Is a 4 year/78 million dollar contract enough to keep Malik Monk?

[BoogieTime]

The salary cap doesn't make it that simple. To get under the cap we need to dump several guys, just to give Monk more than 18. That eliminates all flexibility. No tradable contracts, no MLE, and potentially no draft pick.

So again
Plan 1 (best case) - resign monk, use Duarte/Huerter/Mitchell/Barnes salaries with picks to improve.

Plan 2 - Monk walks, use the MLE to get the best replacement we can. use Duarte/Huerter/Mitchell/Barnes salaries with picks to improve.

Plan 3 (what you are suggesting) - gut the team, resign Monk to whatever he wants. Lose any salaries we can use to improve. Locked into Fox, Monk, Keegan, Sasha, Lyles, Sabonis with no ways to improve other than MLE/Draft pick in 2025.

Again its not as simple as you are making it out to be. You need to look at the big picture.

plan 3) Monk is as integral to the Kings IMO as any player in the Grant/Kuzma/even Pascal tier IMO. Guy is IMO improving in game, putting around 20/7 fairly efficiently in starters minutes and fairly young with IMO room to grow. So you would be talking about a Donovan Mitchell type deal which is hard to pull off anyways. He's putting up better per 36 and certain advanced stats than Mikal Bridges even who would cost three times the draft capital if even ever available and doesn't have the chemistry on/off the floor. And since these guys are expirings this or next year doing in in the next one to two years (except Barnes) instead of waiting and making the deal with Monk in the fold.

I think gutting the team to give Monk a big contract would be a worse move than just letting Monk walk and finding a replacement scorer off the bench.

Gut it? Do you agree Barnes/Huerter/Davion etc have little on court value (my biggest concern with them is how their play is tipping their contracts to negative)? You mean you’d like to save their contracts for trades?

[codydaze]

plan 3) Monk is as integral to the Kings IMO as any player in the Grant/Kuzma/even Pascal tier IMO. Guy is IMO improving in game, putting around 20/7 fairly efficiently in starters minutes and fairly young with IMO room to grow. So you would be talking about a Donovan Mitchell type deal which is hard to pull off anyways. He's putting up better per 36 and certain advanced stats than Mikal Bridges even who would cost three times the draft capital if even ever available and doesn't have the chemistry on/off the floor. And since these guys are expirings this or next year doing in in the next one to two years (except Barnes) instead of waiting and making the deal with Monk in the fold.

I think gutting the team to give Monk a big contract would be a worse move than just letting Monk walk and finding a replacement scorer off the bench.

Gut it? Do you agree Barnes/Huerter/Davion etc have little on court value (my biggest concern with them is how their play is tipping their contracts to negative)? You mean you’d like to save their contracts for trades?

Huerter/Barnes/Davion make up 26% of total minutes played for the Kings and the starting unit including Huerter/Barnes still have a positive net rating as a group playing the 4th most minutes together as a 5 man group in the league. You would have to strictly salary dump those contracts in order to make the room to give Monk a big deal and because they would need to be pure salary dumps, you probably have to attach assets to them to get them done.

We would be left with little assets and tradeable contracts to make any more moves and would need to replace 26% of the rotation, including two starters (starting Monk is not the solution), with the MLE and minimum contracts. There would need to be a lot of faith in Keon and Colby to become impactful, regular rotation guys and as much as I really like both of their games and potential, that might be jumping the gun.

I love Monk and recognize how important he is to this team but this move would essentially be putting a lid on our ceiling as it is now and at the same time pushing all of our chips in on it. You know I'm as confident as anyone in the development of Keegan but this is taking a big gamble on him reaching someone like Paul George levels and that's not a gamble I'd be willing to take at this point. I think it would be better future and asset management to be patient, wait until we get control of all our picks back and wait to make a bigger chips in move.