A few words on (a)the Jaden Hardy trade (b)the Kings multi-year draft outlook

[Ozymandias]

(a)the Jaden Hardy trade (more like the rights to Jaden Hardy trade), or what became of our 2022 2nd rd pick, whatever you want to call it. Gets brought up often around here. now, it's a slippery slope talking about players after their rookie season, how a players 3rd season goes generally is a much stronger indicator, you never know what improvements they make, team fit, lotta factors involved, anyways..

Hardy is a guy who had a lot of big games on a topheavy but otherwise depleted roster in Dallas. The situation he was in there is not the situation he'd have been in here during our playoff push, not gonna dive too deep on this now will get into it int he comments if necessary.

Far as I'm concerned, Terence Davis performed well for us, thats basically the role Hardy would've needed to fill to produce here as he did in Dallas, I think its negligible, In fact I think TD who cost us 1 2rp might be better than Hardy who we gained an extra 2rp for trading. Hardy woulda had off nights and some hot nights, thats what TD gave us. I personally think we'll look to resign TD, but in the event we're heading in another direction I think there will again be many solid low cost options for that spot (or we could take another SG at 37 like Sidy Cissoko, or Ben Sheppard) there's lots of guys who are just looking for a spot to showcase and will sign for cheap.

Of course there's the argument "but yeah thats only year 1, Hardy showed great potential and will improve.." totally fair and just but that brings me to my next point which is along the lines of you could say Hardy was a missed opportunity, but that opportunity to strike is still there (and the price is still cheap)

(b)the Kings multi-year draft outlook. Specifically and oddly enough I'm gonna focus a bit more on the 2nd rd picks cuz we have 10 2nd rd picks in the next 6 drafts and do remember 2 of those 2nd rd picks were generated in the Hardy trade. Though I do think its worth mentioning we can trade up, we have some ammo.

Now that the curse is broken and we're a team competing for the playoffs, the depth chart being much more fleshed out puts the kings in an advantageous position in the draft, were in a position to swing big at low cost and solid depth also means there's less potential holes to plug so we can identify them earlier and focus harder on how solve them.

So basically, time is on our side. Patience in the right spots is going to payoff big. Michael Jordan said "work ethic eliminates fear" and I think that will end up applying to our draft strategy for the rest of the decade, I'm confident we will process of eliminate down to some really excellent sensible choices.

There's also a matter of Stockton and using them to develop players who are further away. if the Kings were to land 2 older players in this draft(at 24 and 37) and lets say they come in and perform as rotation guys off the bench from day1, it stands to reason we'd probably start heading towards more developmental picks after that as our main roster is going to be pretty well filled, as we're certainly going to resign many players this summer and next summer..

 

[Tetsujin]

As the last trade deadline showed us, there’s a lot of merit to be found in swapmeeting our way into a bajillion second round picks. I feel like the Vlade era just sorta soured everyone on second round pick accumulation because the guy pretty much did absolutely nothing with the picks he would get from trading off our bad free agent signings. (In his first season though, Monte turned some of those picks into TD and Mo Harkless, who both turned out to be rotation players for us. TD obviously more important to us than Harkless). As it stands, the Kings have a surplus of second round picks this season, next season, the season after that (the Ariza trade), and in 2028. They could conceivably use some of those assets to move up in the second round this season or move down and acquire additional picks to use at the trade deadline (although at this point, it’s gonna cost like four second round picks to get a rotation player). It’s a position of strength.


in regards to Hardy in particular, there are more and more guards with his general skill set showing up in the league year after year (it’s much easier finding a good 6’4” and below player than a good tall guy just by rule of averages) and it’s hard to see where he’d find playing time in our guard rotation this year, let alone last year. By virtue of how young our main guards are as is, it’s even hard seeing him in the rotation in year three or four unless you think he’d eclipse Fox, Huerter, Monk, or Mitchell in the rotation which means we’d probably be dumping him off for pennies on the dollar like the Nuggets did with Bones Hyland.

 

[Telemachus]

(a)the Jaden Hardy trade (more like the rights to Jaden Hardy trade), or what became of our 2022 2nd rd pick, whatever you want to call it. Gets brought up often around here. now, it's a slippery slope talking about players after their rookie season, how a players 3rd season goes generally is a much stronger indicator, you never know what improvements they make, team fit, lotta factors involved, anyways..

Hardy is a guy who had a lot of big games on a topheavy but otherwise depleted roster in Dallas. The situation he was in there is not the situation he'd have been in here during our playoff push, not gonna dive too deep on this now will get into it int he comments if necessary.

Far as I'm concerned, Terence Davis performed well for us, thats basically the role Hardy would've needed to fill to produce here as he did in Dallas, I think its negligible, In fact I think TD who cost us 1 2rp might be better than Hardy who we gained an extra 2rp for trading. Hardy woulda had off nights and some hot nights, thats what TD gave us. I personally think we'll look to resign TD, but in the event we're heading in another direction I think there will again be many solid low cost options for that spot (or we could take another SG at 37 like Sidy Cissoko, or Ben Sheppard) there's lots of guys who are just looking for a spot to showcase and will sign for cheap.

Of course there's the argument "but yeah thats only year 1, Hardy showed great potential and will improve.." totally fair and just but that brings me to my next point which is along the lines of you could say Hardy was a missed opportunity, but that opportunity to strike is still there (and the price is still cheap)

(b)the Kings multi-year draft outlook. Specifically and oddly enough I'm gonna focus a bit more on the 2nd rd picks cuz we have 10 2nd rd picks in the next 6 drafts and do remember 2 of those 2nd rd picks were generated in the Hardy trade. Though I do think its worth mentioning we can trade up, we have some ammo.

Now that the curse is broken and we're a team competing for the playoffs, the depth chart being much more fleshed out puts the kings in an advantageous position in the draft, were in a position to swing big at low cost and solid depth also means there's less potential holes to plug so we can identify them earlier and focus harder on how solve them.

So basically, time is on our side. Patience in the right spots is going to payoff big. Michael Jordan said "work ethic eliminates fear" and I think that will end up applying to our draft strategy for the rest of the decade, I'm confident we will process of eliminate down to some really excellent sensible choices.

There's also a matter of Stockton and using them to develop players who are further away. if the Kings were to land 2 older players in this draft(at 24 and 37) and lets say they come in and perform as rotation guys off the bench from day1, it stands to reason we'd probably start heading towards more developmental picks after that as our main roster is going to be pretty well filled, as we're certainly going to resign many players this summer and next summer..

I would also point out that the Kings had limited roster spots at the time of the draft. It was really a choice between their 2nd round pick or signing Keon Ellis. Time will tell which was the better decision.

 

[Ozymandias]

I would also point out that the Kings had limited roster spots at the time of the draft. It was really a choice between their 2nd round pick or signing Keon Ellis. Time will tell which was the better decision.

Well we actually received a 2028 2nd rd pick from the Mavs for Hardy along with their 2nd rder in '24 so it's gonna be a long time.

Keon Ellis seems promising he certainly shot the ball great in the g-league and 3.4 assists per game (with just 1.8to's) is encouraging as far as development in his combo guard skills. But his contract situation this summer wont be resolved til after the draft.

But yeah you make a good point it would seem with the expiring situations this summer and next summer we wont have as tight of a roster situation going into the draft as last summer. Did we sell high on that pick and then buy low in the UDFA market, kicking the can down the road to when we have a clearer picture and more flexibility?