twslam07
All-Star
We’re coming off a 39 win season & just missed the playoffs extending our playoff drought to 13 seasons in a row. Kings fans are hungry. They can taste the playoffs and can’t wait to go buy their playoff tickets and cheer for their team as loudly as humanly possible. I just have one question….
Is it really time to go all in on the playoffs?
The team has $21.3 mil in cap space this off-season, and that can grow to $37.5 mil in cap space if we let Cauley-Stein, Ferrell, & Mason walk. It grows to $61.7 mil if Barnes opts out. One thing is for certain, the Kings have some cap space this off-season. The question is how do best spend it to improve this team and put them in a position to one day make the playoffs, but also to one day win a championship.
There are many fans who would prefer to spend that cap space on free agents like Vucevic, Lopez, Dedmon, Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Carroll, the list goes on and on. Their logic stems from the notion that we won 39 games last year and just missed the playoffs; therefore, if we sign a couple good veteran role players, it might push us over the edge (along with the progression from our young players) to becoming a playoff team as early as next season. To this I ask, why the need to catapult ourselves into the playoffs by spending on short term, role players who will likely be well out of their prime by the time Fox (21) and Bagley (20) hit their primes?
I tend to be met with answers such as:
All of these responses either don’t make sense or are insignificant to me. I’m of the line of thinking that we should trade our cap space for 1st round picks (whether they are in this draft or a draft in the future). There are mainly four reasons why I stick to this line of thinking…
The majority of the team that won 39 games last season is returning
As I mentioned above, one of the responses I am met with in regard to not wanting to trade our cap space for 1st round picks is due to fans thinking it will jeopardize our ability to make the playoffs. To some degree, they are right. I am replacing cap space that can be spent on a win now role players for a 1st round rookie who may not contribute to winning early on. However, the players that played 70% of the minutes on the 2018-19 Kings would be back next year. The point is that a large majority of the players that contributed to the 39 win season will be back to pick up where they left off.
Not only will they be there to pick-up where they left off, but we should expect progression from our young guys that would ultimately make us a better team (Fox – 21, Hield – 26, Bogdan – 26, Barnes – 27, Bagley – 20, Giles – 21).
Again, since we are bringing back a lot of the same players that contributed to the 39 win season and the fact that we should expect progression from at least some of our young guys, I don’t think it’s out of the question to think we can’t see this group take another step without any marquee signings.
Big time free agents tend to not sign with Sacramento
I don’t think I really need to go into much detail here. We don’t attract big time free agents. Yes, we are an up & coming team. Yes, we are a fun team. Yes, we have cap space, but there are a lot of teams out there that have cap space this offseason. And there are a lot of teams in the West that will also be right there in the playoff hunt that can attract free agents (GSW, HOU, DEN, LAL, POR, OKC, UTA, SAS, LAC, DAL, MIN).
We’re likely only going to be in the market for role players. Not to say role players can’t help, but they aren’t going to be the types of players that move the needle when it comes to becoming a contender. As for these role players, we’re likely paying a premium for them to come here as well. Again, there are a fair amount of teams with cap space, we’ll likely have to overpay players (especially with the California tax) to convince them to come to Sacramento. It just puts us in a position where we are more likely to sign players to bad contracts.
Now I’m not saying it’s impossible. I think Bjelica and Ferrell were great value signings last year, but those players were picked up after the initial round of signings. Guys like Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Lopez, Dedmon, etc. are likely going to be some of the initial players teams reach out to for their role player contracts.
Not to mention these are 28-32 year old players we’re using to help us make the playoffs in the next couple of years. What happens when their contracts expire? We’re likely over the cap with extensions in place for Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Fox, Giles, and Bagley so we’re either using our bird rights to resign those 33-35 year old players, or we simply let them go in free agency and hope that we hit on a lot of our late draft picks over the years to fill the void.
