2022 Trade Deadline Grades

[BoogieTime]

I think they understand their problem quite well and went about addressing it. They are a poor ownership fiscally who took a beating with the Kings and their other downtown projects during covid. On top of that they were bleeding funds being a bottom 5 attendance team and their ticket prices or going down too.

Bringing in talent now changes the fiscal direction. Their is a buzz, and tickets will be bought once again.

If they were to remain a poor standings team and they missed in the draft, the poor ownership would be looking at half a decade or more of 11,000 people buying 8 dollar tickets etc.

I could see this if not for the fact that they've been doing similar things prior to being in financial straights due to COVID. Secondly, I'd argue that creating a young, up and coming team is the clearer path to success in the short term than creating a good team. They could have done that if they'd sold off the vets and tanked the year for a pick. You get a top 4 spot and then you sell that. I'd say that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than what they're targeting now--which seems to be some combination of either a) We made the play-in and we're gonna be good (despite getting destroyed in that play-in game) OR b) We almost made the play-in and we'll be good!

There are arguments for/against bottoming out to rebuild, some times it works and some times it doesn't.

One of the main points of my post was that they didn't need to bottom out over a long period. They could be opportunistic about it and push for next year.

If they continued to blow top picks we may go decades without competitive basketball, though I understand your point.

That's the thing, though. Good trades, signings, and picks are all predicated on the same skill: talent evaluation. If the Kings sucked at draft picks they'll suck equally as much on the other 2 (see: Vlade). The difference between the last 1 (picks) and the former 2 is that it's a viable path for the Kings (signings aren't as no one will sign here) that doesn't require them to give up existing assets/talent (as trades do).

For this year only? So move vets like Barnes who you might not be able to recover in FA?

The Kings are going to have a short window to put something around Sabonis.

I still hope with their strength of schedule and the changing draft odds landscape that it wont be too big of a deal

[sacking123]

I'm giving it a B because losing Haliburton stings and ideally I would have liked to move Holmes for a stretch 4. We are loaded on wings now and I love the depth we have, a potential bench unit of Davion/Donte/Jackson/Harkless/Holmes looks really good.

I think we have a legit shot of grabbing a play in spot and possibly even sneaking into the 8 seed now. The head coaching hire this summer is going to be more important than any of these trades by a long shot. Grab a good coach and possibly get that stretch 4 in free agency and we can be a really good squad next year.

This pretty much sums up my feelings. It was a terrific deadline and Monte deserves credit for the work they put in.
I completely forgot about Jackson as part of the bench depth.

[sacking123]

“A,” easily. People are sleeping on the lyles pickup. I’d consider starting him with Saboner.


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Good point. While a very small sample size he is shooting 38% as a starter and 18ppg. When he has minutes he has produced, at least offensively.

[City of Trees]

I give the trade deadline grade B+ on today's value.

1. Trading Tyrese away hurts. I haven't felt this type of pain from a Kings trade since C Webb. At least with Webb, it was the end of an era deal, I can look back at all of those wonderful moments, we will never know with Tyrese and I'm not sure if that feeling ever goes away? Most of you know I was a fan of Tyrese and made multiple posts about him during his time at Iowa State. Jalen Rose calls himself the President of the Tyrese Haliburton fan club, sir I respectfully decline. Not gonna lie, I might buy a Pacers Haliburton jersey one day. Don't @ me

I think Monte's timing of trading Haliburton was fantastic. He worked under the radar while we saw Hali's stock rise to an all time high. I read a post in another thread by user Stormi ( i believe), he said its hard to dislike the trade when Monte got back 120 cents on the dollar for Hali, and I agree.

Remove the names and look at the structure of the return: All- Star, get off long term bad money, (2) veteran role players at a position of need, don't take on any bad money. That is one hell of a return. Its a no brainer when you factor in the All-Star unlocks game for your current Max player. As much as i hate seeing Tyrese traded away I have to remove emotion and acknowledge the deal was needed for this team to improve. .

2. I really like the way Monte does business. It has taken Monte 1.5 seasons to trim Vlade's roster down to bare bones where only Fox/Barnes/Holmes remains. For years we as fans have pointed out time and time again the lack of vision. I think trading for Sabonis finally revealed a direction.

3. The Kings kept all of their future draft picks, added one 2nd round pick in 2023, and have Richaun Holmes to use as a decent trade asset this offseason. Kings have positioned themselves to get better.

