Trade deadline approaching for Kings

From Marc Steins twitter:

The Kings fielded offers today for Darren Collison, Ben McLemore and Arron Afflalo, league sources say, but appear poised to keep all three.
Ok, Vlade is such a ****ing dumbass. You trade your franchise player, and we're left with scraps. Why would you cash in the rest of your assets??? ESPECIALLY expiring players like Ben and Collison????
 
So is the plan now to resign Collison? We have a lot of guards and a guard heavy draft coming up. Without moving any of the vets are we trying to make the playoffs and lose the lottery pick? Is there a plan or is this just make it up as you go?

Kings fans are to exhausted for a #FireVlade campaign, been there done that. As long as Vivek doesnt hand over complete control we are not going anywhere.
 
Alright, I'm now convinced Vlade thinks we actually got better in the present and the future with the Cousins deal. That the only thing holding us back was Cousins and now that we got a "haul" for him and his "cancerous" ways out of the locker room, wins will start piling in. This isn't a tank effort, it's him truly having no idea how to evaluate a team/talent/situation that we're in.
 
Alright, I'm now convinced Vlade thinks we actually got better in the present and the future with the Cousins deal. That the only thing holding us back was Cousins and now that we got a "haul" for him and his "cancerous" ways out of the locker room, wins will start piling in. This isn't a tank effort, it's him truly having no idea how to evaluate a team/talent/situation that we're in.
Maybe he thinks it can go either way

Reminds me of a few years ago with Masai Ujiri almost trading Lowry post-Gay to the Knicks and they surprised everyone, then Riley almost trading Dragic this year before that run..

Still... at this point.. I'm highly hesitant and was looking for the rebuild
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
Before we have our collective hissy fit about not trading guys we had offers on, we need to keep in mind that we don't have any idea what those offers were. As we have seen with both the Cousins trade (one pick and a second rounder) and the Noel trade (basically two second rounders), as well as the fact that Boston somehow didn't plunk down their Brooklyn pick(s) for Paul George or Jimmy Butler, teams appear to be very highly valuing picks right now. I doubt we had any offers of first-round picks, either this year or in future years, for any of the Afflalo/Collison/McLemore trio. Even if we did, they may have come with long-term bad contracts attached. What if the Lakers said, "Sure, we'll give you our 2021 protected pick for Afflalo, but you have to take Luol Deng off our hands"? We just don't know what deals we rejected.

And frankly, right now I don't think that a second-round pick is much of an asset for us. Let's look at what we have coming in this draft. Assuming that we flounder around where we are now and keep our pick, we are looking at something like #7ish (our pick), #15ish (Pelicans' pick) and #35ish (Philly 2nd rounder). Even if we fool around and lose our pick to Chicago, we will have #15ish (Pelicans' pick), #35ish (Philly 2nd rounder), and #40+ (our own second rounder). Either way you look at it, we have three picks in the range where (in a draft like this year's) we ought to get three players we want to hold on to.

So let's look at our young assets for next year:
Third-year: Cauley-Stein
Second-year: Hield, Richardson, Papagiannis, Labissiere
First-year: Three picks, Bogdanovic, (Isaiah Cousins)

That's NINE players (and ten if we actually follow through with iCuz) with three years or less NBA experience.

On top of that, we'll have Koufos, Temple, Galloway (not opting out), and Gay (probably not opting out). This is before asking the question of whether we bring Tolliver back or not. So that means we've got at least thirteen roster spots accounted for, with two rotational vets, one good starting player who is an injury question mark, and a ton of young guys trying to figure out where they fit. Should we REALLY add three more second-round picks to this mix? What good does that do us?

Afflalo is certainly gone. We can trade him up to draft day with next year's team option intact, so he's definitely super salary bait. Don't worry about it, we'll almost certainly find a deal for him before it's all over.

Collison is good to keep in our hip pocket. We retain the ability to sign-and-trade him now. Or heck, we could just re-sign him. He's a decent stop-gap at PG, and while he's not what you would want as a starter if we were a playoff team, we aren't going to be a playoff team, and he'll come relatively cheap and probably cheaper than a resurrected Lawson. I don't think we needed to burn an asset like that if we couldn't get anything decent back.

McLemore seems to have no real future with this team, but he's an RFA, and if he stays hot maybe we hold on to him. Maybe we try a sign-and-trade there.

Again, we don't know what offers we got on these guys, but maybe, just maybe, they weren't really any good. And maybe rather than play the 76ers' game of stocking up second-round picks we can't use, we decided to let things play out. Because of team options, RFA, and sign-and-trade rights (as well as the chance we keep Collison/McLemore), all of these guys have potential value over the summer that could very well exceed what we were offered now.
 
