Are Kings mature enough to advance?

[MFFL]

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Mark Kreidler: Are Kings mature enough to advance?
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Thursday, May 9, 2002


DALLAS -- For those keeping score at home, this is where it's supposed to pay off. This is the South Fork in the road at which those seasons of growth and setback, progress and heartache and learning and -- summon the hoop gods, I'm about to invoke it again -- chemistry deliver their hard-earned dividend.

This is the point, that is, at which the Kings are supposed to know what to do.

Anybody taking bets?

One of the things that has made Sacramento such a consistently compelling story these last four seasons, besides the part about the winning, is the notion of bearing firsthand witness to the crafting of a champion. There is something electric in the idea that the Kings weren't merely racking up W's but progressing along a steady curve upward, toward some higher ground.

Or not, of course. Game 3 of their second-round series with the Dallas Mavericks is tonight, and it's pretty much We'll See straight down the line -- and there's something compelling in that, too.

But this much we can say: This is the point at which it's supposed to pay off. Right around here is where veterans like Chris Webber and Vlade Divac, and their coach, Rick Adelman, are supposed to use their shared acquired experience to help their team navigate a difficult second round, to find a way through.

What the first two games have demonstrated is exactly what most people expected coming in: 1) These are two evenly matched teams; 2) the home court is only an advantage, not a guarantee; and 3) either Dallas or Sacramento is going to get it together and keep it together long enough to make the breakthrough to the Western Conference finals.

The Mavs still have the feel of a just-mixed drink, with people like Nick Van Exel and Raef LaFrentz not yet finished recounting the glory of being traded from the dead-dog Denver Nuggets to Mark Cuban's missile factory in Dallas only a few months ago.

It doesn't mean the Mavericks won't win here, only that it's all happening so quickly after the big deal that it doesn't necessarily feel urgent for them to do it. You get the sense Dallas is going to be around, next year and the year after that and for a while, now.

But this Kings bunch, that's different. You can acknowledge the obvious, that point guard Mike Bibby is in the midst of the first NBA postseason of his life, and still rightfully suggest that Sacramento, as a franchise, ought to be ready to move to the next plateau.

Geoff Petrie, the man who put this group together, has said (and Adelman has seconded) that teams often need three or four or five years together before they really understand what it takes to make a title run. The Kings' recent history acts almost as a working model of that theory.

Think about it: The first year, 1999, that five-game first-round tug-of-war with Utah felt like an unexpected gift, but by the time the Kings took the Lakers to five games in the first round a year later, it was clear they were ready -- if not yet able -- to move on.

And so it was last spring, when Webber and Divac and Doug Christie and Peja Stojakovic (and Jason Williams) figured out how to win in the opening round. It was a breakthrough, yet immediately followed by a desultory sweep at the hands of the Lakers -- a second-round lesson.

But the Lakers weren't just good, they were champions. This series is different. There's nothing about the Mavericks that feels remotely fated, nothing in Dallas' repertoire or recent history to suggest it is any more prepared to win the series than Adelman's team.

Maybe that is why the stakes feel so high against Dallas, because there's no hint of superiority there. This is a playoff that will be won by whichever team first figures out how to win in the second round, possibly over seven games, most likely with a clutch performance, against a team capable of taking it out just as easily instead.

It is about strategy, certainly, and substitution patterns, and shooting percentages, and everything else from A to Zinc. But at its heart, for the Kings, it may ultimately be about that question of readiness.

Divac has said teams grow together or they die, which is a typically Vladean way of suggesting that when you don't get over the hump together in the NBA's postseason, you usually wind up being thrown over the thing separately.

It's way too early in the Kings' revolution for that, of course, but make no mistake: This is a series to be taken. It is time to learn whether the veterans on this Sacramento team have taken enough from the lessons of the past three years to do the taking.

[KEVIN_NY]

Playoff experience: yes, they have been beaten enough times and have more experience than Mavs.
Mentally: not yet ( for only one reason: their floor leader is not yet mature enough [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img])
Talent wise: not enough to compete against Mavs. Collectively, Mavs have a clear edge.
Coaching: Match up and innovation master vs. .... (really don't know much about Adelman )

[DTL]

the Mavs seem to be on a much sharper learning curve. made the playoffs for the first time in a zillion years last year, and immediately made past the first round. then this year, a big sweeping run through the first round, and now we're looking at a pretty evenly matched-up second round, basically down to a five-game series with home court ad to the Mavs. i still say Mavs over the Kings in six.

[Murphy3]

the mavs are more talented offensively than any team to come along in awhile
when you have as many guys on a team that can shoot like the mavs do, .. well, sometimes you mess up the learning curve by being able to shoot the ball..
plus, the mavs have young guys that are tremendous leaders

[KEVIN_NY]

<<the Mavs seem to be on a much sharper learning curve.
....
when you have as many guys on a team that can shoot like the mavs do, .. well, sometimes you mess up the learning curve by being able to shoot the ball..>>

Yes. And the reason for that, just a guess, is their playing style. They are not a physical, half court grinding team. Playing that type, it takes time (many playoff games) to learn the toughness/dirtiness/mind game/patience/officiating/whatever nuance. But for Mavs, they are like playing in their own world, no matter what the opponents are and the environment is, be it playoff or regular season.