Vlade's grade as GM thus far...

I agree with this but I still personally give him a B+ at this time because I think we at least need all the young guys to get on the court first. On paper it's an A+ draft and Joerger was a great hire and I think it's why I like where we are at more than anything. All due respect to Thibs but Philly and Minny don't have the coaching that we have.

Fair enough. Kind of agree but I tend to be the Resident Optimist.

I think Joerger is the best young coach in the NBA and even better, he seems ideal for a young roster.

Would you agree it's TWO A+ drafts in a row?

Yes, and to be honest I'm somewhat more impressed (with a year of hindsight) by what he did last year than this year. If this year plays out the way last year did (better than expected) then look out.

Jerry Reynolds often correctly states that drafting is hard, and a significant percentage of first rounders every year end up busts: a few years in the league and then out, or career scrubs. And they're being drafted by the best talent scouts in the world.

That we have what looks like 8 for 8 legit NBA players in two years of drafting with a couple potential stars is absolutely nuts. This is Spurs level drafting and frankly, and time will tell as you say, it may go down as the best two years of drafting in NBA history, in terms of total quality payers and no misses (Giles knee risk aside). Thing is I sound crazy saying that and other NBA pundits can't really say that out loud cause the Kings rep is still recovering, but I know I can't be the only one this impressed.

He gets an A in my book. His vision is certainly starting to materialize. The warchest is looking robust. They're just a few steps away and there's no reason to believe those steps aren't firmly and realistically in reach

I will tell you what I have a new appreciation for Vlade when I see:

(1) Celtics GM Ainge trades down from #1 to #3 and doesn't get much for his trouble. Then he holds grudge against Josh Jackson since he flew to Sacramento to see the kid workout and while he's in flight the agent cancels the workout. Ainge resents this and bypasses the better player. Tatum over Jackson?!? Puh-lease. This pick is going to look bad real soon! Ainge thinks he's getting the next Paul Pierce. I don't think so! Jab step and step back from midrange is 90s basketball. I will take relentless competitiveness and point forward skills of Jackson any day (OR Isaac). Ainge was also asleep at wheel while the Wolves stole Butler!

(2) Lakers GM Magic trades away his most talented player for cap space! You should not be doing this when you stink. He gives away Russell with half-baked plan to land George that stalls out when he doesn't have the assets to acquire him! He tries to patch together a package of #27 #28 and Randle that doesn't interest the Pacers. Maybe he should have put his ducks in a row before shooting wildly? He seems intent on a gutting roster that has limited assets for a player that already wants to come to LA next summer? Then he tries to sell Lopez to the fans as a "stretch 5 All-Star" but this guy is no more than 1-year rental if they have designs on two max player next summer . It is disingenuous to play up Lopez to the media when the motivation was to unload Mosgov. You also make transition harder for Ball by getting rid of Russell who can share the responsibilities of playmaking. I am glad to see the Lakers do stupid moves but if media and fan is going to give grief to Vlade for his moves then this moves deserves to be panned too!

(3) The Bulls traded one of the Top 15 players (Butler) for a guy with busted ACL (Lavine) 23 year old rookie PG coming off terrible rookie season (Dunn) and Lauri M. And they gave Wolves the 16th pick?! Lavine is also RFA next summer wanting 100M. That's kind of ominous. Lauri M better be second coming of Dirk for this trade to have any hope of not being unmitigated disaster! This trade is as bad as Boogie trade or at least right up there. There were more suitors for Butler and not the baggage or toxic reputation. There was NO reason for Bulls to include the 16th pick. Are you telling me that the Celtics could not have easily trumped this offer (Jaylen Brown and 2018 Nets #1)? Or Suns (#4 pick and Chriss)? Why didn't the Bulls pit these teams against each other? What was the rush?! Like I said Lauri better be a stud!

Compared to all this shenanigans Vlade is looking like a genius. I have full confidence in our two new PGs. They are ready to go. The other picks I will reserve judgment on. Mason is awesome! And Fox is going to be super exciting. He is going to be the most electrifying PG we have had since Jason Williams! Fox is going to be a 20 PPG scorer in the NBA. I think a lot of fans miss this. Fox is going to be in constant attack mode, constantly on the fast break, going around defenders. He can also get to the basket in half court sets.

