When you are a small market team in a town lacking global appeal, you must absolutely glean value from your draft picks. And when those picks are lottery picks, it becomes even more critical. And when those lottery picks are top five, it can set you back up to a decade if/when you whiff on them (or have traded them away / swapped them).
Look no further than Oklahoma City and San Antonio when it comes to effective use of draft picks.
Who among us can say with 100% certainty that the Sacramento Kings would not have passed on Victor Wembanyama with the first pick? You can’t, based on the history of this organization, especially under the Ranadive error.
To be fair, the Thunder have also done a good job over the years of making the hard call to part with All-Star players in their prime. It began with James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. The present team has both Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Johnson as a result of the Paul George trade (SGA was acquired via the trade, Johnson selected with one of the picks that they acquired). And that trade is the gift that keeps on giving, as the Thunder own the Clippers unprotected(!) pick this year, with the Clips circling the bottom of the standings.
There are a couple of ways to look back on a draft. One can look at the number of the pick, re-rack the draft and see who the Kings should have wound up with had every team gotten their picks prior to the Kings right. The other (and more maddening) way to look at it is to look at the players left on the board when the Kings selected. The former is probably the fairer way to do it, but the latter will lead to more anger and frustration, which seems to be in lockstep with Ranadive’s brand, so I’m doing it that way. And since second round picks are pure lottery tickets, we’re just going to focus on the first round picks.
One other note: We’re not going to try to justify most of these picks based on roster need or fit, given that the Kings were so thin at multiple positions most of these years that need should not have been a factor, and the only rostered player that should have been anywhere near the fit radar was DeMarcus Cousins (and you can bet your arse that the presence of Cousins would never have stopped a Sam Presti from drafting the player that he wanted).
Let’s pump down some Prilosec and re-live that Vivek Ranadive error draft picks. Lottery the Beam!
2013 – This was the inaugural draft for the dismissive little chap. The Kings selected Ben McLemore at #7. The Kings had CJ McCollum in at least twice (and maybe a third time?). McCollum would go 10th to Portland. Word has it that Geoff Petrie, who was not retained by new ownership and left the team ten days prior to the draft, preferred Giannis Antetokounmpo, who fell to Milwaukee at 15. Rudy Gobert was drafted 27th by Denver and was immediately dealt to Utah for cash and the 46th pick (Erick Green), if that makes you feel any better (it shouldn’t). Bottom line, the Kings had a chance to draft a trio of All-Star level players at #7, but it was McLemore that was drafted by Vivek’s inaugural front office. McLemore would go on to rank 25th among his draft class in career win shares (source: Basketball Reference). 51st in VORP (value over replacement player – again, Basketball Reference). Yikes. Basically, a second-round pick value player. (McLemore is now in prison.)
2014 – The infamous Nik Stauskas year. Nik rocks! The video of the fist-pumping Vivek has become more and more emblematic of the team under his bonership with each passing year. Hilarious in its irony is that Zach LaVine was drafted 13th by Minnesota. Nikola Jokic was drafted by Denver at #41 (guess they kind of made up for that Gobert thing). There would be 28 players in this draft that had longer NBA careers than Sauce Castillo, including 21 that were selected after him. While this was one of the weaker drafts of the last 15 years, there were players to be had, and the Kings came away with nothing more than a punchline. 28th in career WAR, 52nd in career VORP. Another second-round player taken by the Kings with a top 10 pick. This would be the second and final draft pick with Pete D’Alessandro acting as front office sock puppet. (Stauskas is now retired from basketball.)
2015 – Wille Cauley-Stein was drafted by the Kings with the 6th pick. Indiana took Myles Turner at 10. Devin Booker went to Phoenix at 13. This was another draft that was not especially loaded at the top, but 22 players had longer NBA careers than WCS, including 19 that were selected after him. 18th WS / 17th VORP. A first-round player, albeit non-lottery. Progress! All hail Vlade Divac. We have graduated from crew sock puppet (PDA) to knee sock puppet. (Cauley-Stein became addicted to drugs and last played in China.)
