Can a basketball team have allergies? Asking for the Kings
I’m writing something about all 30 NBA teams over the course of 30 days, in the lead-up to the NBA season. This exercise began Monday with the Clippers, so I wrote about how much I haterespect Paul Pierce, who announced on Monday that the 2016–17 season would be his last. It continued Tuesday with me comparing the frontcourt logjam in Philadelphia to a 30 Rock episode. At the suggestion of Mark O’Donnell (Twitter), I’m writing today about the Kings’ alleged allergy to point guards. I’m still taking suggestions, as planned, for the other 27 teams. (Pass them along to @JADubin5) Tomorrow, the Lakers.
Do you notice anything interesting about this picture?
The Kings’ starting point guard, Darren Collison, is likely to be suspended for some length of time after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery during the offseason. Backup point guard Garrett Temple is a shooting guard. Third-string point guard Ty Lawson drank himself out of Denver, couldn’t possibly have been worse in Houston, and barely registered as a contributor in Indiana. Fourth-string point guard Jordan Farmar hasn’t been a consistent part of his team’s rotation in five years and hasn’t been a positive contributor since he was coached by Phil Jackson. Fifth-string point guard DeMarcus Cousins is an All-NBA center.
That’s all… not ideal.
As it relates to Mark’s actual questions:
—Why are the Kings allergic to point guards?
— What should the Kings do preseason/midseason to avoid having Collison matter?
First question, first: I don’t think the Kings are allergic to point guards, in either sense of the word. The “damaging immune response by the body to a substance” definition seems mostly to apply to animals (mostly humans) suffering some sort of reaction to a substance they come in contact with. And the “antipathy” definition doesn’t fit either because they actually seem to have an affinity for point guards. They have a ton of them. Maybe they have an allergy to good point guards or point guards you want on your team, but not to the position in general.
Second question, next: It seems like the most prudent idea (assuming the roster construction stays as is) would be to simply hope that Lawson returns to the form he showed early during his Denver career. That’s not really the best situation to be in, but relying on Temple or Farmar is incredibly unlikely to get you anywhere and playing Cousins as a point guard isn’t all that practical. There’s an argument to be made for going without a traditional point guard, but the Kings don’t necessarily have the personnel on the wing to go with that look.
The best idea, though, is probably to acquiesce to Rudy Gay’s reported desires to ply his trade elsewhere and see if there are any teams that would give up a point guard in exchange for his services. (How good a point guard they could actually get for him is up for debate.) Given his track record of not helping the teams he’s currently on all that much and seeing the teams he’s just left have their fortunes take a turn for the better, maybe the Kings can kill two birds with one stone.