Defenders are going to have to give him room and eventually he's going to nail that jumper. I definitely see Fox as prominent scorer in our league along with racking assists. He's a natural aptitude for scoring based on his aggressive playing style and ability to get through cracks in the defense. I think Giles will spend next season in the G League. He needs to get his confidence and explosion. Depending on how he does we could him called up but I think it will take a while. Justin Jackson reminds me a little bit of Francisco Garcia and Batum. I don't see star potential there just solid role player. His body needs work but I think he has poise and presence about him that will translate.

Not to put pressure on the kid, but Frank Mason has same vitals (height and weight) as Isaiah!!! He's not as fast as Isaiah but I think he's just as good as running a team as Isaiah AND just as good of a shooter AND he's more powerful. Isaiah 2.o! Isaiah was strong. Mason is even stronger. I don't think Isaiah can do backflips like this


Or one hand jam it like this:


And one more of Mason dominating at the NBA Combine.... (the driving lay-up at 1:42 should have been an and-one!)

B-
I didn't like this draft much (15 and 20, but Mason and Fox are great!) and I think he could have got more for Cousins. I was sick and tired of Cousins so I assume he was too, and not many people were calling perhaps?

A- from me... I love everything he's done aside from one major negative being the Philly trade. That trade could knock his grade down quite a bit come 2019 but for now I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that we won't miss that pick too much. He turned Belinelli, whom we wouldn't have signed without the trade, into a first already so as long as our '19 first isn't a high lottery pick we should be ok.

As far as the team goes I couldn't be happier. Haven't been this excited for an upcoming season since we were good. I'll be tuned into every game next season regardless of whether we win or lose. Seven 1st rounders all growing together... Exciting stuff. And more than just that, they're all likable good guys. Very important for me... I can't root for a bunch of things.

Vlade was and still is my guy. He is the man we knew and loved as a player and he is a man of integrity. I chalk up his handling of the Cousins trade as a rookie mistake. He would be the first one to admit that if he had a chance to do it over, he would have done it differently- but it still would have been done. In the short time that he's been here he has completely turned this franchise around, from the players to the front office, and given us real hope. Only time will tell if his vision pans out, but in the near term how can you give him anything but an A grade?

Geez I'm never taking a class from you!

Vlade has proved to be a great drafter. Putting aside the cousins trade he has done well.

I like the fact that all of the picks this year were considered to be resilient, stable personalities. We're probably going to lose a lot of games next year, and it's important that the team can withstand that without putting knives in each other's backs. Team needs stability for a chance to grow.

This has got to be the most manic depressive fanbase on Earth. A few months ago Vlade was widely viewed here as an incompetent boob who blundered his way through a press conference openly admitting that his trade was motivated by panic after he let a better deal for DeMarcus slip away and now he's doing an A+ job? Because De'Aaron Fox fell into his lap (the odds of us getting a top 3 pick were like 8%) and Harry Giles might be the GOAT if he can bounce back from major reconstructive surgery on both knees? I like Frank Mason and I'm hoping he turns into an elite 6th man for us but the last time we drafted a National Player of the Year he didn't even make it through his rookie contract. Anybody saying he nailed all 4 picks this year is kidding themselves. We won't know if that's true or not for several years. We don't even know that about last year's draft yet. Bogdanovic hasn't signed with us or played a game in the NBA. Papagiannis and Richardson played just enough to confirm they belong on a roster, not that they were good choices in the first round. Skal looks like a stud but he should have been a lottery pick. We got incredibly lucky there.

I'm not going to tell anyone how to 'fan' but I think a lot of you are experts in setting yourself up for disappointment with these massively inflated expectations. I liked the draft overall because I like Fox and Giles has upside but I wouldn't have made 3 of those picks given who else was on the board. And overall Vlade is at best doing a C level job. The assets he traded away for a year of cap space 2 years ago landed the first overall pick this year. He bungled the George Karl situation by telling the team he'd been fired when he actually hadn't been and the result of that was the most blatant example of a team quitting on their coach and torpedoing a season that I've ever seen. He signed Caron Butler and Matt Barnes to multi-year deals that he then had to buy out less than a year later. He sold extremely low on DeMarcus to the point where he couldn't get a single unprotected first round pick for him. The eventual haul was a high level starter (hopefully) and two fliers in the middle of the first round. Maybe we look back at this in 5 years and he's managed to pool enough assets to build a playoff team out of the ashes of owner orchestrated ineptitude but right now he only looks good in comparison because the bar had been set historically low. We're a step above national punchline status which is the same "nobody cares about this team outside of Sacramento" place that we've always been aside from a brief peak under Coach Adelman when we were the darlings of the league but couldn't quite get past the Lakers.