4. Lastly, not really deadline related but something I wanted to talk about, BPA is the way to draft when you aren't contending. Monte walks in the door and his first order of business is giving Fox a max deal. He then proceeds to draft two PG's in his first two drafts. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if we learned drafting two players at his position was the cause of Fox's growing disinterest/down year. I mean, think about it, put yourself in Fox's shoes, you sign a max deal with a horrible team, where the plan is to build around you, but instead you see the team using its draft capital to add players at your position. Monte stuck to his philosophy (which he shared from day one) and took BPA. Now Fox can eat. Develop those players and cash in. The Kings don't trade for a Sabonis if they draft for a position of need at #12, which is totally justifiable at that point in the lottery. Keep drafting BPA Monte!

[BoogieTime]

I give the trade deadline grade B+

1. Trading Tyrese away hurts. I haven't felt this type of pain from a Kings trade since C Webb. At least with Webb, it was the end of an era deal, I can look back at all of those wonderful moments, we will never know with Tyrese and I'm not sure if that feeling ever goes away? Most of you know I was a fan of Tyrese and made multiple posts about him during his time at Iowa State. Jalen Rose calls himself the President of the Tyrese Haliburton fan club, sir I respectfully decline. Not gonna lie, I might buy a Pacers Haliburton jersey one day. Don't @ me

I think Monte's timing of trading Haliburton was fantastic. He worked under the radar while we saw Hali's stock rise to an all time high. I read a post in another thread by user Stormi ( i believe), he said its hard to dislike the trade when Monte got back 120 cents on the dollar for Hali, and I agree.

Remove the names and look at the structure of the return: All- Star, get off long term bad money, (2) veteran role players at a position of need, don't take on any bad money. That is one hell of a return. Its a no brainer when you factor in the All-Star unlocks game for your current Max player. As much as i hate seeing Tyrese traded away I have to remove emotion and acknowledge the deal was needed for this team to improve. It's a good trade.

2. I really like the way Monte does business. It has taken Monte 1.5 seasons to trim Vlade's roster down to bare bones where only Fox/Barnes/Holmes remains. For years we as fans have pointed out time and time again the lack of vision. I think trading for Sabonis finally revealed a direction.

3. The Kings kept all of their future draft picks, added one 2nd round pick in 2023, and have Richaun Holmes to use as a decent trade asset this offseason. Kings have positioned themselves to get better.

4. Lastly, not really deadline related but something I wanted to talk about, BPA is the way to draft when you aren't contending. Monte walks in the door and his first order of business is giving Fox a max deal. He then proceeds to draft two PG's in his first two drafts. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if we learned drafting two players at his position was the cause of Fox's growing disinterest/down year. I mean, think about it, put yourself in Fox's shoes, you sign a max deal with a horrible team, where the plan is to build around you, but instead you see the team using its draft capital to add players at your position. Monte stuck to his philosophy (which he shared from day one) and took BPA. Now Fox can eat. Develop those players and cash in. The Kings don't trade for a Sabonis if they draft for a position of need at #12, which is totally justifiable at that point in the lottery. Keep drafting BPA Monte!

This sounds kind and scheming to Monte. The other way of looking at it is he was under directives to make a win now move, as evidenced by several leaks, and really only Simmons and Sabonis were available in terms of big names, and he went after Simmons first, and may have got lucky by Morey's bluff. Only Tyrese was bringing back good value

Anyways I support Monte's stint for the most part. He's drafted well, and looks to have an eye for under the radar adds to the roster. I agree with taking BPA

[City of Trees]

This sounds kind and scheming to Monte. The other way of looking at it is he was under directives to make a win now move, as evidenced by several leaks, and really only Simmons and Sabonis were available in terms of big names, and he went after Simmons first, and may have got lucky by Morey's bluff. Only Tyrese was bringing back good value

Win now moves would not consist of drafting the same position as Fox two years in a row. Win now moves would not consist of retaining your draft assets that could easily have grabbed you an upgrade, and we both know those players where there to be had. I get it, there are leaks of Vivek saying Vivek things, but don't let that stop you from analyzing the moves from a basketball perspective. Monte learned under Morey for years.

[jazanetti]

C.
We had to move firsts to Indi instead of Hali.

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[LightTheBeam]

Somewhere between a C- and a D-. They can't get an F since they didn't trade any future FRPs--so that's a win (I guess). Overall reasoning:

Everything really comes down to timing and direction. There are other bits here and there (acquiring vets) that I'll talk about, but at the end of the day it's all direction related. The Kings are a bad team. They've been on a treadmill of below average for 15 years now. They didn't have the in-house talent to compete. What's more, the lack of sellers this year (and last!!!) gave them the perfect time to do what I'll call an "opportunistic rebuild". An "opportunistic rebuild" isn't like what Hinkie did; it's not bottoming out for multiple years and building from the ground up. It's recognizing that, for whatever confluence of reasons, your team sucks this year. Maybe your star is having a bad year, maybe you kept a crappy coach too long, maybe you've been depleted by injuries. You're bad, whatever. Or, put differently: you're worse than what you should be.

