Neither Smoke Nor Mirrors… and Certainly Not Numbers

The Sacramento Kings play this season is not at all smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as though you’ve actually watched many Sacto games so far this season and if you have watched a couple you weren’t watching the Kings telecast.

Your numbers reveal little of what’s happening because, well, as usual, numbers can always be skewed to say just about anything you want them to say.

Had you written of: Brendan Malone’s evolution as a head coach relative to his players, or the effect of playing on the National Team on both Boogie And Rudy Gay, or about how Malone has demanded — and Boogie has embraced — Cousins to be a vocal and consistently responsible leader of the team, or how Collison has actually grown as a point guard — being the unequivocal #1 PG does play a huge role in his confidence and standing within the team dynamic — to the point where he now can control game tempo while knowing where, when and how to pick the spots to take the game into his hands for a brief but meaningful stretch of game time, or how Gay has become more a facilitator in the Kings’ offense, hence playing more in the post and being more available to either take a mid-range jumper from 15-feet in or make the extra pass when defenders slough off their man to help on him (and don’t run to the numbers for his assists/100 possessions or whatever stat you might be prone to drumming up because his extra pass is more often the first in a series of passes leading to an easy hoop and not the last), I’d actually applaud an article that speaks to the heart of what the Sacramento Kings are, for the first time in Cousins’ career, a team becoming.

Maybe you could have even perused the Kings schedule and realized they played seven playoff teams from last season to open this year with a back-to-back, away-home wins versus 2013–14 non-playoff team, Denver — taken a look at who reffed the games, realized that Cousins still commits some fouls borne of bouts of “spazmodia,” a lack of discipline, and/or a lack of knowing his athletic limitations (of which there aren’t many) that cut into his on-court time while receiving wholly inconsistent calls from refs for and against him in seven of the 10 games. You might have written about how half the teams Sacto has played have used players to attempt to agitate Cousins into technical fouls to no avail — but also without recognition of this fact from any NBA officiating crew so far.

Instead the article represents the new standard of “sports journalism;” uninformed bloviating about a team — its players and coaches — informed by numbers void of meaning and context.

Oh well.