Just to summarize, we’re not going to be able to sign a big time free agent, the upper tier role players will likely result in us overpaying (which may just make them a bad contract a year or two down the road), and signing 28-32 year old role players right now doesn’t help us during the years when we likely will be competing at a much higher level (when Fox & Bagley hit their prime years)
We still have no established all-star level talent (not potential) on our team
I know this probably outrages some of you, but it’s really the truth. We don’t have any established stars on this team. We have players who look promising and are on a good trajectory to becoming a star, but we don’t want to make the mistake of counting our chickens before they hatch.
Locking up all of our cap space this off-season means that we’re thinking that a core of Fox, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Giles, Bagley, and future 1st/2nd round picks is good enough to eventually compete for a championship. Some of you may say “why are we talking about a championship? Let’s make the playoffs first.” But this goes to my point about us not having any established stars. If Fox was as good as Lillard and Bagley was as good as Anthony Davis, do you think we would be having conversations about playoffs or championships? We would say these two guys are enough to carry us to a title and we have Hield, Bogdanovic, Giles, etc. as well, let’s go sign some solid role players to put us in the thick of things. The truth is that we’re not there. They need more time to develop and work on their games before they can get to that level.
The point is that Fox & Bagley still could not reach their potential. What if Fox tops out as a Jeff Teague? What if Bagley becomes a Millsap level player? I wouldn’t bet against these two reaching their potential, but there is still a chance that they don’t develop into star level players. It's naive to think otherwise. If you have locked up all of your cap space with role players this off-season, you don’t have as much flexibility to collect assets in search of drafting a star or trading a collection of those assets for a star that becomes available.
We can keep the entirety of our core on this team for at least the next 5 years
The last and probably the biggest reason why I think we should trade our salary cap for 1st round picks is because we can control our core for at least 5 more years. Barnes is the one exception as he is a unrestricted FA next year, but he seemed to enjoy playing with our guys and has a starting SF spot with his name on it. Hield & Bogdanovic we can keep on this team for at least another 5 years, Fox & Giles we can keep on this team for another 6 years, and Bagley we can keep on this team for another 7 years.
Why are we in such a hurry to go sign veteran role players to help us make the playoffs next season?
If we were in a situation where we were a fringe playoff team but we had Anthony Davis who was becoming an unrestricted free agent in the next off-season or two, then yeah! Go sign some guys that could help the team win today in an attempt to convince Davis to stay.
Luckily, we’re in a position that we don’t have to worry about that for (at most) 4 years. If Hield is bummed out that we didn’t try and sign Lopez and instead we made a salary dump trade for another 1st round pick, guess what? He can’t just walk out the door next off-season. We have the ability to match any offer sheet and keep him on this roster for another 4 years. Sure, he can sign the qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent the next year, but is he really going to be that upset over us accumulating assets vs. signing a 28-32 year old role player to help a core comprised of a 20, 21, 21, 26, 26, & 27 year old? Don’t be silly.
So what are you recommending & how is that going to help us win a title?
If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m recommending executing some salary dump trades with a couple low key signings to round out the roster. I’ll break it down by the various sections of the off-season.
2019 NBA Draft
2019 Free Agency
PG – Fox / Jones / Ferrell
SG – Hield / Bogdanovic
SF – Barnes / V. Carter / Roby
PF – Bagley / Bjelica / Swanigan
C – Kabengele / Giles / Bol Bol / Leonard
2020 Off-season
Next off-season, Barnes would become an unrestricted free agent and Hield & Bogdanovic would both have a qualifying offer. Bjelica would also have a team option to consider. Barnes would likely cost $14-16 mil/year on his new deal. Hield’s cap hold is $14.5 mil and Bogdanovic’s cap hold is $12.8 mil. Not to mention our 1st round pick next year will likely have a cap hold of around $2 mil. If we resigned Barnes, we’d have about $31 mil in cap space that could be used before needing to resign Hield & Bogdanovic. If we let Bjelica walk, that goes up to $37.2 mil in cap space.
