Kings Rumors

Kings Notes: Depth Chart, Gudaitis, Labissiere

Don’t look now, but the Kings have assembled a veritable stockpile of intriguing assets. Recently, Shahbaz Khan of the team’s official website broke down what fans can expect to see on the team’s depth chart.

The Kings are loaded with youth this season, and it’s not just first-rounders De’Aaron Fox, Justin Jackson and Harry Giles that show promise. Sacramento has at least one – if not multiple – young projects at each spot from 1 to 5, from international star and darkhorse Rookie of the Year candidate Bogdan Bogdanovic to the lengthy Skal Labissiere, who flashed promise after the DeMarcus Cousins trade.

The club isn’t without its fair share of veteran leadership, however, and Khan discusses the experience the young Kings will be able to glean from offseason additions like Vince Carter and returning players like Garrett Temple.

There’s more from Sacramento:

  • While there was plenty of turnover on the Kings roster this offseason, De’Aaron Fox leads Sacramento’s new cast of players, A. Sherrod Blakely of CSN New England writes.
  • Don’t expect to see 2015 second-round pick Arturas Gudaitis debut with the Kings any time soon, the Lithuanian big man recently signed a two-year deal in Italy without an opt-out clause after the first season, Sportando tweets.
  • After a solid rookie season, Kings big man Skal Labissiere has changed representation, Sam Amick of USA Today tweets. The Haitian has signed with Thad Foucher and Jason Ranne at Wasserman.

Zach Randolph Avoids Jail Time

Zach Randolph, who was arrested on possession of marijuana charges last month, has struck a plea deal with California prosecutors and will avoid jail time, according to TMZ Sports. Randolph could have faced up to one year in prison had he been convicted of the misdemeanor.

Ray Brothers, Randolph’s agent, released a statement on the incident following the plea deal (via NBA.com’s David Aldridge on TwitLonger):

“As we have said from the beginning, the reports regarding Zach Randolph were false and misleading. After being accused of marijuana possession, all charges have been dropped. He was never arrested with any marijuana in or on his possession. He has been cited for delaying a police officer. It’s defamatory for someone to say anything to the contrary.”

As part of the agreement, Randolph pled no contest to misdemeanor resisting arrest and agreed to serve 150 hours of community service as part of a diversion program. He will report to a California court in December for a progress update.

The power forward signed a two-year, $24MM deal with the Kings this summer. While he won’t miss games this season because of jail time, it’s possible the NBA suspends or fines him because of the incident.

Kings Sign Matt Jones

SEPTEMBER 12: The Kings have officially signed Jones, per RealGM’s transactions log.

SEPTEMBER 10: Former Duke guard Matt Jones has agreed to a training camp deal with the Kings, tweets Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee.

Sacramento already has 15 players with guaranteed contracts, and both of its two-way slots are filled. That means Jones is likely to wind up with the team’s G League affiliate in Reno if he gets waived before the season and no one claims him.

Jones wasn’t taken in this year’s draft after putting up 7.0 points, 2.8 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.7 steals per game as a senior with the Blue Devils.

Raptors Attempted To Sign Vince Carter

The Raptors wanted to bring 40-year-old free agent Vince Carter back to Toronto this summer, tweets Ryan Wolstat of The Toronto Sun.

Many observers were surprised when Carter elected to sign with the Kings instead of trying to finish his career with a contender. Money was certainly a factor, as Sacramento offered $8MM for one season, along with the chance to play for former Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger again. The Kings signed Carter, Zach Randolph and George Hill as veteran presences on an otherwise youthful team.

Despite his age, Carter has remained a productive player. He appeared in 73 games for Memphis last season, starting 15, and averaged 8.0 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists per night. He could have provided wing depth to a Toronto team that traded DeMarre Carroll to the Nets in July and sent Terrence Ross to the Magic at the February deadline to pick up Serge Ibaka.

Carter has a checkered history in Toronto, winning Rookie of the Year honors in 1999 and spending more than six seasons there before demanding a trade. However, that was almost 13 years ago and it didn’t prevent the management team currently running the Raptors from reaching out to him.

Turner Has Harrowing Experience With Harvey

  • Kings assistant Elston Turner and his family were displaced from their suburban Houston home by Hurricane Harvey, Ailene Voison of the Sacramento Bee reports. Turner gives his account of evacuating his home and describes the havoc and damage caused by the hurricane. He’s been uplifted by the support of the Kings’ brass and coaches, Voison adds.