That was the Kings this year. They're probably a 30-some-odd win team if Fox doesn't **** the bed for the first 3 months of the year, but going into the trade deadline they're sitting around 20 wins and they look to have a lottery ceiling of the 5th pick. Couple that with the fact that there are so few sellers at the deadline and you have an opportunity to sell high on your existing talent, get a good pick, and all the while you're doing this with a cabinet full of talent that's underperforming.

Portland and (ironically) Indiana both appear to be doing this exact same thing. Lillard is injured and the team sucks. If they were the Kings they'd have tried to buy vets to keep the team afloat until Lillard came back, maybe make the play-in, and then either lose there, or get stomped by the Warriors or Suns. What did they do instead? Let Lillard rest, traded vets for some young guys, developed their existing young guys, and got ready for a top pick in the draft.

In this alternate reality where the Kings are (*gulp*) smart, they sell off Barnes and Holmes for assets (picks, young players); they take whatever they can get for Hield & Bagley to attempt to clean up the culture; they continue to rest Fox so they can feed Davion more minutes alongside Haliburton; and they give more minutes to Metu, Jones, et al to try to develop them into acceptable role players next year. Then they head into the lottery with the 5th or 6th best chances to move up. Maybe they do and secure Jabari Smith, Chet, etc. Maybe they grab the 4th pick (likely Ivey) and they line up a trade for a star instead of drafting yet another guard.

Either way, the above strategy allows the Kings to take advantage of their current situation and solve their biggest problem (lack of talent) via a larger talent injection at the draft than what they'll get now after the trade.

This isn't to say I think Sabonis is bad or that I think Haliburton is the next Nash. No, the problem is that this team picked a direction that fundamentally misunderstands what their problem is for the myopic target of merely being the 6th worst team in the conference instead of the 3rd or 4th worse.

I shared this sentiment, and I somewhat still do.

The reason I've flipped a bit.

Indiana, San Antonio and Portland flat out sold off their entire teams, it wasn't going to be a given we could out tank any of them.

Looking at the standings

Houston, OKC, Detroit, Orlando were also uncatchable.

From there I really don't think we pass anyone else up. New York and Washington have way less losses than us, and neither of them are tanking. The only other possible team we catch up to is MAYBE New Orleans, who also made a splash themselves.

I honestly think even without the trade, and selling the vets, best case we finish 6. My guess is we now finish 8th. I wonder if Monte waited till the last minute to ensure we couldn't make our pick any worse. We've added a legit piece to the core. We now have 4 legit starters, including 2 borderline all stars, 3 are 25 or younger. Using that 8th pick with Holmes could find us another really good player.

End of the day this is TBD. will be judged this time next season. If we are in the playoffs it will absolutely have been the right move. If sabonis and fox can't figure it out, it will be a giant blunder. But it's too early to really say.

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[LightTheBeam]

I think they understand their problem quite well and went about addressing it. They are a poor ownership fiscally who took a beating with the Kings and their other downtown projects during covid. On top of that they were bleeding funds being a bottom 5 attendance team and their ticket prices or going down too.

Bringing in talent now changes the fiscal direction. Their is a buzz, and tickets will be bought once again.

If they were to remain a poor standings team and they missed in the draft, the poor ownership would be looking at half a decade or more of 11,000 people buying 8 dollar tickets etc.

I could see this if not for the fact that they've been doing similar things prior to being in financial straights due to COVID. Secondly, I'd argue that creating a young, up and coming team is the clearer path to success in the short term than creating a good team. They could have done that if they'd sold off the vets and tanked the year for a pick. You get a top 4 spot and then you sell that. I'd say that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than what they're targeting now--which seems to be some combination of either a) We made the play-in and we're gonna be good (despite getting destroyed in that play-in game) OR b) We almost made the play-in and we'll be good!

There are arguments for/against bottoming out to rebuild, some times it works and some times it doesn't.

One of the main points of my post was that they didn't need to bottom out over a long period. They could be opportunistic about it and push for next year.

If they continued to blow top picks we may go decades without competitive basketball, though I understand your point.