We would have Fox, Jones, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Roby, Bagley, Bjelica, Swanigan, Giles, Bol Bol, & Kabengele under contract. That’s 13 players already. We still would have our own 1st round pick and four 2nd round picks. I’d still trade our cap space in the 2020 off-season for a 1st or two; however, this time, I’d look to move up in the 2020 draft (rather than add more picks) or look to accumulate future 1st round picks (2021, 2022, 2023). The 2022 draft is rumored to be the famous “double draft” where it will be the first year where high school players can enter directly into the NBA, but the draft class will also include all of the players that had to go to college for at least 1 year (thus the talent pool should theoretically be deeper).
If we are successful at trading away our cap space in the 2020 off-season for future 1st round picks, we could potentially have these assets:
Players
1st Round Picks
2nd Round Picks
Summary
That is a ton of assets to work with. They could make a lot of consolidation trades for better players or be a great trading partner for a team that wants to move their star player and rebuild.
I just don’t agree with the idea of overpaying (or paying market value) 28-32 year old role players like Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Lopez, Dedmon, etc. when we are still in a position to collect assets while the team still gets better on the floor every year. Signing the role players is more or less betting on the core we have in place; whereas, this approach is more or so increasing the odds of finding a star either through draft & development (since we have more picks) or through a trade (since we would have a lot assets to attract other teams).
Is it really time to go all in on the playoffs?
The team has $21.3 mil in cap space this off-season, and that can grow to $37.5 mil in cap space if we let Cauley-Stein, Ferrell, & Mason walk. It grows to $61.7 mil if Barnes opts out. One thing is for certain, the Kings have some cap space this off-season. The question is how do best spend it to improve this team and put them in a position to one day make the playoffs, but also to one day win a championship.
There are many fans who would prefer to spend that cap space on free agents like Vucevic, Lopez, Dedmon, Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Carroll, the list goes on and on. Their logic stems from the notion that we won 39 games last year and just missed the playoffs; therefore, if we sign a couple good veteran role players, it might push us over the edge (along with the progression from our young players) to becoming a playoff team as early as next season. To this I ask, why the need to catapult ourselves into the playoffs by spending on short term, role players who will likely be well out of their prime by the time Fox (21) and Bagley (20) hit their primes?
I tend to be met with answers such as:
- Hield, Bogdanovic, & Barnes are due for a new contract next offseason. This is the only chance we will get to sign free agents to improve the team
- Playoff experience for our core players is more valuable than any 1st round pick
- We will give our core the wrong impression if we don’t do everything in our power to sign players that help them now
All of these responses either don’t make sense or are insignificant to me. I’m of the line of thinking that we should trade our cap space for 1st round picks (whether they are in this draft or a draft in the future). There are mainly four reasons why I stick to this line of thinking…
- The majority of the team that won 39 games last season is returning
- Big time free agents tend to not sign with Sacramento
- We still have no established all-star level talent (not potential) on our team
- We can keep the entirety of our core on this team for at least the next 5 years
The majority of the team that won 39 games last season is returning
As I mentioned above, one of the responses I am met with in regard to not wanting to trade our cap space for 1st round picks is due to fans thinking it will jeopardize our ability to make the playoffs. To some degree, they are right. I am replacing cap space that can be spent on a win now role players for a 1st round rookie who may not contribute to winning early on. However, the players that played 70% of the minutes on the 2018-19 Kings would be back next year. The point is that a large majority of the players that contributed to the 39 win season will be back to pick up where they left off.
Not only will they be there to pick-up where they left off, but we should expect progression from our young guys that would ultimately make us a better team (Fox – 21, Hield – 26, Bogdan – 26, Barnes – 27, Bagley – 20, Giles – 21).
Again, since we are bringing back a lot of the same players that contributed to the 39 win season and the fact that we should expect progression from at least some of our young guys, I don’t think it’s out of the question to think we can’t see this group take another step without any marquee signings.
Big time free agents tend to not sign with Sacramento
I don’t think I really need to go into much detail here. We don’t attract big time free agents. Yes, we are an up & coming team. Yes, we are a fun team. Yes, we have cap space, but there are a lot of teams out there that have cap space this offseason. And there are a lot of teams in the West that will also be right there in the playoff hunt that can attract free agents (GSW, HOU, DEN, LAL, POR, OKC, UTA, SAS, LAC, DAL, MIN).
