The Kings are suddenly a fun, anarchic experiment

It is true that the Kings have not gotten a sweet, sweet taste of the playoffs since the days of Ron Artest, Peja Stojakovic and Rick Adelman. And it is true, as you might have heard, that in the lost, wandering decade since, the Kings have ended up on the wrong side of way too many of the most lopsided trades in the game. And, yes, it is true that the same executive guilty of signing off on some of those transactions is still calling the shots.

But listen, things have changed in Sacramento. At least, I’m pretty sure. Yes, barring literally the all-time biggest basketball miracle, the Kings are in the middle of their 12th straight losing season. Unlike the previous 11, though, this one is at least fun. This one, at least, has a glimmer of a long-term vision slowly coming into focus.

It is not recommended, under any circumstances, that an NBA team allow their inexperienced GM to learn on the job. The potential for the wide-eyed executive to fumble away precious resources years ahead of time is just too great. Improbably, though — even though he traded away the Kings’ 2019 first-rounder all the way back in 2015, for example — it looks like Sacramento could be rewarded, in the long-term, for sticking with Vlade Divac.

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While the circumstances surrounding the DeMarcus Cousins trade last February were fumbled dramatically, Sacramento’s return on that deal — specifically, the No. 10 pick in this June’s draft — honestly compares favorably to the several other superstar-moving trades that dominated the offseason. Maybe even more importantly, moving on from Cousins cemented the idea that, even after all these lost years, the best way to get back into the playoffs is still with an honest, from-the-ground-up rebuild.

I think it’s fair to say that, over the last 18 months, Divac is right up there with Brooklyn’s Sean Marks and Philadelphia’s awkward Sam Hinkie/Bryan Colangelo tag team as the most savvy, Process-trusting rebuilders in the game. Plus, if you’re looking for an alternative to most executives’ middle-manager, Silicon Valley vibes, Divac’s short-sleeved shirts and chit-chatty press conferences are a mighty blast of fresh air.

Here’s a look at the thing that distinguishes the 2017-18 Kings — for better and for worse — from the other 29 teams:

The picks are already in the building

Divac and Sacramento have not quite matched the unprecedented pick-hoarding Hinkie and the Sixers put together, a pipeline that is going to be pouring talent into Philadelphia for years to come. While the Kings do not have any sort of notable collection of future picks, there is an astounding amount of young, elite talent already on the squad. Sacramento has eight players on their roster who are first-round picks on their four-year rookie deal: De’Aaron Fox, Justin Jackson, Harry Giles, Buddy Hield, Georgios Papagiannis, Malachi Richardson, Skal Labissiere and Willie Cauley-Stein. I’m not even counting Bogdan Bogdanovic (2014 first-rounder who signed to a 3-year, $27 million deal this summer) or Frank Mason (34th pick in this year’s draft).

The Sixers are the only team in the league who have more active first-rounders on rookie deals, with nine. The Bulls and the Nuggets are also close to the Kings, with seven apiece. But even though you’d expect every team in the league to have four of these players — one first-round pick for each of the last four years — most have less than that. The Cavaliers, Mavericks, Rockets and Grizzlies only have one such player apiece. The Pelicans, who traded that 2017 lottery pick to Sacramento for Cousins, don’t have any at all.

In each of the last two drafts, Divac has pulled off a sharp move down in the draft board, multiplying a single pick into two different prospects. In 2016, Divac moved down from pick No. 8 to pick No. 13, swapping positions with the Suns, picking up the rights to Bogdanovic and selection No. 28 along the way. Then, this June, Divac gave pick No. 10 to the Trail Blazers in exchange for No. 15 and No. 20. Ultimately, Divac turned 1.5 years of Cousins — which may or may not actually be viewed as a positive trade asset around the league — into Hield, Jackson, Giles and Mason.

None of the Kings’ prospects are trade-untouchable monsters like Joel Embiid. And it’s mighty unlikely all eight of these players will still be with the Kings even two years in the future. Still, Divac should be applauded for giving himself an uncommon number of opportunities to find potential cornerstone players.

The minutes balance is unprecedented

The Kings were roasted this summer for spending the largest cut of their free agent cash on George Hill, the savagely underrated point guard who is still conceivably at the back end of his prime. I thought the move was a good one, as not every rebuild has to go full Hinkie-style and scorch the earth of all veterans.

Whatever you thought of the signing, odds are nobody could have seen the remarkable minutes balance coach Dave Joerger is spreading throughout the Sacramento lineup. Yes, Hill has started each game he’s played in, and leads the team in minutes per game. Incredibly, though, Hill is the team leader at just 27.1 minutes per game. Fox is an inch behind him at 26.7 minutes per game. There are 13 players on the Kings who are averaging at least 12.0 minutes per game. Everybody is getting their shot, just like you’d want a rebuilding team to do.

Nobody on the Kings is going to get run ragged for the sake of this losing season. Sacramento is the only team in the league who has not had a single player play 35 minutes or more in any game. The next-closest team is the Nets, who have allowed a player to go over 35 minutes just three times so far. Meantime, the Pelicans appear to just be the opposite of the Kings in every way — New Orleans leads the league with 31 of these long player appearances.

The scoring balance is, uh, unprecedented?

If you consider the Kings’ roster-wide inexperience, plus their unique minutes distribution, plus their incredibly slow pace, this year Sacramento definitely has a “unique” offensive environment. Do the Kings, so far, have one of the 20 worst per-possession offenses of the 3-point era? Yes, they do. However! Sacramento does not have the worst per-possession offense in the league for even this season — that would be the Bulls — and the Kings are not even a bottom-five team in turnover percentage or overall field goal percentage, meaning the team is far from an aesthetic disaster.

Still, all of these factors have conspired to create a historic anomaly on the Kings’ stat sheet: Their leading scorer, Zach Randolph, is pouring in only 12.8 points per game. After looking at the 200 lowest-scoring teams of the 3-point era, I couldn’t find any other team whose leading scorer had a lower scoring average. I found that the 1998-99 Warriors were led by a 33-year-old John Starks at 13.8 points per game. And the lowest mark I could find in a non-lockout season was Greg Anthony’s 14.0 points per game (a career-high!) for the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies in 1995-96. Hopefully Fox (12.4 points per game) or Hield (12.3 points per game) can boost their shooting percentages, or else this obscure corner of history will belong to Sacramento.

Next: Who has won the most NBA games?

So it goes for the Kings this year. It’s not going to be pretty. At all. But for the first time in a long time, there is a patience and wisdom behind Sacramento’s appearances on the transaction sheet.

All stats are accurate before games played on Thursday night.