2016 – Hold onto your hats. The Kings owned the 8th pick, but traded it Phoenix for the 13th, 28th pick, and the rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic. The Kings also had the 22nd pick via a trade of Marco Belinelli. The narrative as the years have gone by is that the Kings were eyeing Domantas Sabonis, but they were certain that he would drop to 13. What the Kings did not factor in was another team trading into the 9-12 spots, which is what happened when Oklahoma City traded Serge Ibaka for the pick and then selected Domas (the Thunder also got Victor Oladipo and Ersan Ilyasova in the trade). The Kings responded by – apologies if my keyboard throws up before I can get this typed out – Georgios Papagiannis. The Kings followed that up by drafting Malachi Richardson at 22, and Skal Labissiere. This one may take a moment to unpack. Sabonis is the career leader in this draft at both WS and VORP, but Pascal Siakam (27th pick to Toronto) is closing fast. Malcom Brogdon was a second-round pick (Milwaukee). The Spurs took Dejounte Murray at 29. The trio of PapaG, Malachi and Skal came in at 35/48/28 WS and 35/38/49 WAR. Three first-round picks, including one at #8, and the net result was three mid-second rounders. Not even a Caris LeVert or Taurean Prince. Just a total waste/misuse of draft capital. (Papagiannis was out of the NBA by 2018.)
2017 – The Kings actually would have had the #3 pick in the draft, but they had swapped rights with the Sixers as part of the mind-boggling 2015 trade that sent Stauskas, Carl Landry, Jason Thompson, the 2019 first-round pick (unprotected!) and two pick swaps (2016 and 2017) for cap space that they could have attained simply by waiving and stretching Landry and Thompson. The Kings used the space to sign Kosta Koufos, Rajon Rondo and Caron Butler. Honest, folks. I am not making this up!
The Kings could have selected third (Philly wound up at #1 via another swap deal that they had with Boston, so the Celtics wound up at #3 with the Kings pick), and with that pick they could have had Jayson Tatum, or Donovan Mitchell, or Bam Abedayo, or Jarrett Allen, or Derrick White, or De’Aaron Fox, or Lauri Markkanen or OG Anunoby. They would end up selecting Fox at #5, which was solid, although Mitchell and Abedayo were still on the board (as was Markkanen). The Kings also had the 10 pick as a result of their prior year trade of DeMarcus Cousins. Tatum, Fox, and Markkanen were all off the board at 10, but the other aforementioned players were still there, along with Josh Hart, John Collins, Isaiah Hartenstein, Luke Kennard, Malik Monk and Kyle Kuzma. The Kings flipped the 10th pick for the 15th and 20th picks, with Collins still available at 15 and Hart, OG, Hartenstein, and Kuzma still on the board at 20. The Kings selected Justin Jackson at 15 and Harry Giles at 20.
This is the draft that flies under the radar, thanks to the 2018 draft (no spoilers!). Even if you consider the butterfly effect of the 2015 trade and just consider the draft picks to be the 5th and 10th (meaning no shot at Tatum), the Kings could have walked away with Mitchell and Abedayo. Even flipping the 10th for the 15th and 20th, it could have been Mitchell, Allen and White (or many others).
2017 is the absolute ground zero for current ownership. You devalued your pick via an unneeded and impossible-to-fathom trade two years earlier, you still net move up in the draft in spite of the pick swap thanks to some ping pong ball luck, and you have an extra pick in a deep draft even though you held onto Cousins for too long and sold him for pennies on the dollar. The franchise could have turned on this draft. Fox was not a catastrophe pick by any means (9th in WS and 6th in VORP), but it could have been even better. And Jackson (24 WS / 49 VORP) and Giles (20 WS / 31 VORP) were disasters compared to what was readily available. This is the draft where teams like the Thunder and Spurs (among others) would have crushed. All the Kings crushed was the collective spirit of the fanbase.
2018 – Luka Doncic. Luka Freakin’ Doncic. Yes, Jaren Jackson Jr. was also available. And Trae Young. And Jalen Brunson. And Mikal Bridges. And, oh yeah, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The crime in all of this is that the Kings were rumored to have passed on Doncic in part because they were worried about the fit with Fox. Fox, who had failed to even make second team All-Rookie. Fox, who had, at that point, shown nothing that would have a normal organization say, “Hey, we can’t draft Luka Doncic – we’re building around the guy that just finished 12th in the all-rookie voting!”
Once the Kings determined to pass on Doncic, they tied themselves up in knots. The trade with Atlanta (5th pick, future 1st round pick) was there for the taking, but the Kings were laser focused on their man. SGA and Luka rank 1-2 and 2-1 in career WS and VORP for this draft class at a combined 64/36. Marvin Bagley ranks 25th and 26th. And just like that, Kings season ticket holders do not have to worry about spending money on playoff tickets for the foreseeable future.
