By trading DeMarcus Cousins, the Sacramento Kings signaled that they would be rebuilding. The team has no sure-thing prospects on the roster and Sacramento is not typically a market that allures high-octane free agents. With reports swirling that the Kings are anxious to trade off the few quality veterans on the roster, including Darren Collison, the goal is clear: get bad enough to get a high draft pick and start the rebuild from there.
The DeMarcus Cousins trade shows the Kings can’t even tank right
Now that Sacramento actually needs to lose to properly rebuild, there are some complications.
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The problem is that the Kings have handicapped their tank job in multiple ways already.
1. The Kings don’t control their pick
In July 2015, this same Kings front office made a deal with the Sixers to open up cap space. One small piece of that deal: Sacramento granted Philadelphia the option of swapping picks in 2017, provided the Kings keep their pick. (They still owe a top-10 protected pick to Chicago due to a 2011 trade. If that pick isn’t conveyed this year, it becomes two seconds.)
If the Kings end up with a pick No. 11 or worse, it moves to Chicago. That is a bad result when you’re trying to rebuild through the draft. But even if the Kings tank well, if their pick ends up better than Philly’s, the Sixers will swap choices.
Typically when you tank, you are concerned solely with losing as many games as possible within the realm of acceptable tanking behavior. That’s not good enough for the Kings. It’s important they are as bad as possible from here on out. But they also need Philadelphia to be as bad as possible. If the Kings somehow end up with the No. 5 pick but the Sixers continue to overachieve and end up with No. 12, then the Kings will pick No. 12.
2. The Kings waited 57 games to call it quits.
The season is 70 percent over. Sacramento isn’t good, but the team has already won 24 games. In terms of trying to get into the best draft position possible, this is a very late start! The Kings are already five wins up on the Lakers, who have the league’s third-worst record. That’s a huge amount given the narrow separation we’re likely to see among the dregs of the league.
By the same token, there’s still enough time for the Pelicans to jump out of the mire, thus making the pick owed to Sacramento that much worse. If the season ended today, the Kings would have the Pelicans’ No. 9 pick and would send their own No. 12 pick to Chicago. By the end of the season, the Pelicans’ pick is likely to better than No. 12 and the Kings’ own pick is not likely to be any better than No. 4. And again, it depends on what Philadelphia does the rest of the way.
3. The Kings still have mixed objectives.
Sacramento is in a really tough spot in terms of selling the future of the franchise. The Kings want to prove that Buddy Hield is a hot prospect. The general manager said on Monday they still want to challenge for their first playoff bid in a decade. If they fail to move Collison, Arron Afflalo, Anthony Tolliver, and Kosta Koufos by the Thursday trade deadline, the front office will find it difficult to tell coach Dave Joerger to sit them and play Malachi Richardson, Skal Labissiere, and Georgios Papagiannis instead.
The glory of the Philadelphia 76ers was that Sam Hinkie clearly laid out what the franchise intended to do, and then they did it. Now the team has Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, and a bevy of future picks. Hinkie was clear, focused, and ruthless.
The Kings are lost, confused, and late. They wouldn’t be the first team to fail to fail properly, but after giving him an All-NBA center in his prime, this loss would sting a bit extra. All rebuilding franchises rely on good fortune. The Kings are pushing that reliance to the extreme this season.
