Fall from Royalty, Part Three: The Final Touches on the Decline of the Sacramento Kings

the 2000-2001 season, Geoff Petrie had assembled a championship quality team from the ground up and turned water into wine in the Sacramento Valley.  For the next four seasons, the Kings played in the Western Conference semi-finals or finals and won at least 55 games a year.  What has King Geoff done lately?  How has the 2002-2003 team, which returned 11 players, evolved into the current roster following the Bibby deal?  In this three-part article, I will go through the major deals, ignoring the Rodney Bufords and Ronny Prices of the world. Part one described five key moves through the 2005 deadline deal of Chris Webber.  Part two got us through the transformation from good guys to bad guys that occurred in 2005-06.  Part three will finally get us to today's roster. First a quick recap.  In the previous articles I've explained how the Kings acquired Kevin Martin, Brad Miller, Ron Artest, Francisco Garcia, Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Kenny Thomas. That leaves ... [link]