We’re likely only going to be in the market for role players. Not to say role players can’t help, but they aren’t going to be the types of players that move the needle when it comes to becoming a contender. As for these role players, we’re likely paying a premium for them to come here as well. Again, there are a fair amount of teams with cap space, we’ll likely have to overpay players (especially with the California tax) to convince them to come to Sacramento. It just puts us in a position where we are more likely to sign players to bad contracts.
Now I’m not saying it’s impossible. I think Bjelica and Ferrell were great value signings last year, but those players were picked up after the initial round of signings. Guys like Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Lopez, Dedmon, etc. are likely going to be some of the initial players teams reach out to for their role player contracts.
Not to mention these are 28-32 year old players we’re using to help us make the playoffs in the next couple of years. What happens when their contracts expire? We’re likely over the cap with extensions in place for Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Fox, Giles, and Bagley so we’re either using our bird rights to resign those 33-35 year old players, or we simply let them go in free agency and hope that we hit on a lot of our late draft picks over the years to fill the void.
Just to summarize, we’re not going to be able to sign a big time free agent, the upper tier role players will likely result in us overpaying (which may just make them a bad contract a year or two down the road), and signing 28-32 year old role players right now doesn’t help us during the years when we likely will be competing at a much higher level (when Fox & Bagley hit their prime years)
We still have no established all-star level talent (not potential) on our team
I know this probably outrages some of you, but it’s really the truth. We don’t have any established stars on this team. We have players who look promising and are on a good trajectory to becoming a star, but we don’t want to make the mistake of counting our chickens before they hatch.
Locking up all of our cap space this off-season means that we’re thinking that a core of Fox, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Giles, Bagley, and future 1st/2nd round picks is good enough to eventually compete for a championship. Some of you may say “why are we talking about a championship? Let’s make the playoffs first.” But this goes to my point about us not having any established stars. If Fox was as good as Lillard and Bagley was as good as Anthony Davis, do you think we would be having conversations about playoffs or championships? We would say these two guys are enough to carry us to a title and we have Hield, Bogdanovic, Giles, etc. as well, let’s go sign some solid role players to put us in the thick of things. The truth is that we’re not there. They need more time to develop and work on their games before they can get to that level.
The point is that Fox & Bagley still could not reach their potential. What if Fox tops out as a Jeff Teague? What if Bagley becomes a Millsap level player? I wouldn’t bet against these two reaching their potential, but there is still a chance that they don’t develop into star level players. It's naive to think otherwise. If you have locked up all of your cap space with role players this off-season, you don’t have as much flexibility to collect assets in search of drafting a star or trading a collection of those assets for a star that becomes available.
We can keep the entirety of our core on this team for at least the next 5 years
The last and probably the biggest reason why I think we should trade our salary cap for 1st round picks is because we can control our core for at least 5 more years. Barnes is the one exception as he is a unrestricted FA next year, but he seemed to enjoy playing with our guys and has a starting SF spot with his name on it. Hield & Bogdanovic we can keep on this team for at least another 5 years, Fox & Giles we can keep on this team for another 6 years, and Bagley we can keep on this team for another 7 years.
Why are we in such a hurry to go sign veteran role players to help us make the playoffs next season?
If we were in a situation where we were a fringe playoff team but we had Anthony Davis who was becoming an unrestricted free agent in the next off-season or two, then yeah! Go sign some guys that could help the team win today in an attempt to convince Davis to stay.
Luckily, we’re in a position that we don’t have to worry about that for (at most) 4 years. If Hield is bummed out that we didn’t try and sign Lopez and instead we made a salary dump trade for another 1st round pick, guess what? He can’t just walk out the door next off-season. We have the ability to match any offer sheet and keep him on this roster for another 4 years. Sure, he can sign the qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent the next year, but is he really going to be that upset over us accumulating assets vs. signing a 28-32 year old role player to help a core comprised of a 20, 21, 21, 26, 26, & 27 year old? Don’t be silly.
