Trey Lyles used to be a promising part of the Beam Team. As a former Kentucky teammate and pal of De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, Trey fit the mold of the prototype “space-and-pace” hybrid big. A guy who could hit threes, fill in as a spot starter, and, on occasion, look more polished than Keegan Murray. He even swiped a few late-game minutes from him. Originally just a throw-in from the Marvin Bagley trade, Trey opted into his player option during the magical Beam Year (2022-23). Back then, vibes couldn’t have been better. He didn’t set the league on fire, but his 7.6 points per game on 36% from deep as the Kings’ eighth man? Solid. Reasonable. He did his job. That performance earned him a two-year, $16 million deal. Spoiler alert: I’m betting Trey won’t be seeing that kind of bag again as he hits free agency as an unrestricted free agent.
Fast forward two years after the Beam Team season and Trey is now in a contract year. He watched the Kings’ front office make some bold moves. Enter DeMar DeRozan on a big deal to shake up the roster, a move that styles clashed so hard I was trying to shoehorn in an AJ Styles joke (wrestling heads, you get it). I even bought a DeMar jersey at the time—not my finest moment. On top of that, the Kings offloaded Sasha Vezenkov and Davion Mitchell in a lesser-heralded move to free up cap space and avoid the luxury tax. None of these changes should’ve impacted Trey much on paper, but somehow they did. With two depth pieces out, Trey became a bigger piece of the rotation puzzle.
Then the season started. Mike Brown, still the head coach back then, trusted Trey as the primary backup center. That was… optimistic. A groin injury in training camp kept him out early, meaning Trey spent the first bit of the season working his way into game shape. Once he did hit the floor, his impact was underwhelming. Playing an average of 20 minutes a game, he only put up 5.5 points and 4 boards on a cringe-worthy 36% shooting. Yikes. Unsurprisingly, the Kings stumbled to a 9-11 start. Having pinned bigger expectations on Trey while juggling new additions like DeMar, combined with the turbulent front office vibes that later led to Mike Brown’s firing and De’Aaron Fox’s unexpected/expected exit, didn’t do anyone any favors. Malik Monk, our steady sixth man, was suddenly thrust into the starting lineup, leaving a major hole in bench production. Trey stepped in, but his inconsistency hurt. His three-point shooting dropped to the worst percentage of his Sacramento tenure, a mediocre 34%.
Credit where it’s due, though. When the shot wasn’t falling, Trey adjusted his game. He embraced the “hustle guy” role, grinding harder on defense and posting the best steal rate of his career (1.1 per 36 minutes). His efforts on the glass improved too, tying his career high in offensive rebounds (1.2 per game). But even these improvements couldn’t mask his struggles. By the trade deadline, the Kings opted to bring in Jonas Valančiūnas to shore up the backup center role, an indictment on Trey, and Jake LaRavia, a high-energy forward who also managed to leapfrog Trey in the rotation once everyone was healthy (well, as healthy as one can be in an injury-plagued stretch run).
Looking back, it feels like everything that could’ve gone wrong for Trey went wrong. The groin injury, the roster changes, and his own shooting woes all contributed to a messy year. Heading into free agency, Trey’s career looks locked into a “solid but unspectacular vet” trajectory. He’s a back-end depth piece at best, and I don’t see any team breaking the bank for him. A vet minimum contract feels like his next logical step. That’s been the story of his decade-long career, really. Trey can pop off occasionally, but trusting him for consistent impact? Nope.
Ultimately, Trey reminds me of my fantasy football draft strategy—focus on the guys who’ll give you steady production week after week, not massive highs and lows, a la Trey.. I’m rooting for him, but putting all the context and stats together, I have to give him a painfully average grade.
Trey’s a C- player, sadly, at best.
On paper Lyles is the perfect fit between Sabonis and Murray. Too bad the games aren’t played on paper.
LOL, on paper DDR, LaVine, Monk and Sabonis should have the Kings in the playoffs. Unfortunately, when you build a team like a fantasy points league, you get 40 wins in real life.
This. If you look at the Kings player acquisitions in terms of fantasy basketball points, it explains a lot. A LOT. Fox for LaVine. DDR. Even Sabonis. All players who rack up fantasy points.
A frustrating player this past season (and the season prior).
