Kings sign Precious Achiuwa

pdxKingsFan said:
He was a below minimum level signing Boston made who only had 4 appearances during their championship run. Now that they are basically in an injury + cap induced tank year he is getting extra run, and he's still just "serviceable".

Granted I'd have rather hung onto him than trotted McGee out there but this is definitely not a case of losing out and I'd rather develop Cardwell or Maxime than Queta in 2025.
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I dunno if anyone’s watched a Celtics game this year but Neemy starting for them says more about the Celtics plans for this season (AJ or Boozer or Peterson in a shamrock green jersey for the next decade plus) than Neemy or the Kings failing to develop him.
 
SLAB said:
Why take years to maybe but probably not develop Precious Achiuwa … when you can just have Precious Achiuwa?



IJ is simply not a worthwhile mystery box. He’s basically the same age as Precious, so why waste more time trying to develop a guy who *might* become the player we can just pick up for free(

If IJ was 21. If IJ had ever had a game like the 25/15/5 game that Precious had last season. If IJ had a single standout trait (like Caldwell’s defense) than maybe just *maybe* it’s worth the process and development. But IJ is not that dude.
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I think people are getting caught up in IJ the story (6’9” guy with 7’3” wingspan and massive vertical leap doesn’t get recruited by any colleges but somehow ends up in the NBA through long winding road after showing up to a juco tryout) rather than IJ the 24 year old small ball 5 who was never really comfortable playing at the forward spot we all wanted him to play.
 
Glad to see the roster getting more skill in a big, that fills a serious need for this season. And I don’t think Isaac Jones is likely to turn out to be a starter in the NBA, but it’s way too early to give up on him. There are old guys on the roster that you’re afraid to play cut one of them. Neither Dario or Dougie are gonna make this team much better and certainly not in the future. IJ might
 
HndsmCelt said:
Glad to see the roster getting more skill in a big, that fills a serious need for this season. And I don’t think Isaac Jones is likely to turn out to be a starter in the NBA, but it’s way too early to give up on him. There are old guys on the roster that you’re afraid to play cut one of them. Neither Dario or Dougie are gonna make this team much better and certainly not in the future. IJ might
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Dario’s salary is a useful trade piece and McBuckets is a good enough “break in case of emergency” wing option.
 
I don’t think there’s really much debate about Precious vs IJ, short or long term. It’s a good signing.

To me, the issue is IJ vs Doug. Did they really need to secure Doug’s services by giving him a guaranteed deal? Have those services been useful so far?
 
gunks said:
I think I was initially mad about this on principle, but whatever. IJ was a fun dude to root for, and it'll be cool if he can break into the league elsewhere.... But this signing is gonna have minimal impact on both Ws or any "rebuild".
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I feel like only two years ago a lot of people would have loved this signing. I know some folks think the Beam was a mirage but it truly is hard to comprehend how we got from 22-23 to this.
 
Tetsujin said:
Dario’s salary is a useful trade piece and McBuckets is a good enough “break in case of emergency” wing option.
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But neither of them can have much or any impact on the team moving forward unless you squint tight and imagine Dario being the make or or break in a trade. As slim as the chances are that IJ will develop into a rotation player there is a chance his development will progress to that point.
 
SLAB said:
We cut an “old” young guy for a guy who’s less than a year older and has actually proven something in the league.

The Kings suck. The roster is trash. IJ is not the player to be that breaking point.
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No, it's the idea though. This is another Band-Aid over cancer kind of thing. Just more pointless spinning, where the grass is greener somewhere else that has kept this franchise in the burning dumpster it's been in for nearly 20 years with one brief moment of positivity. That still was again built on shakey ground in a desperate attempt to salvage the Fox years. They did, it worked temporarily but rather than go the smart route once it was dead and over the Kings appear to want to Kangz this thing all the way to the furthest reaches possible.
 
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HndsmCelt said:
But neither of them can have much or any impact on the team moving forward unless you squint tight and imagine Dario being the make or or break in a trade. As slim as the chances are that IJ will develop into a rotation player there is a chance his development will progress to that point.
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It was a salary thing. IJ was much easier to cut. IJ’s shooting was the issue and frankly he wasn’t even the best summer league player this summer. At least not except one or two games. I’m not gonna sweat the 9-12th man.
 
Padrino said:
I maintain that this franchise is absolutely allergic to the very notion of player development. It spans front office regimes and ownership groups. The Kings dip out early on their homegrown talent with alarming frequency. And even when they hold onto their young talent, they find ways to stunt its growth. Keon Ellis represents such a success story as an undrafted acquisition... and he can barely log consistent minutes despite Doug Christie being present the last few years to witness Ellis' rising potential.

