captain bill
All-Star
Nothing groundbreaking but a decent read behind the paywall. Seems clear that Kings were very invested in keeping the core together both over the last trade deadline and this summer. Clearly counting on internal improvement, especially from Keegan.
It also sounds like the organization has had its eyes on Sasha for a very long time. They did a full court press of sending representatives to Greece to recruit Sasha over, and they seem happy that the charm offensive paid off.
Overall FO seems happy to keep this train rolling forward, while still maintaining flexibility in contracts and owning almost all of their own picks, save the conditional first to Atlanta. The front office seems to have stuck with its philosophy of not just making moves for the purpose of making moves. We can likely expect some stability on this roster for this entire year.
https://theathletic.com/4701945/2023/07/19/kings-free-agency-monte-mcnair-interview/
Regarding how to use all that cap space:
About last year's trade deadline and looking at OG and Siakam:
Some 'inside baseball' on how the org focused on Sasha as a target:
It also sounds like the organization has had its eyes on Sasha for a very long time. They did a full court press of sending representatives to Greece to recruit Sasha over, and they seem happy that the charm offensive paid off.
Overall FO seems happy to keep this train rolling forward, while still maintaining flexibility in contracts and owning almost all of their own picks, save the conditional first to Atlanta. The front office seems to have stuck with its philosophy of not just making moves for the purpose of making moves. We can likely expect some stability on this roster for this entire year.
https://theathletic.com/4701945/2023/07/19/kings-free-agency-monte-mcnair-interview/
Regarding how to use all that cap space:
“(I’m) not saying that we won’t look at upgrades (or that) we didn’t,” McNair said. “Because we certainly explored all those options. But knowing that one of our options was going to be to bring the bulk of our team back (was appealing).”
About last year's trade deadline and looking at OG and Siakam:
“At the time, (the league) had (Kevin Durant) going to Phoenix, (Russell) Westbrook going to the Clippers, Kyrie (Irving to Dallas) and all this stuff. We kind of stood pat…” McNair said. “We didn’t do anything major, and we were kind of relying on the continuity of what we’d built and our chemistry. We certainly got lucky. We had some injuries on other teams that helped us out coming out of the break. But I do think you see (that) trying to assimilate new players and new coaches and things like that on the fly can work, but it also carries risk.”
Some 'inside baseball' on how the org focused on Sasha as a target:
“Colin Montague, who’s our Director of Analytics, has been probably the first one I remember (who was) on Sasha,” McNair said. “He’s got a great eye for finding a lot of intriguing international players, both in the draft and potential free agency or trade targets. This was a couple of years ago, when Sasha was a guy that (Montague) had flagged.
“Per our process, we have some international consultants that have seen him, but our domestic scouts, on up to (Kings vice president of player personnel) Phil Jabour and (assistant general manager) Wes Wilcox, who do a lot of our personnel from the more traditional scouting side, started watching him more and were like, ‘Yeah, this guy is really good.’ So that was a multi-month, if not a couple of years (process), in the lead-up to just trading for him (in 2022). At the time, we didn’t know if he’d come over.”
On Keegan's future:
“We know we need Keegan to take another step,” McNair said. “And one of the ways he can do that is to be more of a second or third option as opposed to a fourth or fifth option. And it’s hard to do that when you have two all-NBA guys, right? Then you have Kevin Huerter and Harrison Barnes. So you know, it may take some time for him to do that within the natural flow.”