So at what point can we say we did botch the WCS and current picks? After a couple more losing seasons and bad moves? And we are all still waiting on the magical trade that is supposed to change the team. Almost two hours and counting...
and here i suppose it depends on how you want to define "botch." if it means that a player drafted at a lower position is having a larger impact earlier in their career, well then you chalk that up to the draft being a crap shoot and you move on, especially if there isn't an obvious consensus draft pick for a particular team to have taken. myles turner over willie cauley-stein is certainly obvious
today, but it wasn't obvious on draft day, regardless of who may have called for it at the time. however, if "botch" is defined as fetishizing a certain skill set until it blinds your ability to objectively evaluate talent, then yeah, the kings have botched quite a few of their draft picks in the last decade. in fact, drafting jimmer fredette, ben mclemore, and nik stauskas from 2011 to 2014 is about as close as you can get to meeting einstein's definition of insanity.
but if "botch" instead means that a team gives up on young players simply because they fail to make an impact immediately, then that's a much larger problem. any "bad moves" that this franchise might make in the future have nothing to do with the development of the young players who are already on the roster, unless those moves constitute trading those young players far too soon or displacing any hope that they have of earning playing time. the developmental league has its uses, but it's hardly a talent farm like the minor leagues are to the MLB. eventually, cauley-stein, richardson, labissiere, and papagiannis are going to have to log consistent and meaningful nba minutes, and until they've logged a substantial amount of consistent and meaningful nba minutes, it's too early to say that the kings "botched" their most recent draft picks.
now, i would have drafted different players than the kings in most of those circumstances. there are plenty of deficiencies amongst the set of young players the kings currently possess on their roster. there is some reason to believe that any or all of them could bust. but given that they are unproven and unheralded first round picks, they have little trade value anyway. you're not likely to receive the kind of talent upgrades necessary to move the needle in the win/loss column, so it's much more prudent to attempt to improve in-house by investing in the development of those players. get them on the court sooner rather than later, otherwise they'll amount to nothing more than wasted assets by the time their rookie contracts come to an end.
of course, there is a line that's worth drawing in the sand, particularly when a young player receives a significant amount of minutes and shows little to no progress across the entire length of their rookie contract. ben mclemore would meet this definition very soundly. what a disappointment. i wouldn't say his nba career is over, but he's about ready to go the way of the jimmer. there was a time when most kings fans imagined he could at least pan out as a 3-and-D role player, but he has never taken advantage of the
many opportunities he's been given, and past a certain point, that's on him. i'd rather the kings didn't hold onto fledgling "talents" like mclemore until their value drops to less-than-zero, but nor would i suggest that the kings plot an exit strategy for every young player that suits up for them and fails to impress right off the bat. i seriously doubt that there's an impact player in the kings' handful of recent first rounders, but that doesn't mean any or all of them can't eventually develop into contributors that allow the kings to maximize the very few assets they have elsewhere.