NBA Draft Rights Held: Pacific Division

When top college prospects like Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball are drafted, there’s virtually no doubt that their next step will involve signing an NBA contract. However, that’s not the case for every player who is selected in the NBA draft, particularly for international prospects and second-round picks.

When an NBA team uses a draft pick on a player, it gains his NBA rights, but that doesn’t mean the player will sign an NBA contract right away. International prospects will often remain with their professional team overseas for at least one more year to develop their game further, becoming “draft-and-stash” prospects. Nikola Mirotic, Dario Saric, and Bogdan Bogdanovic are among the more notable players to fit this bill in recent years.

However, draft-and-stash players can be former NCAA standouts too. Sometimes a college prospect selected with a late second round pick will end up playing overseas or in the G League for a year or two if there’s no space available on his NBA team’s 15-man roster.

While these players sometimes make their way to their NBA teams, others never do. Many clubs around the NBA currently hold the rights to international players who have remained overseas for their entire professional careers and are no longer viewed as top prospects. Those players may never come stateside, but there’s often no reason for NBA teams to renounce their rights — those rights can sometimes be used as placeholders in trades.

For instance, earlier this summer, the Pacers and Raptors agreed to a trade that sent Cory Joseph to Indiana. Toronto was happy to move Joseph’s salary and didn’t necessarily need anything in return, but the Pacers had to send something in the deal. Rather than including an NBA player or a draft pick, Indiana sent Toronto the draft rights to Emir Preldzic, the 57th overall pick in the 2009 draft.

Preldzic is currently playing for Galatasaray in Turkey, and at this point appears unlikely to ever come to the NBA, but his draft rights have been a useful trade chip over the years — the Pacers/Raptors swap represented the fourth time since 2010 that Preldzic’s NBA rights have been included in a trade.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at the players whose draft rights NBA teams currently hold, sorting them by division. These players may eventually arrive in America and join their respective NBA teams, but many will end up like Preldzic, plying their trade overseas and having their draft rights used as pawns in NBA trades.

Here’s a breakdown of the draft rights held by Pacific teams:

Golden State Warriors

  • Mladen Sekularac, G/F (2002; No. 55): Retired.

Los Angeles Clippers

Los Angeles Lakers

Phoenix Suns

  • Ron Ellis, F (1992; No. 49): Retired.
  • Milos Vujanic, G (2002; No. 36): Retired.
  • Cenk Akyol, G/F (2005; No. 59): Last played in Turkey.
  • Dwayne Collins, F (2010; No. 60): Retired.

Sacramento Kings

Previously:

Information from Mark Porcaro and Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post.

Pacific Notes: Ingram, Randolph, Warriors, Kings

Kings‘ forward Zach Randolph was formally charged with two misdemeanors after his August 9 arrest for possession of marijuana, John Schultz of the Sacramento Bee writes.

Charges against Randolph were reduced from possession of marijuana with intent to sell to possession of more than one ounce of marijuana and resisting arrest, per the Los Angeles County Superior Court website.

Possession of marijuana comes with a possible six-month sentence, a fine not exceeding $500, or both. The resisting arrest charge comes with up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.

Randolph, 36, signed a two-year, $24MM deal with Sacramento in July, bringing a stable veteran presence to an otherwise rebuilding Kings team. While age has slowed Randolph’s production, he has still posted at least 14.1 PPG and 7.8 RPG the last five seasons. Needless to say, this type of legal issue is not what the Kings had in mind when they committed two years to the NBA veteran.

Below you can read other tidbits of news around the Pacific Division:

  • In a piece for ESPN Insider (subscription required and recommended) Mike Schmitz examines Lakers‘ forward Brandon Ingram. The second overall pick from last year’s draft did not have the type of season he and the organization hoped for in 2016/17. Schmitz — who expects a breakout season — explains that Ingram’s shooting was impacted by a change of position and simply adjusting from college to the professional level.
  • Anthony Slater of The Athletic (subscription required and recommended) explains how the Warriors‘ star players can be even better in 2017/18. Golden State has made three consecutive NBA Finals appearances, winning two out of the three.
  • A state senator in Inglewood, California, says it is possible that a proposal to fast track a new arena for the Clippers will be introduced, Liam Dillon of the Los Angeles Times writes.
  • Shaun Powell of NBA.com has compiled an offseason recap for the Kings.

Where Things Stand On Kyrie Irving Blockbuster

It has been eight days since both the Celtics and Cavaliers announced the completion of a trade that sent Kyrie Irving to Boston in exchange for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and the Nets’ 2018 first-round pick. However, more than a week later, we still can’t classify the deal as “completed.”