And this is me being optimistic! If everything breaks right we've got a terrific young backcourt and some of the most athletic bigs in the league. We still need an MVP level player to lead the show and that's not an easy piece to obtain. In 30 years we've had only 2 of them. I would hope the next step is to let the kids play-- don't blow all that cap space on veterans who are going to block development and underperform (yes I'm looking at you Mikki Moore, Shareef Abdur-rahim, Carl Landry, John Salmons, Arron Afflalo, Marco Bellineli, Chuck Hayes, and Travis Outlaw).
We probably need a stopgap SF which is someone who will take a 2 or 3 year deal not a coveted star player. Part of the reason February to April was so fun this year is because the burden of expectation had been lifted. We have to somehow hit the reset button as a fanbase and just let these kids find themselves as NBA players and as a team. Don't hold the last 10 years against them because they had nothing to do with it. But if this is really going to happen for us than Vlade is going to have to be a lot better than he's been so far. The selling low on assets and throwing away draft picks like they're nothing has to be over. That's not something you say about a GM who is performing at the top of the class. He's got potential to be good if and only if he learns from his mistakes and doesn't make them again.

I give Vlade 2 separate grades. An absolute A when it comes to drafting. He's definitely got "the eye" for finding talent and getting us several more picks each draft. Very well done and its easy to see the team does their homework on players.

The rest of it isn't as rosy. I thought the Cousins debacle was treated poorly and he said things he shouldn't have and didn't do things he should have. I do think that he is improving, but at this time I give him a B-. The reason for a B- is that he did sign several players to really friendly team contracts and didn't hook us to any terrible ones. He's learning, but I am sure even he would admit there is room for improvement.

Overall, not bad. Drafting well is absolutely essential for small market teams and its something that Vlade does well.

C-
Good
1) Nice 2017 draft- in theory
2) Skal pick was great
3) Nice 2016 FA signing (minus Barnes)
4) Great coaching hire

Bad
1) Unprocted pick in 2019 for no real benefit is inexucasable.
2) Cousin trade value is way to low. Handling of whole situation will not help us attract FA for a while.
3) Papi pick was weak. Could have got him where Malachi was selected.

C. Probably had him at a D- or F before this draft.

He still dealt a franchise player for pennies on the dollar while wasting 2 years of everyone time by not dealing Boogie when he took the job and that Philly trade is so damn difficult to recover from. Rondo was a horrid signing, letting Seth Curry walk for literally no reason for 51 bad games from Matt Barnes. Signed a washed up Afflalo. Belli the player was a disaster here. Picking Papagiannis in the lottery when he probably could have had him later and 3 good C's already on the roster locked up (Boogie/Koufos/WCS)

But he's essentially fully restocked the team with young guys in 2 years (and decent prospects at that) and he's locked in a great coach and a very good FO staff around him. Turning Belli into a first round pick was very good. Tolliver signing brought exactly what we wanted/needed, thus it was very good.

Need some time to see how his draft picks turn out as that's the aspect that takes the longest to really judge. It's much easier to call out a bad trade and FA signing right off the bat than it is with draft picks. But the process was spot on in this draft and exactly what a rebuilding team wants to do; get your main guy (Fox), trade down if the guy you want is going to still be there, fill a big need at SF ( Jackson), take a huge upside/huge risk player (Giles) and gets a 2nd round pick who's almost assuredly going to be an NBA rotation player (Mason)

I give Vlade an A so far.

