After approximately one million stories about the seemingly never-ending saga between the Sacramento Kings and DeMarcus Cousins and who was more at fault for the organization’s struggles and whether they should or shouldn’t, would or wouldn’t trade the supremely talented and supremely ornery center, the Cousins era in Sacramento ended Sunday night after the All-Star game in New Orleans.
As we all know now, the Kings traded Cousins and Omri Casspi for Buddy Hield, Tyreke Evans, the Pelicans 2017 1st Round Pick (Top 3 protected) and the Pelicans 2017 2nd Round Pick.
Now quite possibly the two most talented big men in the entire NBA are teammates in the same front court.
I have written numerous times over the past few years that it was clearly never going to work with Cousins and Sacramento. The organization and the player were best served moving on from one another even though neither side seemed to be able to move on. The deal that finally happened after years of rumors is another huge disappointment for the Kings even if this is the right move in theory for their franchise.
Although it seemed as though maybe half of the front offices in the league view Cousins as untenable and would never want to bring him into their organization, there are still plenty who have reportedly been in discussions for Cousins and had better assets to offer than what the Pelicans sent in exchange for one of the 10 best players in the league at the age of 26.
The Kings dealt the most valuable piece on the trade market outside of their own 2017 1st round pick, the only real asset that they possessed to garner a lot of value in return. This trade will amount to a pick in the 8-15 range (they would currently have the No. 8 pick in the draft from the Pelicans pick) unless the Pelicans don’t get extremely fortuitous and land in the top three in which case they would be allowed to keep their 2017 draft pick (can you imagine how that would make the Kings look?). They got an expiring contract of a player in Tyreke Evans, they have no desire to re-sign one would assume, a 2nd round draft pick which has minimal value, especially with an organization this poor at evaluating talent, a journeyman guard in Langston Galloway, and a 23-year-old rookie shooting guard who is shooting under 40 percent from the field and doesn’t appear to have the athleticism or overall game to develop into anything more than a player of J.J. Reddick’s caliber, which is a dependable starter but far from a game changer.
Even with Cousin’s issues, that is no more than 40 cents on the dollar.
One would have to assume that the Celtics were not offering their 2017 1st Round Pick from Brooklyn or rookie forward Jaylen Brown in a deal, but there were reports that the Suns were offering their 1st round pick (would be No. 2 currently) T.J. Warren and Alex Len for Cousins which would give the Kings a young center, scoring wing and opportunity to draft one of the talented crop of elite point guards to be their face of the franchise moving forward.
While it is hard to know what other legitimate offers were on the table for Cousins, the Kings clearly waited too long to decide and cornered themselves by feeling that they had to accept the first deal they could before Thursday’s NBA trade deadline. They cost themselves a lot of value because of it. They would have been fine waiting out one more season and allowing the bidding process to pick up through the off-season.
While moving on from Cousins is the right move for a Kings franchise that has been marred by dysfunction, their execution of it is yet another example of a franchise that is mismanaged and ill-fitted to do what it is necessary to build a winner in an increasingly competitive and savvy league of front offices.
The Kings are essentially starting from scratch once again to reboot a franchise that has been grounded for take-off since the mid-2000s. Do you really have much faith in them to build a winner from scratch in the next three to five years? Let’s hope for all of the loyal Sacramento fans that for once this front office group proves us wrong.