That's the thing, though. Good trades, signings, and picks are all predicated on the same skill: talent evaluation. If the Kings sucked at draft picks they'll suck equally as much on the other 2 (see: Vlade). The difference between the last 1 (picks) and the former 2 is that it's a viable path for the Kings (signings aren't as no one will sign here) that doesn't require them to give up existing assets/talent (as trades do).

One other thing about this.

People keep saying if we make the play ins we will get destroyed. Really? For us to make the play in, it means we finish the last 25 games strong (Unless you think new Orleans who has played much better lately is gonna suddenly fall off?)

Who are the 3 teams locked into the play ins? Minnesota - I don't trust them
LAL - they are absolutely in shambles. I won't be shocked if lebron takes the rest of the year off
LAC - missing George and kawhi.

I mean again, if this team plays well enough to make the play ins. They certainly could beat any of these teams.

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[sacking123]

I think they understand their problem quite well and went about addressing it. They are a poor ownership fiscally who took a beating with the Kings and their other downtown projects during covid. On top of that they were bleeding funds being a bottom 5 attendance team and their ticket prices or going down too.

Bringing in talent now changes the fiscal direction. Their is a buzz, and tickets will be bought once again.

If they were to remain a poor standings team and they missed in the draft, the poor ownership would be looking at half a decade or more of 11,000 people buying 8 dollar tickets etc.

I could see this if not for the fact that they've been doing similar things prior to being in financial straights due to COVID. Secondly, I'd argue that creating a young, up and coming team is the clearer path to success in the short term than creating a good team. They could have done that if they'd sold off the vets and tanked the year for a pick. You get a top 4 spot and then you sell that. I'd say that's a hell of a lot more reasonable than what they're targeting now--which seems to be some combination of either a) We made the play-in and we're gonna be good (despite getting destroyed in that play-in game) OR b) We almost made the play-in and we'll be good!

There are arguments for/against bottoming out to rebuild, some times it works and some times it doesn't.

One of the main points of my post was that they didn't need to bottom out over a long period. They could be opportunistic about it and push for next year.

If they continued to blow top picks we may go decades without competitive basketball, though I understand your point.

That's the thing, though. Good trades, signings, and picks are all predicated on the same skill: talent evaluation. If the Kings sucked at draft picks they'll suck equally as much on the other 2 (see: Vlade). The difference between the last 1 (picks) and the former 2 is that it's a viable path for the Kings (signings aren't as no one will sign here) that doesn't require them to give up existing assets/talent (as trades do).

One other thing about this.

People keep saying if we make the play ins we will get destroyed. Really? For us to make the play in, it means we finish the last 25 games strong (Unless you think new Orleans who has played much better lately is gonna suddenly fall off?)

Who are the 3 teams locked into the play ins? Minnesota - I don't trust them
LAL - they are absolutely in shambles. I won't be shocked if lebron takes the rest of the year off
LAC - missing George and kawhi.

I mean again, if this team plays well enough to make the play ins. They certainly could beat any of these teams.

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This x 100. If the Kings make the play in it simply means they're playing very well. Look at the remaining schedule, it's tough, March is a killer. But to me that is a good thing, either we lose a heap against teams that are PO bound and we see glimpses of good play, but we have a good lottery pick, or we are beating these teams which means a win or two in the play in isn't out of the question.

[sacking123]

I just have to share this. This podcast (I don’t want to share their name coz they obviously suck) but they literally just said that the Pistons were big winners of the Bagley trade because Marvin can be a rim protector. I mean WTF. These guys don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I’m pretty pissed with the YouTube algorithms TBH. Had to laugh though, they said, “let’s be real, if a GM is pissed at a player, they trade them to Sacramento, no player wants to be there”


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[blind prophet]

I look at it like this.

We needed to choose a direction and we did. The value we got back was fantastic. Agree or disagree with the direction.

So value I give him an A

But wait & see if the direction was the proper one.

Can't grade it yet.

[codydaze]

The two people who voted F should share why.

[LightTheBeam]

The two people who voted F should share why.

I'd bet I could guess 1.. not sure the other lol

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[sacking123]

The two people who voted F should share why.

I'd bet I could guess 1.. not sure the other lol

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Burner account. Not going to say a word.

[perezident]

It was an okay trade. Losing Haliburton is real rough; he was definitely our best playmaker. He I believe has a higher ceiling than Fox but I get why the franchise values Fox more.

This trade can't fully be diagnosed..I'll look back to this trade a few years from now to really judge it. Monte has to complete his vision first.