The problem with this approach is that of the three ways of adding talent (draft, free agency, and trade), trade is the one where it's most difficult to get a big increase in overall talent. You have to give something to get something, and if you don't give up draft picks or "free agents" (i.e. eat salary cap space for somebody), then you're usually making incremental improvements at best. Yes, those incremental improvements can result in "better fit" but when your team is as frankly pathetic as the Kings have been, an incremental improvement in talent and better fit doesn't get you very far. Can we trade Barnes and Holmes and Bagley for similar talent levels that is a better fit? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But while we "only" have to jump three teams and three games in the standings to get to the 10th spot and a desperate attempt at the play-in, we're 6.5 games from even the #9 spot, and we're 11 games down and 7 teams away from guaranteed playoff position. There is just simply no incremental talent/better fit combo out there sufficient to get us to the #9 spot this year, much less the #6 spot. So the game of getting rid of future assets that might result in big talent increases to incrementally get better this year seems absolute folly at this point.
I think the play-in has been very bad for us as a franchise. Under the old rules, we would 7 games behind and have to jump five teams to get to the #8 spot (and a basically guaranteed first-round bounce), and with 26 games left we'd never try. But dammit, watch us burn first round picks to shuffle deck chairs and keep churning between 10-14 in the lottery until we finally hit it and spend it right.