The somewhat bizarre and bewildering transaction history of the Vlade Divac-led Sacramento Kings continued during the NBA Draft last Thursday.
The NBA Draft is a time of excitement and thrill as the hint of what might be combines with what is known to produce a result that does not indicate what will come to pass. Yes, the draft is an enigma enshrouded by the prognostications of false surety.
Wordy enough? I think so. So let’s get down to business. The Kings entered the draft on June 23 with the No. 8 pick and complete uncertainty about the future of the franchise and their marquee talent DeMarcus Cousins. While the Cousins saga is yet to be resolved, likely to drag through another ugly season of player vs. coach vs. ownership vs. the world, we can now begin to make evaluations of their draft.
The first movement from Sacramento was coordinating a deal with the Charlotte Hornets, trading Marco Belinelli to Charlotte for the No. 22 pick. This deal, however, is unofficial as the Hornets must wait until July 1 to complete the move due to salary implications. As of July 1, Belinelli will be traded to Charlotte and the No. 22 pick, which became Malachi Richardson, will be sent to Sacramento.
The trade seemed a bit odd for both parties. Belinelli retains value as a 3-point shooter on the wing while the Hornets essentially passed on any available talent in the draft to acquire the services of a 30-year-old role player. The trade seems more rational for the Hornets than the Kings at first glance. If Charlotte figures they will be unable to keep all of their free agents – Al Jefferson, Jeremy Lin, Courtney Lee, Nicolas Batum, Marvin Harrison – they will want to find a cheaper way to replace what they are losing, which is three-point shooting. Lee and Harrison are the lower priorities on Charlotte’s list with Batum a near lock to return. Belinelli is a low-cost substitute for the scoring that Lee and Harrison provided in 2015-16. As for the Kings, getting rid of a reliable, though non-descript deadeye doesn’t seem to benefit the pace-driven run-and-gun that owner Vivek Randive is demanding.
DraftExpress ranked Richardson 18th among all freshman after his lone season at Syracuse and their mock draft had him being taken at the No. 17 spot. Meanwhile, Zach Reynolds of The Lottery Mafia had Richardson at the No. 18 spot and project him out as a future starter in the league. Based on rankings, the Kings were fortunate that Malachi fell to them at No. 22, though you might question the selection in comparison to what was still available, namely Timothe Luwawu, the No. 24 pick, and Furkan Korkmaz, the No. 26 pick, who were both projected very high on draft boards and who both fell to the Philadelphia 76ers.
But Richardson was not the big name or part of the big news for the Kings during the draft. That honor falls to the combination of Georgios Papagiannis, Skal Labissiere, and Marquese Chriss.
Sacramento drafted Chriss with the No. 8 pick, which falls in his projected range. He was picking up steam heading into the draft and was projected between the tenth pick on the low-end and reached as high as the third pick with Boston.
Chriss is such a wildcard that he could fall anywhere on the scale. A great gamble, but about as far from a sure thing as you can get. His boom or bust potential is very real, but in a particularly thin draft class, you could do worse. As much scrutiny as Chriss at No. 8 could receive, the Bucks selecting Thon Maker at No. 10 was all the more daring.
And before you think the Kings were done after making a solid selection at No. 8, finding a perfect stretch-four to compliment Cousins, it was time to announce a trade. Sacramento was sending their perfect fit to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for the rights to the No. 13 and No. 28 picks and the rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic.
Somewhere around this time, it gets confusing as to why the Kings felt the impulse to trade Chriss. And somewhere around the time that the No. 13 pick was made, Boogie took to Twitter to share this thought:
You see, Sacramento has a crowded frontcourt. A combination of Willie Cauley-Stein, Quincy Acy, Cousins, Kosta Koufos and some form of guaranteed money for Duje Dukan. Adding Chriss wouldn’t have muddled things up too much as Dukan and Acy are not part of future plans for the Kings and combining Cauley-Stein and Chriss to play most minutes with a combination of Cousins and Koufos would be fine, even good. But that’s not what the Kings opted for.
With the No. 13 pick, the Suns selected Georgios Papagiannis, a player I profiled for Pippen Ain’t Easy. Except, when I profiled him, it was to look at the likelihood that he might be brought in with the second Chicago pick in the draft at No. 48.
