5 reasons Sacramento Kings fans should have hope
By Connor Learn
Following the trade that sent franchise player Demarcus Cousins to New Orleans, many NBA fans are questioning the plan in Sacramento.
The Kings drafted Tyreke Evans ahead of Stephen Curry and DeMar DeRozan. They took Jimmer Fredette before Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard. The next year, they took Thomas Robinson right before the Trail Blazers selected Damian Lillard. Then Sacramento took Ben McLemore and Nik Stauskas in back to back years in the mid-lottery. However, the Kings did hit on two draft picks. They selected and developed Isaiah Thomas before trading him for the draft rights to Alex Oriakhi, who is yet to play a game for the franchise. Sacramento’s other successful draft pick, Cousins, is now gone as well.
Team owner Vivek Ranadive should be commended for saving the Kings from moving to Seattle when he acquired a majority stake in the team in 2013. However, his tenure as owner has been marred by nearly as much chaos as the previous owners, the Maloof brothers. It is hard to get fans to believe in the teams leadership when Ranadive pitched playing four-on-five basketball with a cherry picker with complete sincerity. With Cousins being dealt for what is basically Buddy Hield and 2017 first and second round picks, the Kings will almost certainly miss the playoffs for the 11th straight season.
General Manager Vlade Divac has been scrutinized during his tenure thus far. He will get the chance to build the Kings now, and there are reasons to believe that fans should believe in his vision for the team and should be excited for what he builds. Here are five reasons why Kings fans should have hope moving forward:
5. There appears to be a plan in place
Most believed that the Kings would add building pieces around DeMarcus Cousins in last year’s draft. Sacramento then confounded many when they spent three first round draft picks on Georgios Papagiannis, Malachi Richardson, and Skal Labissiere. Papagiannis, a center, was selected in the lottery after being considered a fringe first round pick at best. With a logjam at the position already, the Kings went ahead and selected fellow big Labissiere in the late first anyway. Richardson was coming off a strong freshman season at Syracuse, but most believed he wasn’t a ready contributor in the NBA.
Those picks didn’t make sense to most at the time, but it makes more sense following the trade of Cousins. Now that he is employed elsewhere, Sacramento moves forward with Papagiannis, Labissiere, and Willie Cauley-Stein as building pieces up front and have minutes for all of them. An additional fringe benefit of moving Cousins is getting to keep their own first round draft pick; they would have lost it to Chicago if it had fallen outside of the top ten. Last summer makes a lot more sense at this point (although it may be a stretch to say they were intentionally linked by management.)
Moving ahead in Sacramento, they will have two early first round picks in New Orleans’ pick and their own. They also own Philadelphia’s second round pick, which will be a high one. The coming draft class is considered to be a good and deep one, especially at point guard and on the wing. Since they invested into young bigs last year, the Kings will be in good position to address their biggest needs in this draft class. Sacramento will hopefully have at least one promising prospect at each position next season. They should be in good position for a rebuilding team.