The Kings have rebounded from their slow start, and only lost this game to the star-studded Lakers by two points, but they’re still just 4-7 and playoffs are looking remote even at this early stage of the season. For a team that looked so promising last season, it’s hard to know exactly what went wrong, but I think I have a pretty good idea:
Not re-signing Kosta Koufos.
Koufos’ floaters were unstoppable. He couldn’t do much else to score, but he didn’t need to, because you could just run a pick-and-roll with him that ended in a running floater over the defender and it would go in every time. It was as close to a guaranteed bucket as there is in the NBA, and the Kings just let him go to China so he could average fifty floaters and two hundred lost hair follicles per game over there.
However, there is still hope. Richaun Holmes has demonstrated some floater-shooting ability this season. Often he’ll hit them at a standstill from just inside the free-throw line, but there’s no reason he couldn’t hit them on the run either. Since he’s a major threat to catch lobs, a lot of defenders will give him the floater from further out if that’s what he decides to do. That’s why I think that Holmes should be groomed into an exact Koufos replacement so that the Kings can get back to the success they had last season.
Think about how good Koufos would have been if he could run and dunk. He would have been a top five center for sure. That’s what the Kings have with Holmes and they don’t even realize.
You could even shave a bald spot into his dreads. It’s too perfect.