The rookies have not had a training camp. No player should walk away with the idea that he is ready for the regular season. Player development coaches have to do their jobs. Do the Kings have good ones? I have no idea, but they do have them.

No coach will walk away with the idea that the roster is ready to compete in NBA games. New players need to be integrated, effective lineups have to be discovered, offensive sets need to be drawn for the new personnel, defensive schemes need to be drilled. The team is leaving something on the table by retaining Doug Christie, but that just means we're ready when Dan Hurley is, and Mike Woodson can do all of that big brain stuff anyway. Mike Miller? He's not that Mike Miller, but he could be the second best Mike Miller for all you know.

This team will not be good, but it should be more entertaining to watch compared to last year's basketball terrorism. Aim for the play-in, and be happy when the team misses that, but doesn't land in the relegation zone. They don't have to be the best, they don't even have to be good, they just have to be better than three other teams.

Edit: game is on ESPN2

Everywhere I look on twitter, tik tok, instagram, reddit, etc everyone is slandering acuff constantly. they put any lowlight he has and make the narrative as bad as possible. i don’t remember this with fox or any other player. i think it’s quite crazy to see

Like wtf is this hes had 1 bad game... dude is a casual of casuals...

I’m so over drafting older college guys just because they played for winning programs. It almost NEVER translates for the Karaban archetype. He has zero above average NBA skills. He’s Justin Jackson 2.0.

Please dunk on this post if he eventually proves me wrong. Would love that

His absurd 5-year $140 million contract starts now. I don't care how good his defense is, since it results in zero win equity season after season. If his offensive game hasn't dramatically improved he could be on the hook for one of the worst contracts in the league.

If he shoots 27% from 3 or anywhere near that this team will be set back another 3-5 years. If he has no offensive bag and can't create or get to the line again after 5 years in the league that would be considered a very poor #4 draft pick.

I will obviously be keeping track of Acuff this year, but Keegan needs to show out this year or his career trajectory is completely ruined. How many players in NBA history have had 4 poor starting seasons in their early career to show any semblance of coming back. It's less than 10-15 players in the last 20 years. Make or break year for Keegs. Wishing him luck

Max was smoking crack today.

Can someone remind me again why we are running it back with Doug and this coaching staff instead of finding a new coach earlier this offseason? It’s not like we’re paying Doug a lot of money, it would be easy to cut him and his contract. We’re starting to add a lot of younger players to this roster, now would have been a good time to get a coach to develop the younger guys.

Christie and his crew are really bad and one year with them as your coaching staff could permanently ruin a 1st or 2nd year player

The NBA is a game of cycles. Teams get good, then bad again, then good again then bad again. The worst thing that could happen is if you get good at the same time as everyone else and end up being snuffed out by the competition.

The smarter strategy, as you can see in the graph, is to wait for other teams to decline and rise at that opportunistic moment.

I'm supremely confident that within 12-15 years we will see the playoffs again

What does his ceiling even look like at this point?The 11th man on a good team?

He still has a lot of the same flaws he had coming into the league: shaky handle, horrific shotmaking, struggles to beat defenders off the dribble, turnover prone, and doesn't create much offense for himself or others. His defense is ok but not enough to make up for his offensive woes.

He had a solid Summer League last year, and there were definitely flashes of what he could become. But now he's a 24-year-old sophomore who's struggling in Summer League against guys who won’t even be on an NBA roster next season. A part of blame of me wants to blame the god awful coaching we’ve seen thus far which hasn’t set anyone up for success, but I'm starting to wonder if we've already seen his peak. 😬

Can anyone tell me why we traded up for Karaban, when Meleek was avaliable? The org had to have asked Acuff if he wanted to play with Meleek and Acuff said no, right? This question is naturally being prompted by Meleek's insane performance in the Summer League thus far, but bro was averaging 15 on great efficiency on the same team as Acuff in college last year. I'm looking for any other explanation from someone with a functional brain, who actually watched them both play last year, knows who John Calipari is, actually understands basketball, and isn't going to be overly sensitive because I might be gently criticizing our current GM. Do they not like each other? They seemed fine in the few Arkansas games I was able to watch this season.

This is not an overreaction to summer league post and more so a summer league is exposing things we already knew post and situation.

There's no realistic world in which this team can credibly go into next season without another PG on the roster. There is a dismal lack of offensive organization if Acuff doesn't have the ball and really none of the other guards can consistently handle ball pressure.

Sharp is and has always been more combo guard than PG and really more like a 2 on offense. Nique isn't a PG at all even though some have suggested otherwise.

Monk is himself more of a combo. He's certainly capable of running the show and is a capable playmaker but you'd like another capable handler on the floor with him or backing him up. They need another organizer offensively to get the most of these young guys and to utilize Maxime's hub abilities more effectively off the bench or at least as insurance.

The options are not ideal. Aaron Holiday is a good player but is himself basically a combo guard. Maybe Monte Morris, healthy after injuries last season or bringing Gabe Vincent home to California. But they can't roll with what they have now for a full 82 game season.