So what are you recommending & how is that going to help us win a title?
If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m recommending executing some salary dump trades with a couple low key signings to round out the roster. I’ll break it down by the various sections of the off-season.
2019 NBA Draft
- Trade 2021 SAC 2nd (Top 55 protected) for Timofey Mozgov & #16
- Draft Bol Bol at #16
- Trade #46 for Meyers Leonard & #25
- Draft Mfiondu Kabengele at #25
- Draft the best wing available at #40 (Bazley, Okpala, Windler, Samanic, Roby, McDaniels, King, Jeffries)
- Draft & stash a euro player at #60
2019 Free Agency
- Harrison Barnes opts-in
- Keep Yogi Ferrell
- Let Willie Cauley-Stein & Frank Mason walk
- We’d have $5.6 mil in cap space. Sign Tyus Jones to a $16.5 mil/3 year deal (last year being a team option)
- Waive/buy-out Timofey Mozgov to open up another roster spot
- Use the room exception to sign a veteran wing mentor (V. Carter, Sefolosha, Brewer, Dudley, Temple, Shumpert)
PG – Fox / Jones / Ferrell
SG – Hield / Bogdanovic
SF – Barnes / V. Carter / Roby
PF – Bagley / Bjelica / Swanigan
C – Kabengele / Giles / Bol Bol / Leonard
2020 Off-season
Next off-season, Barnes would become an unrestricted free agent and Hield & Bogdanovic would both have a qualifying offer. Bjelica would also have a team option to consider. Barnes would likely cost $14-16 mil/year on his new deal. Hield’s cap hold is $14.5 mil and Bogdanovic’s cap hold is $12.8 mil. Not to mention our 1st round pick next year will likely have a cap hold of around $2 mil. If we resigned Barnes, we’d have about $31 mil in cap space that could be used before needing to resign Hield & Bogdanovic. If we let Bjelica walk, that goes up to $37.2 mil in cap space.
We would have Fox, Jones, Hield, Bogdanovic, Barnes, Roby, Bagley, Bjelica, Swanigan, Giles, Bol Bol, & Kabengele under contract. That’s 13 players already. We still would have our own 1st round pick and four 2nd round picks. I’d still trade our cap space in the 2020 off-season for a 1st or two; however, this time, I’d look to move up in the 2020 draft (rather than add more picks) or look to accumulate future 1st round picks (2021, 2022, 2023). The 2022 draft is rumored to be the famous “double draft” where it will be the first year where high school players can enter directly into the NBA, but the draft class will also include all of the players that had to go to college for at least 1 year (thus the talent pool should theoretically be deeper).
If we are successful at trading away our cap space in the 2020 off-season for future 1st round picks, we could potentially have these assets:
Players
- Fox
- Jones
- Hield
- Bogdanovic
- Barnes
- Roby
- Bagley
- Giles
- Swanigan
- Bol Bol
- Kabengele
1st Round Picks
- 2020 SAC 1st
- 2021 SAC 1st
- 2021 1st (from salary dump trade in the 2020 off-season)
- 2022 SAC 1st
- 2022 1st (from salary dump trade in the 2020 off-season)
2nd Round Picks
- 2020 SAC 2nd
- 2020 MIA 2nd
- 2020 DET 2nd
- 2020 HOU 2nd
- 2021 SAC 2nd
- 2021 MEM 2nd
- 2022 SAC 2nd
Summary
That is a ton of assets to work with. They could make a lot of consolidation trades for better players or be a great trading partner for a team that wants to move their star player and rebuild.
I just don’t agree with the idea of overpaying (or paying market value) 28-32 year old role players like Beverley, Joseph, Aminu, Ariza, Lopez, Dedmon, etc. when we are still in a position to collect assets while the team still gets better on the floor every year. Signing the role players is more or less betting on the core we have in place; whereas, this approach is more or so increasing the odds of finding a star either through draft & development (since we have more picks) or through a trade (since we would have a lot assets to attract other teams).
