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No white flags in front office
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, March 10, 2005

And now, direct from Pretzel Logic Productions: The Kings - these Kings, the ones with no Webber, no Christie and still no Bobby Jackson - as a serious conference-title contender.

Don't look at me; I'm just telling you what they're talking about in the team's front office. Which is, of course, the one place you'd expect to know better.

Just when the fan base was getting used to a comfortably diminished expectation for this season, the franchise's movers and shakers have quietly begun to go the other way. As people publicly discuss the Kings getting a decent opponent and maybe pulling a first-round surprise, the folks behind the recent in-season roster overhaul are, very privately, thinking bigger.

But not always so privately. When I asked player personnel director Jerry Reynolds on Wednesday what constituted a fair hope for this new-look team, Reynolds answered immediately, and with what I take to be a straight face, "They'll be one of the five or six teams with a chance to win the conference, and one of maybe seven or eight with a chance to win it all."

Wait, win it all? This is the team with Brian Skinner where Chris Webber used to be, right?

"Hopefully, we'll get healthier and get 17 or 18 games where we have everybody available," said Geoff Petrie, the architect of the new look. "If we do, I think we can do some damage."

Coming from Petrie, the team's president of basketball operations, that's giddy drunken glee. It's also the kind of talk that feels spectacularly out of step with the prevailing sentiment.

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