I might have been too low on Papagiannis and will freely admit that. However, to trade away a definitive top-10 prospect in Chriss to acquire Papagiannis at No. 13 was not a great choice. “Big George” Papagiannis was probably still going to be available at the No. 28 pick, if not later, and even if he wasn’t available there were a number of other international and domestic prospects that were projected ahead of Papagiannis.
Big George has the height and skill to be a good rim protector, but has been scouted as very poor in the pick-and-roll both on offense and defense. He has difficulty dealing with quickness, which isn’t surprising given his 7-2 frame that weighs 275 lbs. He’ll have a role to play in the NBA, but the size of that role seems uncertain. The Kings are really swinging for the fences on this one.
The surprise of Papagiannis going so high in the draft is dulled slightly by the Bucks and Maker, but potentially more painful because of the traded asset in Chriss. Worse, none of this takes into account the fact that Sacramento already has Cousins and Koufos at center with Cauley-Stein at power forward. If anything, the Kings were a bit shallow at the four unless they planned to get a lot of work out of Acy this coming season. Now the Kings have three centers on their roster, and that leaves only two realistic assumptions: Boogie is being traded, very unlikely, or they plan to shift Boogie into a power forward role and run Koufos and Papagiannis at center when the time comes.
The whole idea seems bad for a team that ranked No. 1 in the entire league for pace last season. Big George has a huge frame but can’t handle quick guards on defense and lacks lateral quickness. He also will lack quickness in any direction if they expect him to run the floor every possession every night. Coupling any of their centers with Cauley-Stein and sending them running gives them more size than most elite teams prefer, forcing them to try modern small-ball with a roster that would have looked compelling in the mid-1990s.
The second pick that the Suns made and transferred to the Kings was fallen prospect Labissiere. At the beginning of the collegiate season, Skal was projected to compete with Brandon Ingram and Ben Simmons for title of top prospect. When the season ended, only Tim Quarterman might have had a more dramatic plummet.
Labissiere was still ranked as a top-15 prospect by most analysts, but when it came time to draft, he just kept falling and falling. The reason for the fall could have been his underwhelming lone season in college, but it might also have been the fact that he is definitely a project and nowhere near his finished potential.
His scouting report indicates that he is almost the opposite of Big George, very athletic and good with both lateral quickness and the pick-and-roll on the defensive side of the ball. His offense can work, too. While he is 7-0, he is only 215 lbs. As he grows into his body, he’ll also need to grow into his skill. A lot of the concerns about Labissiere seem to stem from the same place that the negativity on Simmons originated – the determination and intensity to push himself to the next level.
Despite his height, he projects as a combo power forward/center. This means he could see minutes as a backup to Cauley-Stein or play in tandem with Cousins, Koufos or Cauley-Stein. Likely, Labissiere will be into his first or second team option season before we really start to get a feel for what his potential is in the NBA.
Kings fans have endured a lot. They almost lost their team and seemed to go from a set of unstable owners to just one unstable owner. The team has a national treasure on their hands in Boogie Cousins, but no way to turn that amazing individual skill into team success. Vlade Divac doesn’t understand the business side of basketball but gets to keep calling shots. It must be a bit frustrating that a high-ceiling prospect like Chriss was just packaged and sent to the desert for two project players that will likely spend almost the entirety of their rookie contracts crafting their skill and serving as limited role backups to the positional incumbents. Or worse, as successors in a vast rebuilding of the Sacramento system that has a slew of young players – Cauley-Stein, Ben McLemore, Richardson, Papagiannis, Isaiah Cousins, Labissiere – which will soon be complemented by whatever a Cousins trade will bring back in picks and prospects.
However, it could work. Cousins has said the right things to the press, telling them that he wants to win in Sacramento and have his jersey hang in the rafters. Labissiere could have a fast learning curve and Papagiannis could be every bit as good as his dad claims he is on Twitter. We don’t know yet what these players will become, all we know is what they were and they may yet be. For now, with Chriss traded to Phoenix for Papagiannis and Labissiere, it looks like the what might have been in Sacramento isn’t all that is there now.
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