I don't think Sacramento is out of the picture if the pitch of a new ownership group is "Seattle is so much better" or "San Jose has much better corporate support". With the NBA, it's rarely as simple as some think. If you thought the issue has gotten complicated, just wait and see how complicated a sale becomes with the Maloofs being involved. Trust me.....

While most people choose (and understandably so) to use the quality resources that both Chad Ford and Jonathan Givony offer at ESPN.com and DraftExpress respectively, it's also true they are not alone. If you have not read Ed Isaacson's rather awesome (and not because it's part of the Bloguin network) NBA Draft Blog, you should.

Here is the Kings profile he worked up with a blurb from myself. (Gotta read it there.) There is also discussion on the Bobcats, the Wizards and Cavaliers available. If that isn't enough for you, over the last several weeks Isaacson has posted many interviews and/or analysis with/of draft prospects (some fairly well known some not) about how the draft process works. It is rather fascinating to see the draft process from someone coming into it for the first time. 

Either way, it should be a daily read when you are thinking about the draft at a bare minimum. Read it. Now. 

That is all minions.

If you can't tell by the title, I think the All-Rookie team is silly. Just check this list out. Should Isaiah be on the 1st team? Yeah, he should be, but guess what? Who cares. Did Isaiah have a better season than Iman Shumpert, Klay Thompson or Brandon Knight? Absolutely did.

Let's keep this in perspective though. Isaiah was the 60th pick in a market that got very  little media attention throughout the course of the season. The fact is that until late in the season, most media people in other cities weren't even that aware of Isaiah's presence.

Just look at the all time rookie teams. John Stockton, Reggie Miller and Steve Nash did not make the All Rookie 1st team (there wasn't a 2nd team when Stockton and MIller were rookies) and Nash didn't make either 1st or 2nd rookie team. Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Kevin Love and Gary Payton made All Rookie 2nd teams. (You can argue Payton only  made it because he was the 2nd overall pick.) Would you rather have Gary Neal (a fine shooter no doubt), Channing Frye, Jorge Garbajosa and a host of funny selections over Hall of Famers? I'm not claiming Isaiah Thomas will be a HoF because I think we've seen Isaiah basically be as good as he can be. This edition of Isaiah Thomas is not a HoF no matter how impressive that is.

Awards don't make players. Players make players.  Isaiah Thomas is a player. Isn't that what matters?

I lied actually. All awards are really silly, but the All Rookie team is arguably the silliest award mechanism in all of sports. Isaiah Thomas not being on the all rookie 1st team behind Iman Shumpert, Klay Thompson (a fair argument but not one I would make) and Brandon Knight is not a grave injustice. It's just voters not knowing better, and since when does that really matter?

To be honest, before isaiah's late push, I wondered if Isaiah would even make the all rookie 2nd team, and now it's pretty clear that most media and teams who voted on this award don't pay much attention. It really argues a bigger question: If all awards are is a PR mechanism to bring attention to the NBA, why do we consider them important?

Until next time.

The title is self explanatory to me, but this draft will come down to two players for most people (if Anthony Davis is not available and in that case will be the Kings pick): Michael Kidd-Gilchrist or Andre Drummond.

For me the question is: Is leadership necessary in the long run for this team, or is talent necessary and which is more important to have at this very moment?

For me, talented big men are incredibly hard to find that Andre Drummond is one of those players, that even with a dearth of real leadership on the Kings, that makes it tough to pass him up unless it's Anthony Davis. (Who has the leadership. See what I did there?) But that's me. There are pro's and con's to this debate and they should be carefully sussed out with the expectation that one is knowing what one is getting from each player.

I already discussed why the SF hole is a difficult prospect to fill given the circumstances but nonetheless I think it's worth reminding people why I'm not convinced Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is the right answer for this Kings roster despite all the reasonable attractive qualities Kidd-Gilchrist brings (not to mention qualities that I want and the Kings roster needs no less).

Yesterday, as pretty much everyone who is reading this already knows, Carmichael Dave of KHTK was fired from his job. Tom Ziller at Sactown Royalty had a good piece on this already that sums up a lot of the issue's that exist with the cronyism between the Kings franchise and 1140 (owned by CBS radio).

The issue, of course, that there is a major conflict of interest between the station and the franchise and for a fan seeking commentary relatively unbiased and reasonable, the fan can no longer expect any of that from the radio. For the most part, the Bee has their hands tied as long as they expect to get information from the franchise. One of the problems with Geoff Petrie is that he holds information in a strangehold, and if you expect anything from him in the future you have to play by his rules. If you are the Bee, what choice do you have but to play ball?