Winners and losers of wild week of trades in Kingsland

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I’ve never been a fan of trade grades. I don’t like draft grades either. They are usually knee jerk reactions and oftentimes you are setting yourself up to be horribly wrong.

Instead, I like to look at transactions and how they impact the team, players, coaches and front office personnel. You can still be wrong breaking down trades in this manner, but it feels like a better way to analyze the immediate impact for all of those involved.

Coming into the days leading up to the NBA trade deadline, very little was known about Kings’ general manager Monte McNair and his approach. While he had been on the job a little under 18 months, his moves had been minor and difficult to assess. 

That is no longer the case. He has reinvented the Kings on the fly and there are major ripple effects that come with the makeover.

Here is a look at some of the biggest winners and losers after a wild week of deals leading up to the NBA trade deadline.

Winners

Quieting the critics

McNair has taken a beating for his inactivity leading up to the trade deadline. We here at The Kings Beat have been particularly critical and for good reason. 

In the span of three days, McNair just bought himself another two years at a minimum and the opportunity to hire his own coach this summer. 

McNair’s first major move was met with some skepticism from national media and certainly some outcry from the fanbase. Dealing away a young fan favorite like Tyrese Haliburton is a bold move and comes with an incredible amount of risk.

Domantas Sabonis quieted all of that noise Wednesday night in his first game in a Kings uniform. He is a star and the Kings haven’t had one of those in a long time. If he can build off of what we saw in the opening game and become a fixture in Sacramento for the next decade, then McNair crushed it.

In addition, McNair pulled off a magic trick when he traded Marvin Bagley to the Pistons in a four-team trade that brought in Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Jackson and Trey Lyles. The roster makeover took much longer than expected, but even the decision to hold onto Harrison Barnes looks like a stroke of genius at this point.

Change is good

De’Aaron Fox found his smile. Sabonis is a star that compliments him well. Defenders were added all over the court. Marvin Bagley and Buddy Hield are gone. 

There is no question that a bad mixture of players and the piling up of losses has taken a toll on Fox. He looked rough coming into camp and he just sat out eight games leading up to the break with a sore ankle. He now has a new lease on life in Sacramento and an elite running mate.

Fox has never played with a player of Sabonis’ caliber. He also hasn’t played with a big man who can pass. This is a golden opportunity for the 24-year-old to reach his lofty potential. It’s also an opportunity to win games and get back into the conversation as one of the best young guards in the league.

We saw Fox and Sabonis embrace after the game. Hopefully Fox had that same energy for his GM who not only brought in a star, but cleared out a few players who didn’t want to be there and brought back versatile veterans that can help the team win.

The Kings handed Fox the keys to the car four years ago. They dropped in a new supercharged engine, a paint job and some slick rims and tires on it at the deadline. Now let’s see what he can do with it. 

Happy wife, happy life

A lot was made behind the scenes about Sashana Sabonis, Domantas’ wife, being from California and wanting to get back to the West Coast. And then a fleet of family members wearing Sabonis No. 10 jerseys showed up at the players’ introductory press conference.

These things do matter at the NBA level. It was only one game, but when Sabonis spoke about coming to Sacramento, he sounded very much like a player who is ready to sign up for the long term with the franchise.

“Since the second I came into the NBA, I figured out the hard way that this is a business, I got traded on draft night and then a year later got traded again,” Sabonis said. “I’m just trying to find a home where I’m loved. I want to come out and compete everyday and I feel like I found it here. I love it here and I just want to keep playing and getting wins.”

Sacramento has long been a place that struggles to get players to come to the city. Once someone arrives, they quickly discover that the fanbase is amazing, the weather is outstanding and it’s a great community to raise a family in. McNair needs to keep building, but it sounds like he may have found a second franchise cornerstone to pair with Fox for the long term.

On the basketball side, Sabonis has never played in an uptempo system quite like this. While it may not have seemed like a natural fit after watching him play in other cities, Game 1 was eye opening. Watching him rebound and lead the break was stunning. Seeing players he had never even shared a court with before instantly find their place in his orbit tells you everything about his talent. The Kings are onto something here.

Kings fans

Losing Haliburton stings, but it took less than three minutes of watching Sabonis with his new team to understand why McNair made this move.

One giant trade can’t wipe away 15 years of misery, but it was a start. You could feel the excitement build at Golden 1 Center. Sabonis, Justin Holiday and Jeremy Lamb felt it as well.

“The taste of the crowd we had tonight, I grew up in LA, so I’ve seen how this place can get down,” Holiday said. “We were just talking about it, that it’s sad that we’re only going to have eight more home games, so we need to do something to where we have more home games after that. But to be able to be there in front of that crowd and just hear the passion, and again, just the joy from them, it’s something we feed off of. It makes the game fun.”

