Eight is Enough. Maybe Nine.

Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said, "If you label me, you negate me?" My money's on Dick - he was a true genius. Perhaps he is best remembered by his ABC "hit" "Eight is Enough", starring future tattooed freak and Scott Baio compadre, Willie Aames and future typical child star Adam Rich. Thanks for your continued contributions to society, sirs! Yes, as a child of the 70's, I watched this show. It's amazing what you could get kids to watch if you have enough likable characters and maybe a few kids on it - are they doing this today? Is this why there is a Bill Engvall show?

Anyway, "Eight is Enough" took place in one of the loveliest little glens that the NBA likes to call home, Sacramento. I drove through Sacramento once. It was foggy. Is their arena deal done? Because I would love for this team to move to Las Vegas, be the Las Vegas Kings, have at least 4 jerseys (club, diamond, heart, spade, maybe Elvis too). Nobody in their right mind gambles on the NBA, you can take it off the books. But back to the Kings and all their Arco Arena splendor. This is another crappy NBA team (John Wall, start your condo search now), but has people worthy of drafting in a standard 12 x 13 league.

Martin! Kevin Martin is second/third round talent. You need to know that. Here are the pertinent numbers from last year: 24.6 ppg; 86.7 FT% @ 10.3 ftapg; 2.3 3pg. There he is, your pure shooting guard to plug in your SG spot. Of course, you'll notice that I mentioned only three categories - chances are you'll have nine, so I guess you're about six shy. Excuse-flippin'-me, we can't all be LeBron James! He'd be a really good roto pick, in that he could counteract a lot of, say Dwight Howard's deficiencies. Then again, he has played 51 and 61 games the last 2 seasons, so that may not work so well either. You'll have a lot of hand wringing with Kevin this year if you are debating drafting him. If it gets to be late in the 3rd round and he's available, go ahead and grab him if your team is set up to handle him. Or maybe you can go for the Kevin-Heaven strategy by picking Durant, Garnett, and Martin in the first 3 rounds. That will work for ya.

Depending on how you rank players, possibly the next best King is Francisco Garcia. Everyone likes players who can average 1 steal/1 block/ 1 three-pointer a game, right kids? Well Garcia done did that last year. You know who did that last year? LeBron, Wade, Granger and Garcia. So if you're stuck on who to pick in the first round, you should go with the Dominican, right? Um, yeah. He may not start, but he will get minutes. He's not a scorer, and while he gets the counting numbers, he won't rack them up. He's got more value in roto, too, but if you've got a strategy where you're punting points, he's a definite have. For instance, you're picking in the middle of round 1 and you start off with Danny Granger (I know, you're punting points, but still he does other things well), come back with Gerald Wallace, maybe a Josh Smith and/or Shawn Marion, grab a decent mid-tier PG who can pass, pick up Wilson Chandler in rd. 6 or 7, then you've got a lineup that can do some damage in any week. Oh, and when you draft Garcia, you have to say "Bring me the head of Francisco Garcia." It's one of Yahoo's new rules.

If you do your rankings another way, the next best King is Spencer Hawes. This guy will get thirty minutes a night probably. He can score a little, board a good amount, decent but not great from the field, not a FT shooter, should get slightly more than a block per game. Not bad numbers for the center position. But there are a couple sneaky things there with Hawes. Dude had 40 three's last year - look at who went all Memo Okur on us! And after Brad Miller was traded, he went for 20 points/10 boards five times and had several other games where he was close. I'm telling you, no one will come into your draft thinking of explicitly grabbing Hawes. And when he comes off the board, you likely won't even be thinking of him - not because he will be overdrafted, just that he's so far off of the consciousness of the NBA fan. At least tell me you'll think of him, okay?

Jason Thompson plays basketball for the Sacramento Kings as well. He's another one of those PF/C's who doesn't score much and can rebound and grabs some of your counting stats. Free throws, not so much. The things that stands out for me was that after Brad Miller was traded, Jason had 10 games of where he grabbed 10 or more rebounds. Man, was Miller a drag on this team or what? Again, this is another King you won't necessarily be thinking of come draft day. Keep him on your watch list in those shallow leagues.

Man, I would have loved to have seen Ricky Rubio in Kings purple. I guess Tyreke Evans ain't so bad neither. Anything that will push Beno Udrih further down the bench is okey dokey with me. The big thing with Evans is that he should get to the line a ton as that's his calling card. It would certainly help things if he could learn to hit the NBA 3, as Martin is really the only threat from long range. I'm rooting for him, just not about to draft him.

He's gritty, he'll hustle, and dammit, he'll work his way into the lineup. Keep living the dream, you 42% shooting Andres Nocioni. Oh, and Sean May sweats hollandaise sauce. There, that's eight Kings, that should be enough. Okay, nine. Kenny Thomas has one significant number - $8,553,125, the value of his expiring contract. That could shake up the lineup come February, when the Kings should be out of it, so watch their numbers at that time.