His level of play has slowly diminished every season it seems. He looked ready to grab a starting role after his promising first two years in the League, with the Jazz. He was moved to Denver where he also played around 20 mpg, averaging 10 ppg/4.8rpg and shot 38% from3FG. And that’s about where he’s stayed.
An around 16-20 mpg, around 6-9ppg around 4-5 rpg. Jazz, Nuggets, Spurs, Pistons, then Kings. The other teams kept him no more than 2 seasons, he’s been in Sac for 4 seasons.
Promise that turned to meh. An expendable.
Seems a wonderful fellow. I like him on the team as a teammate, but like the Kings as a team, mediocre.
He’s old enough that a younger replacement makes sense (Isaac Jones), and not so old that he provides saavy veteran experience (CoJo, Garret Temple or some such equivalent)
I feel like his vibe mirrors Fox in a way as he has to get mad to be really good.
Lyles is who he is. Like Rob said above, he’s the “type” a player you want next to Keegan and Sabonis. The reality is he’s a poor man’s version of a stretch wing who doesn’t shoot or defend well enough and isn’t athletic enough to warrant good minutes. He’s likely a 4th big on a good team. He does bring his lunch pale to work every day, plays hard, and has a bit of physicality to his game, but if you are giving him 20 minutes a night, your team likely isn’t very good. He’s the Kosta Koufos of stretch 4s.
When you look at his measurables, he would seem to be a guy that could provide length and some weak side rim protection at the four. But he lacks any semblance of lateral quickness and has to gather to get up – he’s just not twitchy enough to fill the bill.
Yup.
Player A: 6’9″ 240lbs with a 7′ wingspan and shoots 34% from three and 74% from the line for his career. Averages 14 and 8 per 36
Player B: 6’8″ 235lbs with 7′ wingspan and shoot 33% from three and 69% from the line for his career. Averages 18 and 6 per 36
Who do you want?
.
.
.
I give you Player C: 6’10” 235lbs, athletic, with a 7’1″ wingspan and averages 19 and 10 per 36 and shoots over 50% from the floor.
What’s wild is he really does have all the tools to be that guy to fit between Keegan and Sabonis. He just totally lacks the IQ to be trusted on the floor.
In theory he has all the tools. In practice he has none of them.
In practice he has all the tools.
In the game, wellllll…
Uhmmm…anybody but bagley (dont say his username three times)
Luke Walton and Mike Brown being considered by the Knicks.
“This is the team that passed on Luka, and traded away Haliburton and gave De’Aaron Fox away for a song. These guys are likely marvelous”
There’s so many good coaches available this offseason, I can’t see the Knicks settling for either of these two.
Yeah, that would be crazy. Malone and Jenkins come to mind for me. I think they would be good there.
Meh.
(That’s about Lyles. Not about the article!)
Highly replaceable player. Let Isaac Jones get the minutes, if the Kings don’t bring in another stretch big that is better.
I hope they can retain Jake LaRavia. We need him.
I think we can hope for the best but fully expect the worse. I’d be shocked if he settles for a little over $5M per year.
I’d be shocked if he actually wants to come back here, despite the cliche comments of “I like city, my teammates, and the coaches”.
This was from his interview yesterday by Hoopshype:
Q: Are you open to going anywhere else in free agency?
Jake: Yeah, options are definitely open. It’s not like I have my mind set on one place. I’ve seen plenty of cases where it’s hard to turn down money at the end of the day. It’s a business.
And he made some comments about taxes and how that affects things. $5.1m in CA versus other lower tax states. Makes a huge difference.
Isn’t it funny how the tax thing affects the Kings but not the Dubs, Lakers or Clips?
Not disagreeing with you, but there is a lot more money to be made off of the court in those markets than there is in Sac. For decades the Lakers have lined up their players with deep pocketed sponsors in the LA market and beyond. It’s quite the side hustle for the non-stars on the team. Austin freaking Reaves got a $1M shoe deal is 2nd season in LA! How long did it take for Fox to get a shoe and it was under the Curry line!
As for Sac…we have the Pizza Guys. The Kings didn’t even keep their jersey sponsor for the whole season.
Shaq had a good counterpoint to this mindset. In the 80s or 90s, it would absolutely matter if a player went to a big market team because the fanbase and TV were your main means of getting sponsorships. But now, almoat everything is social media driven. If you are present in social media and you are savvy, you can reach a global audience in an instant. And the number of views, likes, and followers will dictate how much you rake in, thanks to this thing im typing on.