After an unbalanced schedule in the first half, the Kings have nine remaining home games. Whether this group can find chemistry and make a run at a play-in spot, or perhaps more, is unknown. Saying that, this is a different feel and the fans who were in attendance on Wednesday understood that almost instantly.

Tickets are easily obtainable at this point. Sacramento is just two games out of the 10th seed. A few days ago that was a joke. It’s not anymore. The Kings improved and not just for the final 25 games of the season. It cost a good young player, but it might be time to consider coming out to support the franchise again. Watching Sabonis is worth the ticket price alone.

Fresh start

No one needed a new home more than Marvin Bagley. Taken with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, the 6-foot-11 power forward has been known more for who he isn’t than who he is as a player. 

It’s hard to live down being drafted ahead of Luka Doncic and Trae Young. It’s hard to grow as a player when injuries cause you to miss major time. It’s hard to get a break from a fanbase when one of your parents is constantly on social media talking trash about a franchise that invested heavily in you as a player and received diminishing returns. 

Hopefully Bagley gets an opportunity to show people what he can do with the Pistons. He needs to stay healthy and continue to grow as a player, but he has undeniable potential. At 22 years old, he still has time to convert that to production, but that was never going to happen in Sacramento.

Losers

New opportunity

Haliburton had the look and feel of a player who would play for a single NBA team throughout a long and storied career. That didn’t happen. In the NBA, you have to give up talent to get talent.

While he will get plenty of opportunities to shine in Indiana, he is also going to a crowded backcourt once again and he’ll work with a coach in Rick Carlisle who is notoriously hard on point guards. 

There is a chance that Haliburton and Carlisle form a bond and this becomes a match made in heaven. There is also a chance that Carlisle smothers the creativity of Haliburton’s game and the situation becomes untenable. 

Haliburton is an extremely smart player and person on and off the court. If he is given full reign of the Pacers, this could work out just fine and his pairing with big man Myles Turner could work out well. 

Lost your job

Richaun Holmes has been the Kings’ starting center for the better part of two and a half seasons. That is no longer the case. 

Sabonis didn’t have time to get a practice in and instantly took over at the five. He also flourished and there is little chance of him relinquishing that role anytime soon. 

According to a league source, the Kings view both players as true centers. Sacramento’s front office searched for a new home for Holmes at the deadline and nothing worked out in the short term. 

There is potential that these two could share the court for limited minutes down the stretch to test the pairing. Sabonis logged heavy minutes with Turner in Indiana and knows how to play with another big. 

The more likely outcome is that we are watching the final 25 games of Holmes in a Kings uniform. He’s under contract for another three seasons on a very team friendly contract. Can the Kings find the right trade partner leading up to the draft?

Holmes’ presence also puts a road block in place for Damian Jones, Alex Len and rookie two-way player Neemias Queta. Five centers on the roster is not ideal, especially when one of them is a 25-year-old two-time All-Star and primary focal point of the team.

Buddy Buckets

Over his last 385 games, Buddy Hield has played for three different coaches in a Kings uniform. From Dave Joerger to Luke Walton to Alvin Gentry, Hield has caused all three to gray prematurely, but due to the lack of overall talent on the roster and his ability to hit a 3-pointer, the Bahamian Bomber was given a neon green light to shoot away.

That might not be the same situation Buddy is walking into in Indy. Carlisle has tons of options in his guard rotation and he doesn’t put up with nonsense. There were rumors that the Pacers tried to flip Hield again at the deadline, which might have been the best for all parties involved. Nothing materialized and Hield is a Pacer, at least for the remainder of the season. 

When you look at Indy’s roster and you break down some of Hield’s incentives for games played and made 3-pointers, there is potential for him to watch a lot of basketball in the last two months of the season. The neon green light may have just turned to yellow.   

Never given a shot

When the Kings completed the Bagley/DiVincenzo trade, it was a 3-for-1 swap. McNair worked up until the deadline to find another trade that balanced the roster. That didn’t happen. 

By NBA rules, you cannot exceed the maximum number of roster spots (15) in a trade and you can’t waive an incoming player to get under the maximum. Jahmi’us Ramsey and Robert Woodard were the casualties of the 3-for-1 swap and both have been let go by the Kings.

This is a tough end for these two. More than anything else, they are both victims of circumstance. The coronavirus pandemic took away much of the G League season last year. 

There wasn’t time for development and neither took monumental steps forward. 

Hopefully they catch on somewhere in the coming days, but more likely their path to the league is through the G League or beyond.