What’s Next For Sacramento?
As you may have heard, (or not heard, no one would blame you) the Sacramento Kings traded away their young rising star Tyreese Haliburton, sharpshooter Buddy Hield, and I guess Tristan Thompson in exchange for Domantas Sabonis and Jeremy Lamb. Their plan here was to pair De’Aaron Fox up with another All-Star caliber player that he could co-exist with. A lot of people were livid with this trade. The Kings traded one of the few players we’ve ever seen that was genuinely happy in Sacramento who happens to be an extremely young, and very talented player. Before you jump at Sacramento’s throat, they did get a 2X All-Star in return…but was it the right move?
Fox & Haliburton Couldn’t Co-Exist
At the end of the day, you had to pick between one of these guys going forward. They both need the ball in their hands to make magic happen, and they’re both too talented to come off the bench for the other. They picked De’Aaron Fox. You can’t blame them, he was a top draft pick, he averaged All-Star numbers last year, and they gave him a fat 5-year $163M contract. Unfortunately, we won’t know if they choose wisely until we get to see Haliburton’s development in Indiana, as well as how Fox & Sabonis’ careers pan out in Sacramento, which could be many years. All we know is that they did the right thing. They paired up one of the guards with someone they can play alongside better, and Sabonis is as good as a fit as it gets. I wouldn’t call this such an L for Sacramento, and as for Indiana, I’m proud of them…but we’ll dive into that in another article.
What Now?
Outside of Fox and Sabonis, the Kings don’t have much talent around them. To bring any in, they need to free up cap space but to do so, they would have to get rid of Harrison Barnes which is a bad contract that’ll be hard to off-load. Harrison Barnes is making $20M this year and $18M next year while averaging 17 PPG on a losing team. That likely won’t be enough to convince other teams to go after him. As for the others? Donte DiVincenzo’s contract is expiring this year, Richaun Holmes is decent, Terrence Davis is meh, Chimezie Metu is eh, and Davion Mitchell has yet to show any offensive firepower. Besides that, there really isn’t any true talent on this team. It’s all up to bringing in free agents, but the biggest problem Sacramento has…who on God’s green earth wants to go to Kings?
The Verdict
Drawing in a big-time free agent in the off-season is going to be very difficult because of who they are as a franchise and how little cap space they have. Drafting a cornerstone is going to be tough because they’re not bad enough to get a top pick. They have very little talent, not enough cap space, and they’re arguably the worst ran organization in professional sports that resides in a town no one wants to live in. In a nutshell… cool. You have two above average players, but you have nowhere to go yet. Most teams in this scenario I wouldn’t be so worried about, but this is the Sacramento Kings after all. This is the team that constantly gives my Cleveland Browns a run for the gold medal in the “Worst ran organization of all time” olympics, so no, I’m confident Sacramento will make a mess of this, but boy do I pray for the people of Sacramento that I’m finally proven wrong.