Those owners can afford to be competitive in the West while fielding star powered lineups and making mistakes on the supporting cast now and again. Vivek tries to be an owner like that but can’t afford to be in the luxury tax / apron. Not only is he in over his head from a “how to be a successful NBA owner” perspective, he also just can’t keep up with the cost and is getting outclassed in every area except his arena, the one area that kinda matters least. Cool arena, tho.
Sad to see, everyone has faded from the Beam team minus Domas, Keeg, Monk & Keon. It was shocking to see everyone struggle shooting last year except Ellis & Sabonis. After moving HB and his accurate outside shot, guys really needed to step up….instead Murray, Monk, Huerter & Trey all shot very poorly. What a shame, but hey…they could always bounce back next year I suppose.
I would rescind the HB and Fox trades in a heartbeat. Hated both trades at the time and even more so now.
Fox, HB > DDR, Lavine
Was decent for a while until he wasn’t. Seemed like a good dude though, so wish him all the best.
That trade was quite interesting looking back on it. With all the talk recently of hitting on smaller moves to take a decent roster to a good roster, the Kings traded the remnants of Marvin Bagley + the rights to Vanja Marinkovic (never made it over and never will) to get Lyles and DiVincenzo (and Josh Jackson, meh), two players that could actually play a role (to various degrees) on a winning team.
A good return for Bagley on paper, although it didn’t do much for the Kings that year because the roster was wank and DDV was working his way back from serious injury.
In my view, that was probably the last trade the Kings ‘won’ since arguably February this year; they traded nothing for something. You can argue that the Huerter trade and the DeRozan trade were decent trades at the time, but other than that, the Kings trade history gets very bleak. Whether it’s the Jaden Hardy trade, the Prosper trade, the Duarte move, and of course the Davion/Sasha salary dump, all moves that were piss-poor and could’ve supported the building of a deeper, more well-rounded roster when the Kings needed it most.
Instead, we are here.
The trade was actually a good one. They just didn’t retain DDV, and they asked Lyles to do more than he probably should have.
Sure would have liked to have DDV over Duarte in the 23-24 season!
The last couple years version of DDV with the LTB szn would have been sick.
Im not exactly sure if DDV would have stayed, even though he was the King’s previous target in FA. In the few weeks he was here, his body language and interviews seemed to point to not wanting to stay. Granted he was recovering from an injury, he didnt to seem to mesh well with the group back then *shrug*
Lowe posited this just for fun:
Trae Young for Lavine straight up?
They’re on identical contracts. Don’t see why the Hawks would do it unless a FRP was attached. If I were Perry I’d make the trade straight up and throw in some seconds.
Straight up? I think I’d do it I fills a position of need and allows Keon to start as the off guard. It would be the skinniest and lightest backcourt in the the league, but a PnR game of Young and Sabonis could be…something, I guess.
Here’s a wilder one. PHX apparently does NOT want Beal back next year. There is even the suggestion of just letting him sit, sort of how Wall was treated at the end of his career/contract. Would you do a straight up trade of LaVine for Beal if PHX attached this year’s #29 and a some future seconds? It basically boils down to an extra $16M over two years to eat Beal’s deal over LaVine’s.
So basically, would I rather gargle with razor blades or with sharp knives?
Beal still has that no trade clause in his contract. Do you think he’d agree to be traded to the Kings?
Doubtful, but they seem to be making things very uncomfortable for him in PHX, and they are going to have a really hard time finding someone to eat his deal with only this year’s first rounder as the kicker.
What’s the going price of a first rounder these days? Is $16M (which is what the Kings would end up adding to their costs) too high, especially since it’s #29 and Beal is only good for a half season of games.
I will say this, Beal is likely a better version of Monk, when healthy. He can be a primary ball handler, although not an ideal one. I guess you could start him next to Keon if you had to. The Kings could take a flier on a prospect at #29 (Bogo Markovic?) or combine the #29 and #42 to trade up in the draft.
OT: The Kings have added another asst coach
Note: Adams is Mike Woodson’s son-in-law.
So the “Associate” Coach got his son-in-law on the bench with him. Is Christie just being set up as a legacy hire figure head?
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