Sacramento’s careful balancing act between winning now and rebuilding has many people speculating about its true strategy.
Posted on July 22, 2014, by Zach Lowe
“So, um, does anyone have any idea what the Sacramento Kings are doing?” was arguably the most often asked question among team executives, agents, and coaches at the NBA summer league in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Darren Collison, an older and clearly inferior player who would make just $1.4 million less than Thomas on average over the next three seasons, took Isaiah Thomas’s spot after he left without a fight.
2. Picking up their lustful chase of Josh Smith again, who recently finished one of the most depressing individual seasons in league history. Smith has little trade value and is owed $13.5 million in each of the next three seasons.
Even the NBA’s most accepting people were perplexed. These decisions marked the end of a turbulent fifteen months that saw the team’s ownership changed, the murderous Maloof regime ended, a new arena deal agreed upon, a new coach and general manager hired, and an unending flurry of moves that resulted in the turnover of almost the entire roster and left only hazy remnants of any cohesive team-building strategy. It would be difficult for Verbal Kint to construct a story out of Sacramento’s patchwork of trades.
At times, they behaved like a rebuilding team trying to maintain a clean cap sheet. Tyreke Evans was offered a lucrative contract by Sacramento, but the team wisely passed on it. Greivis Vasquez, a pass-first point guard who was difficult to deal with for the Kings and made roughly $9.5 million less than Evans last season, was acquired in a sign-and-trade for Evans. In exchange for Jason Terry’s lower contract, they pawned off the final two seasons of Marcus Thornton’s contract to the desperate Nets.
However, the Kings changed their persona at that time, becoming a ravenous “win now” team prepared to shell out a lot of cash for experienced players. They committed over $11 million in total to Carl Landry and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute last season, filling the contract space that Evans left behind. Both players were solid players who confused an already congested frontcourt. They quickly shipped Derrick Williams to Minnesota in exchange for Mbah a Moute, making the kind of low-risk trade that every rebuilding team should do, even though it came with a little salary increase.I n response to the Williams move, they signed veteran Rudy Gay, who was in his prime, to an absurdly large contract, convinced Gay to accept a $19 million option for the next season, and acted as what may have been the only team in the league to pursue Smith.
