With 35.2% of the vote, Jalen Johnson takes the 12th spot on the Kings Herald Draft Board. He joins Zaire Williams, James Bouknight, Alperen Åengün, Franz Wagner, Moses Moody, Jonathan Kuminga, Scottie Barnes, Jalen Suggs, Jalen Green, Evan Mobley and Cade Cunningham.
When a choice comes up, pick who you’d want the Kings to pick given all the players remaining. Note: THIS IS NOT A MOCK DRAFT. This is a draft board, a ranked list of prospects you’d like to see the Kings pick. In other words, if we were the Kings front office, when our pick came up, we’d take the top name left on our board. So pick your choice, not who you think Monte McNair or anyone else would choose in a slot.
Explain your choice in the comments, and lobby for who should be added to the next pick’s choices.
This poll ends at 7 AM tomorrow. The next one will begin shortly thereafter. We will go roughly 20 picks deep.
Keon Johnson. Need that wing defense. Garuba is next, just not sure what his offense will look like.
Took Jones after a long think about Garuba. Both are raw, but also possess some impressive skills now, and could both turn out to be special.
Ga-rooooooooooba!
With Ziaire and JJ off the board, we’ve officially run out of players on my 3rd tier. I’m going with Josh Giddey – doesn’t help the defense but could give the Kings one of the best 1-2-3 combinations of playmaking in the league.
After that, I’ll be in Springer/Garuba/Kai territory.
Garuba versus Kai is an interesting debate.
Garuba has more of an NBA ready skill with his defense, but could easily be a PF/C version of Thybulle. Despite hitting the occasional open 3, his offense is brutal. I was a bit surprised how many shots at the hoop he missed on tape. He doesn’t have the verticality or length of even a Capella and can struggle more than you would like inside in traffic.
Kai is a bit raw on both sides of the ball and arguably could be a negative on both offense and defense as a rookie. But if he puts it together, he would have a much more well roudned game that could fit seamlessly into virtually any system, which is nice for a more complementary player you don’t want to have to shape your team around.
I have tended to see both as guys I’d prefer in the 15-22 range, but I did see a mock with Kai going to the Hornets and that actually felt like the perfect landing spot. Kai with a PGs like Ball and Graham and solid / good defensive wings feels like the perfect landing spot for him to develop and to make the best use of his skills without him being hard to play, while trying to win the first couple of seasons.
Second vote for Davion Mitchell who seems pretty clearly BPA at this point from my view. Dude’s a well-rounded player, stout defender, leader, winner and absolute gamer. He’s gonna be in the league for a decade as a Top 15 starting PG – bank on it.
Now that JJ is off the board, I’m going with Kai Jones for this pick.
At least I don’t have to type in garuba anymore.
I think Mitchell is the obvious choice if one was worried about the highest floor at this point, but for me, its hard not to watch how fluid of athlete Kai is and not want to explore his development.
Went with Kispert here. I got a feeling he’s going to slide and some team will end being real happy to have him. Really good shooter with size. No real holes in his game, but not really any star potential. That’s ok with me.
I agree that Kispert will be good on a team that is ready to go and needs a guy that doesn’t need a ton of development and reps (GS, Spurs,etc) I don’t think he’d be a good fit or get any shine here in Sac.
So much rawness at this point. And Kispert. We’re getting close to the point where I say forget the defense and go with the shooting Kispert brings.
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