Incompetence Reigns in Sacramento

Since the Domantas Sabonis acquisition, De’Aaron Fox, and anyone who has ever watched a single second of any level of basketball, has asked for one, simple thing: a rotation of quality, three-and-D wings to support the Fox-Sabonis pairing. Despite that very obvious, critical, roster-breaking need, Monte McNair has politely declined to take any significant action in that direction. Instead, he’s shopped the incredibly attractive pairing of Kevin Huerter and Trey Lyles for the past decade-and-a-half, with not a bite to show for it.

In lieu of an actual difference-making deal, he’s pretended to be in the running for Pascal Siakam. He made overtures in the OG Anunoby talks. He eavesdropped on the Mikal Bridges conversations, and more recently, he’s leaked the news of being close to John Collins and Cam Johnson. But those moves aren’t coming, and they never were. Harrison Barnes and DeMar DeRozan and Keegan Murray are good enough. They allow the Kings to maintain flexibility while also staying aggressive.

To further poison the relationship with the only true star Sacramento has seen since the glory days of two decades ago, the Kings also forced Fox to take the blame for the once-controversial Mike Brown firing, even though Fox never asked for that to be done. Monte McNair and Vivek Ranadive avoided the media like they were an impactful trade, and Fox was left in the dust, again.

Of course, that firing ended up being a shot of adrenaline into what once looked like a lost season, and in the past month, the Kings have played out of their minds. Their 11-3 record is the second-best in the league. They’ve posted the 9th best offense, the 8th-best defense, and have beaten good team after good team despite fighting through injuries. They just need a wing.

Instead, they’ve taken a sharp turn to the left and have begun the process of shopping De’Aaron Fox – not to maximize value, and certainly not to kickstart a rebuild, but because they are incapable of making B-level moves that every other competent GM makes on the regular in this league. They will dump De’Aaron Fox before he dumps them – the same reaction and maturity level one expects from a middle schooler, which is the exact level this organization operates.

And if Fox is traded, the Kings will not rebuild. They will not execute subsequent trades of Malik Monk and Domantas Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan. They will pursue whatever package offers them the best chance of making the playoffs, getting Vivek his playoff check, and allowing him to continue raising ticket prices. It won’t be a fun, sprint-around-the-court, young team. It’ll be a worse, less fun, less successful version of the current 10th place Kings.

Perhaps the saddest part of all of this is that a John Collins or Cam Johnson trade just isn’t that hard to pull off, or at least it wasn’t and shouldn’t be, and it likely would have satisfied Fox, at least in the short-term. But in the off chance that the Kings actually prove themselves capable of holding those sorts of conversations, they’ll now be wildly out leveraged. If Collins is the key, Danny Ainge will eviscerate Sacramento knowing that they have to make the deal, and the same can be said for Johnson and the Nets or Jerami Grant and the Blazers.

If the Kings ultimately move Fox, their market has been somewhat destroyed by waiting so long, by pissing off his camp enough to allow there to be rumors about “destinations”, and by pursuing their cheap, win-now, no matter what, approach. A premiere, young, picks-filed package isn’t walking through that door.

When all of this turns disastrous, and it will turn disastrous, the Kings will have no one to blame but themselves, although who between Vivek and Matina and Anjali and Wes and Monte will have made what decision will remain a mystery. Perhaps one or two are fired, but nothing will change long-term.

The Kings are going to pivot from not landing John Collins to trading their franchise point guard, and they are arrogant and incompetent enough to believe that is a reasonable, and perhaps even positive, result.