SACRAMENTO KINGS
Am I Right — Or Wrong — Again?

For Kings fans, history is split neatly in two: the bad years before Vlade, Webber and Peja, and the bad years after. In between, of course, was a thing of beauty, basketball played with as much grace and flair as World Cup soccer, but those years passed like a dream, too fast and too magical to register as real.

Before that otherworldly and ultimately unfulfilling run at the turn of the decade, Sacramento knew some lean years. Dreadful, even. From 1986 to 1994, a particularly desolate stretch, the Kings didn't win 30 games in any season. But that was the honeymoon, when the NBA was new in town and Sacramento had no reason to expect a high-caliber product. So for last year's team, just three years removed from a winning record and a playoff berth, there can be no sugarcoating it. The season was an atrocity — 17 wins to 65 losses. It was the worst tally in a league where bad teams abound, and the poorest record in the franchise's 60-year history.

Heads rolled, as they had to. Head coach Reggie Theus is gone — just 24 games into the season, the front office was convinced that he was the wrong man to lead the team through its rebuilding. Theus' replacement, former assistant Kenny Natt, fared even worse and found himself cut loose as well.

Now the Kings turn to veteran coach Paul Westphal, who led some fantastic Phoenix Suns teams in the early 1990s but has not helmed an NBA club in almost a decade. I could compare his arrival to that of Rick Adelman, the avuncular and unassuming coach who arrived in 1998, along with Webber and company, to lead the franchise into its freewheeling heyday. Both Adelman and Westphal came to Sacramento with NBA Finals appearances under their belts and a couple of disappointing seasons afterward.

But Westphal doesn't inherit nearly the wealth of talent handed to Adelman, and besides, I've given up on prognosticating when it comes to coaches and this franchise. In this space, in years past, I've praised incoming coaches Eric Musselman and Theus for their toughness and their ability to coax hard-nosed, defensive-minded ball out of their charges.

I was dead wrong, both times: in their tenures the Kings languished among the league's worst in defense. Musselman washed out after one season; Theus hung on only a bit longer.

Why so much emphasis on the coach? Well, this team is a fixer-upper, a modest little property in need of some TLC. The roster is full of youth and bereft of a real floor leader, and Westphal will have his hands full keeping Sacramento out of the cellar.

The team's best player by far is Kevin Martin, a fluid scorer who on a playoff-caliber team would be the second or third option. Along with Martin, the Kings return a pair of promising young big men, Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes. Both can rebound and have shown some ability to score, and they each bring invaluable size.

Joining the squad is rookie Tyreke Evans, the Kings' top draft pick. Evans is a long-limbed backcourt player with good size and ball-handling ability, but he does not truly fill the team's void at point guard.

So the head coach is a question mark, and the team's nucleus has exactly one player of proven big-time talent. Whether the rest of the squad is enough to build a future around is an open question, but with more experience among both players and skipper, this season should be better than the last. It's hard to imagine it could be much worse.

Then again, I've been wrong before.