Appearing in their first game as members of the Kings on Wednesday, Kent Bazemore and Anthony Tolliver were part of the team’s sixth consecutive loss and 15th in the last 18 games. While Sacramento’s playoff chances appear to be slipping away, the two newcomers remain optimistic that they can help turn things around.
“Me and Kent both feel exactly the same way — it’s not unfixable,” Tolliver said this week upon joining the Kings, according to Jason Anderson of The Sacramento Bee. “It’s not something where we feel, ‘Aw, crap, we’re just gonna have to ride it out.’ We really feel we have an opportunity to do something with the guys we have.”
The Kings are now 5.5 games back of the No. 8 seed in the West, but Bazemore isn’t convinced that deficit is insurmountable, as Anderson relays: “You win two or three games in a row, you finish strong going into the (All-Star) break and you have plenty of time to make up that slack. This league is about getting hot at the right time.”
Despite the disappointing stretch, the Kings have no changes planned for their coaching staff or management group, according to James Ham of NBC Sports California, who tweets that the club will need to work things out with the current group in place.
Let’s round up a few more items from around the Pacific…
- Asked by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin (Twitter link) if the Lakers need one more piece to cement their place as a championship contender, LeBron James declined to lobby for an upgrade. “We have enough right now,” he replied.
- As a result of starting 41 games this season for the Suns, Dario Saric has met the starter criteria and will be eligible a slightly higher qualifying offer if the team makes him a restricted free agent this summer, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. A former 12th overall pick, Saric would have been in line for a $4.79MM QO, but it’ll now be worth $5.09MM, the equivalent of a QO for the ninth overall pick.
- Suns head coach Monty Williams and star Devin Booker expressed enthusiasm about NFL receiver Larry Fitzgerald joining the club’s ownership group, as Brendon Kleen of Forbes.com writes. “The level of credibility of our franchise continues to go up,” Williams said. “When someone like Larry partners and pours his money into it, it says a lot about who we are and who we’re trying to be.”
Come on, Anthony. It’s not, “Me and Kent,” it’s “Kent and I.”
Also, I personally have a journalism degree that I don’t use, and I know the importance of quoting people correctly, but why aren’t we just allowed to clean up the grammar before posting/print? Never made sense to me. It doesn’t change the meaning of what he said at all, and it makes it look cleaner and actually sound better. The rules are pretty stupid, and one of the reasons I went into a completely different field. Glad I spent the money though!
Quotes between quote marks should be exact. Unless the QMs are for other purposes… there are the so-called “scare” QMs, which ironically reminds me that there are also “so-called” QMs.
Very un-exact. We should have more punctuations available befitting the new keyboards.
The concept of a quote is simple, and accuracy is is very important. Changing a quote simply because you think it would sound better is essentially putting words into someone’s mouth, and would be completely unprofessional. One can get around that by identifying words within a quote which are not part of the actual quote by using brackets, though. The fact that you do not understand this leads me to agree with you about one thing…it is a good thing you went into a different field.
Think of all the ruined Yogi Berra quotes if you had your way.
“Baseball is 90% mental and the other half physical”= Baseball is 50% mental and the other half physical
“It’s like deja vu all over again” = It’s like deja vu
That already is a thing, it’s called paraphrasing. If you want to edit (and improve) the words chosen then you paraphrase. If you want to present the exact words used by the source, you quote.
I’m a bit concerned that you received a whole journalism degree without learning this concept. Even I learned it and I went to school for finance.
I agree. The establishment which granted that individual a degree in journalism should be ashamed of itself.
Saric will be back in Philly next year if they dont offer him a QO.
Walton is doing a great job! Fox gonna waste his career if they don’t get an actually good coach. Why would you want to run a slow pace with Fox? Injuries, yeah, but that just doesn’t make any sense. With that front office, the signing of Walton fits perfectly. Hield already getting frustrated, despite the extension.