Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
Vet mentor Schroder
I don't get the fascination with Schroder. He has come off the bench for a lot of teams.
I just don't see who is going to have much trade value other than Sabonis. Kings are in a bad spot where they need to rebuild but don't have much to start a proper rebuild. They're like a half step above an expansion team right now. Nearly starting from scratch.
There's definitely not a ton of trade value on the roster, but that sort of doesn't matter. They just need to move off this collection of going-nowhere veterans and get whatever draft compensation they can in return. And they're not exactly starting from scratch, either, as a rebuild begun in earnest by the trade deadline that seeks to add high value talent via the draft to Murray, Ellis, Carter, Clifford, and Raynaud presents fans with at least something to root for, as well as some sort of long-term vision that prioritizes defense for the first time in this franchise's entire Sacramento-era history. It might not be much, but it's a significantly more worthy product than whatever Sabonis-plus-everybody-else's-over-the-hill-cast-offs is going to look like this season.
I think having trade value on the roster matters to a great extent. Rebuilding with single first round picks and a roster full of role players is not an easy way to build a good team.
Keon is an unrestricted free agent. Perry is playing with fire for no reason with his situation. Carter is going to get almost no playing time unless multiple players get hurt or traded. At some point the Kings will either have to extend him while still having no idea what they have in him or they'll have to let him go for nothing. Clifford looks promising and Raynaud will probably not amount to much since big men that can't play defense don't really carve out much of a career in the league.
I agree that I'd rather watch the young guys play and fail over the old guys failing but it would be nice if we had a small cache of first round picks to go along with watching the young guys fail. At the moment, only Sabonis has enough value to bring a first round pick back and I have a feeling the rest of the league already knows what we know. That it's very difficult to win when your big man can't play defense, even if he is a walking double double and triple double threat.
To be clear, I do not disagree at all that the Kings have really failed to build a cache of draft picks to help them get started with any potential rebuild. My point was mostly that they just need to get on with it, ya know? There's no point lingering on the moves that weren't made by prior Kings' front offices. If the cupboard's bare, then the cupboard's bare. They are going nowhere with this roster as-constructed, and Domas is literally the only veteran asset the Kings possess that will bring back anything of value in a trade. Nothing's going to change the fact that they're not winning with this crew, nothing's going to change the fact that they're getting little in return for DeRozan, for LaVine, and even for Monk, and nothing's going to change the fact that they still need to think about the future. So get on with it.
By December, I'm guessing the team is going to be in quite a hole. At that time, they should be looking to jettison everything except Murray, Ellis, Carter, Nique, and Raynaud. They likely won't be able to move off of more than one or two of their vets before the trade deadline, but regardless, the company line should be: We're bad, we know we're bad, we're going to find new homes for these veterans who deserve to compete, and we're going to focus on rebuilding for the future. Hopefully they'll be able to snag somebody's middling future first rounder by the deadline, or at least some noteworthy swap rights, in addition to some number of second rounders. It's not much, but still... get on with it.
Frankly, my belief is that this franchise needs to man up, stop dithering about in never-never land, accept that they're not a playoff team, accept that they're not well-positioned for the future, and commit to the hard work of rebuilding anyway, slow as it will be to get started. I currently live in Northern Virginia. I'm 45 minutes away from the Capitol One Arena, home of the Washington Wizards. And it pains me to no end that the effing Wizards are doing it better than the Kings right now. They've finally got a front office that is committed to doing the work of rebuilding, and they've got buy-in from ownership to set their franchise up for future success. Personally, I'd rather the Scott Perry regime skip over the whole Laughingstock of the League™ phase of Kangz basketball that we're so used to around these parts and just get on with it.
Agreed. It has Vivek's stank written all over it. Not getting on with it is how you go 17 years in between playoff berths. Random average veteran signings make good teams better. They don't make bad teams good. I don't think Vivek has learned that yet. I don't know exactly what type of control Vivek exerts but the same mistakes keep being made, regardless of who is the coach or GM and the only constant over all of it has been Vivek.