My concern is how the Kings continue to set themselves up to get the least amount of value possible. We did it with Isaiah Thomas, we did it in the Stauskas trade, we did it with Cousins and now with Collison and Afflalo (Mclemore is at least a RFA) and free agency. To me it speaks to a lack of planning and a team that is responding to something as opposed to executing a plan or even a philosophy. Stepping back and looking at the course of personnel decisions over the last year and half is just seems disjointed and reactionary.
 
Before we have our collective hissy fit about not trading guys we had offers on, we need to keep in mind that we don't have any idea what those offers were. As we have seen with both the Cousins trade (one pick and a second rounder) and the Noel trade (basically two second rounders), as well as the fact that Boston somehow didn't plunk down their Brooklyn pick(s) for Paul George or Jimmy Butler, teams appear to be very highly valuing picks right now. I doubt we had any offers of first-round picks, either this year or in future years, for any of the Afflalo/Collison/McLemore trio. Even if we did, they may have come with long-term bad contracts attached. What if the Lakers said, "Sure, we'll give you our 2021 protected pick for Afflalo, but you have to take Luol Deng off our hands"? We just don't know what deals we rejected.

And frankly, right now I don't think that a second-round pick is much of an asset for us. Let's look at what we have coming in this draft. Assuming that we flounder around where we are now and keep our pick, we are looking at something like #7ish (our pick), #15ish (Pelicans' pick) and #35ish (Philly 2nd rounder). Even if we fool around and lose our pick to Chicago, we will have #15ish (Pelicans' pick), #35ish (Philly 2nd rounder), and #40+ (our own second rounder). Either way you look at it, we have three picks in the range where (in a draft like this year's) we ought to get three players we want to hold on to.

So let's look at our young assets for next year:
Third-year: Cauley-Stein
Second-year: Hield, Richardson, Papagiannis, Labissiere
First-year: Three picks, Bogdanovic, (Isaiah Cousins)

That's NINE players (and ten if we actually follow through with iCuz) with three years or less NBA experience.

On top of that, we'll have Koufos, Temple, Galloway (not opting out), and Gay (probably not opting out). This is before asking the question of whether we bring Tolliver back or not. So that means we've got at least thirteen roster spots accounted for, with two rotational vets, one good starting player who is an injury question mark, and a ton of young guys trying to figure out where they fit. Should we REALLY add three more second-round picks to this mix? What good does that do us?

Afflalo is certainly gone. We can trade him up to draft day with next year's team option intact, so he's definitely super salary bait. Don't worry about it, we'll almost certainly find a deal for him before it's all over.

Collison is good to keep in our hip pocket. We retain the ability to sign-and-trade him now. Or heck, we could just re-sign him. He's a decent stop-gap at PG, and while he's not what you would want as a starter if we were a playoff team, we aren't going to be a playoff team, and he'll come relatively cheap and probably cheaper than a resurrected Lawson. I don't think we needed to burn an asset like that if we couldn't get anything decent back.

McLemore seems to have no real future with this team, but he's an RFA, and if he stays hot maybe we hold on to him. Maybe we try a sign-and-trade there.

Again, we don't know what offers we got on these guys, but maybe, just maybe, they weren't really any good. And maybe rather than play the 76ers' game of stocking up second-round picks we can't use, we decided to let things play out. Because of team options, RFA, and sign-and-trade rights (as well as the chance we keep Collison/McLemore), all of these guys have potential value over the summer that could very well exceed what we were offered now.
Thank you for providing some perspective. I really hope I am the idiot in the room and not Vlade, but it is difficult to see that way right now. I just love the Kings and it is not an easy position to be in these days. Again thank you and I truly hope you are right.
 
Afflalo is certainly gone. We can trade him up to draft day with next year's team option intact, so he's definitely super salary bait. Don't worry about it, we'll almost certainly find a deal for him before it's all over.
I was just about to DM you on this actually, but since you posted it, I just thought I would reply :)

If we trade Afflalo (or Tolliver) on draft day, would that team still have the option to waive them and only have the $1.5 mil (or $2 mil in Tolliver's case) count against the cap? Basically, when do Afflalo & Tolliver's 2017-18 contracts become guaranteed? I'm curious for trade proposal purposes. ;)
 
Yes, and the easier part of the schedule is this second half
I think a lot of you are overly worried. We just lost our best player and the guys that are left on the team all benefited majorly from having him on the court. They now have to figure out how to play without him (for more than 1 game); we are talking about 28 points 11 rebounds, and 5-6 assists all of a sudden missing. The chemistry will be off, especially with several new players on the roster. We might win 6 or 7 games the rest of the way and you know what? That's fine. Losing is what we should be doing now, it serves our best interests.
 
You serious? Our best player is Darren Collison. We're winning less than 5 games the rest of the way.
The draft pick is top 10 protected, not lottery protected. Since we didn't trade away our vets, I wouldn't be surprised if we win a decent amount of games , esp home games. We have Joerger. There's still a decent chance we lose that Chicago pick. There's only 24 games left in the season.