We continue our “Seasons in Review” series with a close look at Kings Guard Gaming, a team that entered season one with incredible hype and exited it falling well below expectations.
Check out the first installment of this series where Josiah Cohen reviewed Warriors Gaming Squad.
Record: 4-10
Current roster: Worthingcolt, Timelycook
Protections: Worthingcolt, Timelycook
Offseason transactions: None
Draft picks: 1st round (3rd overall), 2nd (22nd), 3rd (37th), 4th (53rd)
2018 Review
The Good: Kings Guard Gaming looked good in the final month of the season. The team’s search to find their optimal composition came to a close at The Ticket—at which point it was clear they probably wouldn’t make the playoffs—when they moved Worthingcolt from his natural position of center to point guard, allowing defensive stalwart Timelycook to guard the opposing team’s best player on a small forward and giving first-round pick Mootyy room to breathe in the paint at the five. The result: an upset of first-place Blazer5 Gaming in the first round and a Kings Guard team that suddenly looked competitive again.
The Bad: Unfortunately, that lineup change didn’t translate into a better record, mostly due to poor—and I mean POOR—late-game execution. Actually, let’s just say the execution was lacking in general. I had campaigned for the Kings to sign a coach since the season started, and they did eventually, but it was clear the players were still running the show and it didn’t work. Long-term, the team had obvious chemistry issues, something easy to spot if you ever watched them play live in the studio.
2019 Preview
The Good: They now have a fresh start and two good pieces in Timelycook and Worthingcolt. Both have elite skillsets and it’s not too tall a task to build around these guys. They also have the 3rd pick in the draft, where a point guard should be available should they choose to go that route. If they can capitalize on that pick and get a shooter/role player or two with the rest of their draft, there’s no reason this team shouldn’t be a threat for season two, talent-wise.
The Bad: Who is running this team? What is their plan? Do the Kings even know these two things? If season one taught us anything, it’s that a lack of solid management and a lack of direction—two things that go hand in hand—are fatal to a team’s chances at title contention at the least. There’s no face of this team in the front office. The Kings need to hire someone who knows 2K if they want to maximize their potential.
The Big Question
Did this team learn from its season one mistakes?
And I mean numerous season one mistakes. While it’s good PR to house your players in an NBA player’s former mansion and sign Shaq as a “general manager” (I can’t put enough quotation marks around that) and have a UFC fighter as a trainer and have a state-of-the-art esports facility in your NBA arena, there needs to be some actual substance to the style. Time is already ticking down to find a coach with other teams having started and finished their coaching searches and making the talent pool weaker and weaker. Realizing you need to figure out what direction you’re taking the team is all well and good, but that needs to turn into action, and soon, or else the Kings will fall into the exact same traps they fell in during season one.