Was Isaac Jones likely to become a similar success story? Probably not. However, he's another in a long line of the Kings' developmental interests that get chucked out in favor of shortcutting the process and "skipping to the finish line", as you say. Achiuwa is a decent signing with Keegan out injured, but it's all so ridiculous that it's happening now. They knew they were logjammed in the backcourt, and they knew they lacked frontcourt depth, but they focused all of their attention on 37-year-old Russell Westbrook before the season opener. And now they're dumping one of their own developmental program's investments for a similar player who's a bit further along the developmental track. Why not just waive Saric? Even if Jones is no great loss, it's still astonishingly backwards asset management.
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This is the most low hanging fruit team in history. Vivek acts a beaten dog. Precious is a decent player, heck, I wanted the Kings to draft him back in the day but this is more short sighted delusion crap on the surface. Perry going with a proven Knick is like Vivek gushing over a prove Warrior. Yuck. Might not be true but the parallels are right there.
 
iowamcnabb said:
IJ is a good story but he can’t defend, shoot or rebound. He is a 5 that needs a couple more years of development and even then it’s a long shot. We have two young 5s that have a distinct skill that could be more useful to this team moving forward: Cardwell (elite defense and athleticism) and Max (floor stretching and offense).

As others have mentioned, Precious is basically the same age, a proven NBA player and can/has played the 4.
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Hard to show any of those things in 5 minutes. Jones literally played 1 minute during which it looked like Eubanks was getting spanked left and right, Eubanks stayed on the floor, Jones sat. DC is definitely playing favorites either at the direction of his GM or himself. We already know if someone in the FO/ownership tells DC to jump he'll ask how high.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
You develop guys because you hope to hit a home run.

Also, you develop guys because sometimes you get rotation-level players for bargain prices for a few years. (e.g. Keon)

But if you develop a guy, and then decide after two years that his ceiling is about replacement level, then it's really OK to let them go and get the guy that's replacement level now. That's not a waste of resources - you used your resources on a chance, and that chance didn't pan out. Like many before him. It's the name of the game.

We seem to be acting like we're cutting a major future asset for minimal benefit now, but are we? I've never really been on the IJ hype train, to be honest, and the org has had two years to see what his development looks like. They seem comfortable cutting ties. Doug seemed comfortable NOT PLAYING HIM when we went a whole game without even fielding a forward (after yanking him after a one-minute stint the game before). We need a player like IJ in our lineup right now, and he still can't crack the floor. These are very writing-on-the-wall signs. Yes, we would all like for IJ to be the Next Great Thing, but wanting doesn't make it so.
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Good then go scour the league and look for potential. Most teams post trading their franchise player for scraps do those things. Not turn over the reins to a 37 year old former MVP. Oh boy, this could get destructive lol.
 
SacTownKid said:
Hard to show any of those things in 5 minutes. Jones literally played 1 minute during which it looked like Eubanks was getting spanked left and right, Eubanks stayed on the floor, Jones sat. DC is definitely playing favorites either at the direction of his GM or himself. We already know if someone in the FO/ownership tells DC to jump he'll ask how high.
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I see what you are saying but I just didn’t see what I wanted to out of him this summer or pre-season. He can’t defend without fouling and he is too small to handle the big centers. He has the size of a stretch four but isn’t a ball handler or shooter. Right now he looks an awful lot like the 4A player we talk about.
 
SacTownKid said:
This is the most low hanging fruit team in history. Vivek acts a beaten dog. Precious is a decent player, heck, I wanted the Kings to draft him back in the day but this is more short sighted delusion crap on the surface. Perry going with a proven Knick is like Vivek gushing over a prove Warrior. Yuck. Might not be true but the parallels are right there.
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Yeah I definitely thought the same.

Precious is a win now move for a team that's looking like a play-in long shot, Vivekian foolery of the highest order.
 
One other possible positive from this move is that if the team can't navigate Keegan's downtime with this signing it may just be one more piece of evidence that Perry needs to turn over the roster at the deadline.
 
Jdbraver137 said:
It was a salary thing. IJ was much easier to cut. IJ’s shooting was the issue and frankly he wasn’t even the best summer league player this summer. At least not except one or two games. I’m not gonna sweat the 9-12th man.
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I got that it was a salary thing sort of looks like pennypinching, but it’s not my team as an owner and I do agree, this is not the kind of change. It’s going to probably push more than a win one way or the other. I just liked Isaac Jones. It’s a Wenatchee thing.
 
iowamcnabb said:
I see what you are saying but I just didn’t see what I wanted to out of him this summer or pre-season. He can’t defend without fouling and he is too small to handle the big centers. He has the size of a stretch four but isn’t a ball handler or shooter. Right now he looks an awful lot like the 4A player we talk about.
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Yeah, wait until you see PA play. There’s a reason he doesn’t really stick. But it’s besides the point. I think the biggest thing is the Kings suck at developing young guys. And that includes Keegan. He’s been relegated to being a 3 and D guy from a high lottery pick with zero chance of ever being more. Have we really developed him to his potential?
DC most likely goes the route of Davion. We attached assets to him so we could dump salary and got back the lesser McDaniel. Yeah, IJ is a low level guy but he’s a big who rim runs. If we were better at actually developing, maybe he becomes a 12 minute guy. Maybe not.