As first reported last Friday by ESPN, the Cavaliers expressed concern after their own doctors conducted a physical exam on Thomas’ injured hip. That concern has pushed the Cavaliers to re-engage the Celtics about acquiring further compensation in the blockbuster deal. Although it took a few days for the two sides to make contact again, that reportedly happened on Tuesday.

Here’s a breakdown of what we know about the situation, and when we can expect resolution:

Read more

NBA Teams That Still Have 2017/18 Cap Room

During the 2016 NBA offseason, when the salary camp jumped from $70MM to $94MM, 27 teams had cap room available, with only three clubs operating over the cap all year. A more modest cap increase this year to $99MM meant that fewer teams had cap space to use. So far, 14 teams – less than half the league – have used cap room to sign players.

Of those 14 teams, several have since used up all their cap room, including the Celtics, Knicks, Jazz, Lakers, and Timberwolves. However, there are still several teams around the NBA that have room available, or could create it without waiving and stretching any players on guaranteed salaries.

With the help of data from HeatHoops and Basketball Insiders, here’s a quick breakdown of teams that still have cap room available, along with their estimated space:

  • Atlanta Hawks: $4.6MM. The Hawks could gain slightly more space by waiving Luke Babbitt, whose salary is only partially guaranteed, but Atlanta just signed Babbitt, so that’s not a likely move.
  • Brooklyn Nets: $6.6MM. The Nets could gain slightly more space by waiving Spencer Dinwiddie, whose minimum salary contract is mostly non-guaranteed. However, I expect Brooklyn to keep Dinwiddie on its roster.
  • Denver Nuggets: $2.8MM. With Mason Plumlee‘s cap hold still on their books, the Nuggets’ cap room is fairly negligible. Denver could get up to about $8.6MM by renouncing Plumlee, but there’s no indication that’s in the plans.
  • Indiana Pacers: $7.6MM.
  • Philadelphia 76ers: $15.1MM. The Sixers could create even more space by waiving a player on a non-guaranteed contract, but the team isn’t about to part with Robert Covington, Richaun Holmes, or T.J. McConnell.
  • Phoenix Suns: $6.3MM. Alex Len‘s cap hold is taking up $12MM right now, and Phoenix is carrying a pair of non-guaranteed contracts (Elijah Millsap and Derrick Jones), so in theory the Suns could get all the way up to $21.2MM in space by renouncing Len and cutting those non-guaranteed players.
  • Sacramento Kings: $4.3MM.

The following two teams are essentially capped-out, but could create a very small amount of room if necessary:

  • Miami Heat: The Heat could create close to $1MM in space by waiving Rodney McGruder and Okaro White, whose salaries aren’t fully guaranteed. That almost certainly won’t happen.
  • Orlando Magic: The Magic are currently under the cap by about $550K, and could create up to about $1.34MM in space by waiving Khem Birch, whose salary is mostly non-guaranteed. Again, that’s not likely.

The following two teams are technically operating over the cap at the moment, with various trade and mid-level exceptions pushing them over the threshold, but they could create room if they choose to go under the cap:

  • Chicago Bulls: The Bulls could immediately create about $13.5MM in room by renouncing the rest of their MLE and the $15MM trade exception generated in the Jimmy Butler deal. If the team chose to waive David Nwaba, who is on a non-guaranteed deal, and renounced its free agent cap holds, including Nikola Mirotic‘s, that figure would increase to about $25.8MM.
  • Dallas Mavericks: Even without renouncing Nerlens Noel‘s cap hold, the Mavericks could get to $11.6MM in cap room by waiving their non-guaranteed players and dipping below the cap. Removing Noel’s cap hold on top of that could get the Mavs up over $22MM in room, but there’s been no indication that Dallas plans to go that route.

Franchise Better Off Without Cousins

The decision to remove DeMarcus Cousins from the equation has brought a sense of happiness and hope around the moribund Kings franchise, Nick Zappulla of RealGM opines. The pieces are now in place for a quick turnaround via the acquisition of Buddy Hield in the trade with the Pelicans along with four promising rookies taken in the draft, particularly floor leader De’Aaron Fox and forward Harry Giles, Zappulla continues. Big men Skal Labissiere and Willie Cauley-Stein showed progress once Cousins was removed from the picture and the club also brought in three veteran free agents to facilitate the development of the young players, Zappulla adds.