1) We just witnessed a wonderful draft. Say what you will but Vlade trading Cousins made this draft happen for the Kings. Fox, Jackson, Giles, Mason plus Heild....not to shabby!
2) Signing the Vet Free Agents he has with those front loaded 2 year deals that are really one year deals is pretty close to genius. The Kings have the most cap space of any team!
3) The 2016 draft is is looking fabulous.
4) The 2015 draft netted the Kings a starting level center. Pretty good pick for Vlade coming out of the gate.
5) I have never been as down on the Philly trade as most Fans. IMO the cost was the 2019 pick. Vlade made that up on the Marco trade and we now have Malachi as a direct result. Koufos is a valuable player also from that deal.
6) I was shocked by the Cousins trade. Boogie was incredible to watch play. The Kings had little success during the years DMC was here so I eventually understood the need for the trade. Now the Kings have young players with upside at every position. I have highlighted the players I consider a net result of the Cousins trade:

PG Fox, Mason
SG Buddy, Bogdan, Malachi
SF Jackson
PF Skal, Giles
C WCS, Bam Bam

To really judge any deal you have to take into account all the net results. not just the direct ones. So I think it is fair to include the Kings own pick that became Fox and all the players that are signed with that Max Money Boogie would have received. If a younger Veteran is signed who is with the Kings long term these net results become pretty amazing. The trade becomes one that will need to be judged a little differently than we have seen so far.

Vlade may have vision that has been under appreciated to say the least. Time will tell, but as I said.....an A for now

I did not even mention Joerger and the Front Office additions Vlade has done a lot!

Yep, my thoughts, too.

I didn't listen to Vlade on the show, but I seriously doubt that he would have picked Fox over Fultz. But maybe over all the others. And we (and Vlade) knew Fultz was going #1.

I mean, if Vlade really did have Fox rated ahead of Fultz, you'd either have to admire his moxy or plain question his rational thinking skills.

I dunno... Danny Ainge says he would've taken Tatum #1 which is why he traded down. There's a lot to be skeptical about when it comes to Fultz... Shot (terrible ft%), defense, ability to make teammates better. There's also obviously a lot to like but to me he was never a no brainer at #1. If we had #1 and wanted Fox trading down with anyone besides the Lakers would've been risky as there was no way to be certain they wouldn't take Fox at #2.

It's the same every offseason. People are celebrating the "brilliant" moves Vlade made, wether it's drafting the next defensive player of the year WCS or the next John Wall De'Aaron Fox or signing the experienced FA's with championship pedigree Bellinelli and Rondo or the great character guys Tolliver, Afflalo or Temple. What really counts is the wins and losses of the team and so far Vlade hasn't been successful in that regard.
The positive light some are casting onto Vlade just looks like overall lowered expectations and being used to horrible management over the years to me.
It's reasonable to rethink Vlade's body of work as a GM once he has proven, that he can built a winner. So far he isn't even close to prove that. So no need for premature accolades.

It all depends on what you think about the future of his shot. If Fox had shot 38% from 3pt range, he probably would have been in the conversation for the #1 pick.

This is only his third off-season and first without cuz. His drafting looks well above average so far and he has us in a good position with an excellent young coach and a roster loaded with seven first rounders from the last two drafts. There's plenty of legitimate reasons to be optimistic if that's your disposition.

I love Vlade and pretty much agree with his vision from day one. That said he was hoodwinked on the Phili trade. I understand the Cousins trade but still think he could have gotten more. His front office selections have been good and his last few drafts have been good so I would give him a B-

Kings fans 4 months ago: "BOO!!!! VLADE YOU SUCK!"

Kings fans now: "YAY VLADE! VLADE #1!!!!!!!!"

Kings fans 4 months from now: "BOO!!!! I REALLY WISH VLADE DIDN'T GIVE (Insert random vet here) THAT CONTRACT! ALSO HIS DRAFT PICKS SUCK!!!"

Kinda like the premature accolades of declaring a player a future HOF-er that you shouldn't trade for LBJ when he wasn't even close to winning 30 games for the most part?

Well obviously. The thing with Fox is that if he doesnt develope a respectable pull up three point shot, he wont ever be an elite point guard. He doesnt have the body of Wall or Westbrook.

Isn't that what it is to be a fan? A little madness?
You make a lot of great points. But I can't agree that all that matters is wins and losses. That's just a little too one-dimensional for me. There's plenty of criticism that can be thrown at Vlade, probably some of which he doesn't deserve. But he has done some great things, too. But to give him an A or A+ at this point is pure fandom (or early onset...).