Should have never signed McBuckets or traded for Saric. None of this makes sense
 
If the franchise is looking to do everything they can to move even further down in a really strong draft without sniffing the playoffs, then mission accomplished. Vivek looking to revive mid 2010s basketball again. Always just out of reach of the playoffs and the no brainer picks.
 
dude12 said:
Yeah, wait until you see PA play. There’s a reason he doesn’t really stick. But it’s besides the point. I think the biggest thing is the Kings suck at developing young guys. And that includes Keegan. He’s been relegated to being a 3 and D guy from a high lottery pick with zero chance of ever being more. Have we really developed him to his potential?
DC most likely goes the route of Davion. We attached assets to him so we could dump salary and got back the lesser McDaniel. Yeah, IJ is a low level guy but he’s a big who rim runs. If we were better at actually developing, maybe he becomes a 12 minute guy. Maybe not.

Should have never signed McBuckets or traded for Saric. None of this makes sense
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I’ve seen PA play quite a bit in Toronto, he’s easily an upgrade over IJ if you are comparing talent to talent. In the short term he is the better player on a team trying to win. If and when the team doesn’t win, all these complimentary pieces are enders.


If I thought IJ was a better bet than Max or Cardwell I’d be upset with this move but I think both of those guys have identifiable skills that matter more in the modern game.
 
iowamcnabb said:
I’ve seen PA play quite a bit in Toronto, he’s easily an upgrade over IJ if you are comparing talent to talent. In the short term he is the better player on a team trying to win. If and when the team doesn’t win, all these complimentary pieces are enders.


If I thought IJ was a better bet than Max or Cardwell I’d be upset with this move but I think both of those guys have identifiable skills that matter more in the modern game.
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Last game Cardwell played, they left him unguarded. Bucks knew he couldn’t do anything on offense and it became a problem. A big reason why he didn’t return after going to bench. But he’s got good D. I am actually on the fence on Maxime. There are skills there but not big enough to be a 5 and is he quick enough to be a 4? But the big thing is I have no reason to believe Sac can get either guy to be a bench rotation guy
 
dude12 said:
Last game Cardwell played, they left him unguarded. Bucks knew he couldn’t do anything on offense and it became a problem. A big reason why he didn’t return after going to bench. But he’s got good D. I am actually on the fence on Maxime. There are skills there but not big enough to be a 5 and is he quick enough to be a 4? But the big thing is I have no reason to believe Sac can get either guy to be a bench rotation guy
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Yeh neither are ready now but it’s a strength issue with Max, that can be fixed. Cardwell is going to be a situational guy at best but he can absolutely defend and he works well with other bigs. To me that gives him a chance. Having said that, there is no guarantee either is long for the team.
 
The_Jamal said:
It's once again a "process" issue for me.

Why did we spend the last 2 off-seasons with IJ then? Why use those resources on him just to cut him before we see if he's actually an NBA player or not? Because he proved he's better than the G-League/Summer league competition and has seen steady progress since we picked him up as a UDFA. The only thing left was to see what he did with an NBA role.

Precious is fine and he'll make us better "right now". But that's once again the issue; you still had a mystery box of on IJ; instead, we're playing for the next 70 games and not worrying about what the next 3 years looks like
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Short answer: IJ was Monte’s project. His g-league coaches aren’t in the org anymore. He hasn’t shown anything of note in NBA action. He looks slow, lost and has no consistency (not his fault). I’m for cutting Saric, but understand he has value as a trade piece. IJ’s contract does nothing for the organization…guess it wasn’t that short of an answer.
 
Shaqfuey said:
Short answer: IJ was Monte’s project. His g-league coaches aren’t in the org anymore. He hasn’t shown anything of note in NBA action. He looks slow, lost and has no consistency (not his fault). I’m for cutting Saric, but understand he has value as a trade piece. IJ’s contract does nothing for the organization…guess it wasn’t that short of an answer.
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This is kind of the scary thing about all this. There seemed to be a legit effort in development FINALLY under Monte even if it was far from perfect. At least the last couple of seasons. Perry's history is what it is. He didn't bring the Knicks up, he got pushed to the side and Thibs did that. Thibs runs his own house, period. Always has, for good or bad, and that partially why he wears out his welcome after awhile too. Perry had the Knicks swirling around the toilet with similar moves before Thibs came aboard.
 
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