2019 – I’ll spare you the convoluted details, but the Kings pick wound up at #14 and in Boston as part of their deals with Philly. The list of players at 14 or later that could have helped the Kings: Matisse Thybulle, Ty Jerome, Coby White, RJ Barrett, Jordan Poole. Nothing exciting here, but a wasted piece of draft capital, nonetheless.
2020 – Blind squirrel, meet nut. Nut, meet blind squirrel. With the 12th pick of the 2020 NBA draft, the Sacramento Kings select Tyrese Haliburton. Desmond Bane and Tyrese Maxey were unbelievable gets for Memphis (via a trade with Boston at 30) and Philly (at 21), but Haliburton was great value for the Kings at 12. Now all you have to do is make sure that you nourish and grow the asset, and everything will be fine……
2021 – We now return to our regular programming.
It’s not that Davion Mitchell was a preposterous reach at the 9th pick. And as we’ve noted, if you think he’s the guy, don’t sweat the underperforming roster too much. That said, if you’re sitting on Fox and Haliburton, you might want to make sure that there is a path for your top-ten lottery pick, and that he fits the system that you intend on running. Mitchell currently sits at 21WS / 52(!) VORP, but those numbers are trending upward thanks to his post-Kangz career. The player to take here would have been Alperen Sengun, and there were definitely some Sengoonies among the TKH staff and membership. All you have to do is imagine a world where they draft Sengun, negating the need for Sabonis, and perhaps opening an earlier trade window for Fox that could bring in player to elevate Sengun and Haliburton. Other available players would have included Trey Murphy, Herb Jones, Santi Aldama, Atlanta’s Jalen Johnson, and Quentin Grimes.
The Kings wound up sending a second-round pick to Toronto to take on Mitchell (they also sent Sasha Vezenkov, who voided his contract and went back to Europe). The Raptors then received a second round-pick from Miami for Mitchell. Recapping, the Kings netted a minus one second round pick from the 9th pick in the 2021 draft. Toronto netted two second-round picks. Miami netted Davion Mitchell. This is probably not the way to run a successful NBA team.
2022 – This is another one of the few picks that does not crush your soul, but perhaps due to organizational malfeasance, it is not aging well. The Kings selected Keegan Murray with the 4th pick. Murray is currently 5th and 10th in WS and VORP (we have definitely gotten to the point where the smaller sample sizes make the numbers more volatile), but the Kings could have had Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams. Jalen Duren is also an interesting alternative, as is Dyson Daniels.
2023 – 2025 – The Kings traded the 24th pick in the 2023 draft, and there was not a lot of meat left on the bone by that point in the draft (as Colby Jones proved at 34). Devin Carter currently ranks 34th WS and 33rd VORP, so I certainly won’t argue with anyone that wants to tout Kel’el Ware or Jaylen Wells or Tristan da Silva or several other of the two dozen or so players that have shown out better than Carter at this point. It is way too early to make a call on Nique Clifford. (I know – Raynaud! Again, not considering the second-round lottery tickets in this little process, though he is outplaying cash considerations.)
All told, the Kings have “earned” 11 lottery picks under Ranadive, with 9 of them being in the top 10 and 3 of those being in the top 5. And there just isn’t much to show for all of it. Fox is gone, with a 2031 unprotected pick from Minnesota as the “prize.” Bagley is gone, with nothing to show for it. Murray is in either limbo or purgatory. And the one time that the Kings got it right (Haliburton), they wound up getting it wrong.
And the one constant, the one thing that has not changed during this two-arena, five-general manager (including a month of Joe Dumars), eight-head coach, one-hundred-and-fifty-four player march toward being one of the worst-run professional sports franchises of all time is Vivek Ranadive (and for that matter, Matina Kolokotronis).
Look, the last thing that this loyal fanbase needs is more pee on their already soaked Cheerios. But it’s really difficult to have any degree of faith in this organization, based on its history. If Vivek’s opinion is solicited, we may be doomed to repeat the Draft mistakes (and mistakes and mistakes) of the past. Don’t worry about the ping pong balls, folks. Worry that nothing about the organization has really changed.
Vivek, when you bought the team in 2013, you told the fans that this was their team. With all due respect, you’re not heaping this pile of crapola on our shoulders. This is your team. The results are yours. The NBA laughingstock status is yours. The lack of direction is yours. Vivek, this is your team.