My guess is that Kings fans are a bit despondent right now. The Kings lost a tough one to the Spurs two nights ago, making their next games just that much more crucial. So what do they do? Get blown out by a Magic team whose playoff spot is all but guaranteed. A Magic team that, really, isn’t that good at all, and DEFINITELY isn’t that much better than the Kings that they would blow them out by thirty (as was the Kings’ deficit at one point).
So the Kings won’t be making the postseason this year. They were trending upwards and then decided to trend back downwards at the worst possible time. But here’s a little factoid that will help raise Kings’ fans spirits a perceptible, if ultimately insignificant, amount:
Harry Giles got a career high of 23 points and he hit some jumpers.
When Doug Christie talks about Giles being a guy you can run the offense through, he isn’t lying. He’s being optimistic, but he isn’t lying. When you stick Giles at the top of the key, he can find cutters. And when he’s hitting his jumpers from that spot, he all of a sudden becomes a serious threat to expose the defense in multiple ways. Does this idealized version of Giles manifest itself very often? Not really, but it could, especially if he starts getting more minutes in the final six games of the Kings’ season, games that might become steadily more meaningless if they pick up one or two more L’s.
My greatest fear is that this will turn into a Skal Labissiere-type situation, where a player plays extremely well for about a month and then is promptly forgotten about by the entire league. And that thought just gave me a great idea: pair Skal and Giles, call them “Skiles” in honor of a former coach that nobody ever liked, make them the first and second options on their team, and let the fun begin.