According to this columnist in The Sacramento Bee, Kings president Geoff Petrie had a difficult decision to make after his team was bounced from the playoffs again.  Perhaps this was his most difficult call during his six years running the Kings in Sacramento.

Petrie had to decide who would stay and who would go and his head coach Rick Adelman was the first and easiest person he could dismiss.  But Petrie made the choice to stay with Adelman and now all eyes are on the Kings front office to see if Chris Webber has played his last game as a King.

Petrie?s decision certainly had to have something to do with the fact that Adelman had the team playing beautifully with Webber out of the lineup early in the season.  

They got off to a terrific start, were the model of good ball movement, and played with a furious tempo and energy that even made their defense suffocating at times.

Then Webber came back into the lineup, declared that the Kings were still his team, and the team?s basketball efficiency and winning ways slowed down.  

So without saying so explicitly, Petrie is ready to find out what he can bring back for Chris Webber.  Or at least this is the assumption.  So now the pressure is on Petrie to come up with an ingenious maneuver or two to keep his team moving forward.

Petrie will look to make the 2004-05 Kings younger, deeper and more athletic, and Webber will be available in this pursuit.

The task will not be easy.  Trying to deal Webber for premium value will be at the heart of the Kings? off-season planning but this presents a number of obstacles.  Webber has an $80 million deal and a bad knee, and he is now getting into the later stages of his playing days at 31 years of age.