If you look at Sacs recent history, they lost Artest, Martin and Bibby for an extended time. With that, you see Salmons and Garcia taking an expanded role on the team. They get heavy minutes and greater responsibility. They both had to emerge during this time. Early on they got punked, were inconsistent but acclimated themselves to their new roles as key starters.
In fantasy basketball they were dropped repeatedly before they 'broke out' so they didn't just explode onto the scene as some big secret weapon. But eventually, they did put up numbers and the team found moderate success even with their big three nursing injuries.

So now you have a team that could hold its own against us but at this time, they are bringing three all star calibre players into the mix. Hello! of course our bench is going to look bad against Bibby and Artest.

I'm not going to blame Flip for this loss. It would be interesting though, to experiment with lineups and chemistry. I believe we have talent...but a lot of it is still very young.

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