Good morning. Let’s basketball.
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A Boy and a Girl With a Cat and an Eel, Judith Leyster
The Sacramento Kings had quite a disappointing 2019-20 season, not just because they finished well under .500 again and failed to make the playoffs for the 14th straight year. The campaign was so disappointing because the team went backwards after a promising 2018-19 season that left them just a couple games under .500 and just outside the playoffs. Young teams are supposed to go forward, and the 2018-19 season tricked the Kings into investing in their core. An investment that now looks a bit dodgy.
That investment: a 4-year, $85 million deal for Harrison Barnes and a 4-year, $94 million extension for Buddy Hield that kicks in this coming season. Both contracts decline in value over their terms, and the Kings (for better or worse) don’t have anyone else signed long-term. De’Aaron Fox is now eligible for an extension that would kick in for the 2021-22 season, and should get something approaching the max.
The problem is that another of the Kings’ best young players, Bogdan Bogdanovic, is a restricted free agent this offseason, and there’s really no clarity still on how he fits on a team paying Buddy Hield $94 million. This is complicated by the fact that the front office that paid Buddy and Barnes has been replaced by a group that has no ties with either player or the incumbent coach, who will stick around for at least the time being.
Buddy and Bogdan are the same age and really are similar players: high-scoring two-guards who rely heavily on the three-pointer and don’t attack the rim or create for others all that much. Buddy has been a better shooter in the pros (he’s one of the most prolific high-volume, high-efficiency shooters in the league) but appears to be a little more melodramatic behind the scenes. (He’s feuded with Luke Walton for basically a year now.) Bogdan seems to have accepted whatever role whatever Kings coach puts on him, and showed some spectacular competitiveness and leadership in the FIBA World Cup in 2018.
Given Buddy’s stated unwillingness to come off the bench, despite him excelling in that role last season, this is a pickle. Bogdanovic can continue to be the team’s sixth man, but he’s not quite a Jamal Crawford/Manu Ginobili orchestra leader — and his salary is likely to exceed what the Kings can afford to spend on a sixth man given the enormous outlay for Hield and Fox. The Kings have tried Fox, Hield and Bogdanovic together at times, and woe be the big man who has to anchor the defense in that case.
The easiest path is to let Bogdanovic work the market in a situation where few teams have salary cap space and many are saving up for 2021, and then match any reasonable offer sheet. The new front office, led by Morey acolyte Monte McNair, can determine what to do with the roster later this season or next offseason. Meanwhile, you preserve an asset — it’s unlikely that in restricted free agency Bogdanovic will draw a salary that immediately becomes an albatross.
The issues between Hield and Walton are only concerning inasmuch as they reflect on Buddy’s personality and ability to be coached, and any impact it has on the Kings’ other young players like Fox and Marvin Bagley. Walton is likely not long for this team unless there’s an immediate turnaround. General manager positions are too fragile to rely on someone else’s coach (especially one with a record of little success once he left Steve Kerr’s staff). McNair will want his own coach to execute his vision before long, so the fact that Buddy is feuding with Walton is more annoyance than deciding factor in whether to shop Hield.
The Kings have the financial flexibility this offseason to be patient and let the Buddy and Bogdan situation play out. But once Fox’s contract kicks in next season, most of that flexibility is gone and the pressure will begin amping up on this latest front office to have the Kings back in competition. With the other young teams in the West looking better than Sacramento at this point, it’s going to be a really tough path unless things start going really right.
P.S. The single biggest factor for the Kings’ future success is how good of a three-point shooter Fox can be. He shot 37% in his breakout 2018-19 season and 27% last year. Needless to say, that’s an enormous gap that has incredible implications for his ceiling. His defense is also an issue to watch closely, because that can help dictate the make-up of the team around him.
P.P.S. I would count Bagley’s development as an enormous factor as well, though at this point I hope for his sake he just gets and stays healthy for a while, no matter what stats he puts up.
Hold Up
Allow me a brief descend into the world of baseball.
A positive test for Justin Turner, the L.A. Dodgers’ third baseman, came back in the second inning, and the Dodgers left him in the game until the eighth inning of their close-out Game 6 World Series win over the Tampa Bay Rays?
Then he came back out to celebrate with his wife and teammates? Having just tested positive for COVID-19?
Major League Baseball did not have an NBA-style bubble, and dealt with cases on and off throughout their abbreviated season. Had the Rays won Game 6 and forced a Game 7, reporters cited MLB sources who are not clear when Game 7 would have been played due to contact tracing from Turner’s positive case. In other words, it would have been an entire mess just completing the World Series at that point.
As it stands, the Dodgers and Turner seem to have flouted every conceivable rule and recommendation by keeping Turner in the game six innings past being informed of his positive test and then by bringing him out to celebrate. It would have been heartbreaking for him to be unable to celebrate with his team, yes. It’s going to be heartbreaking if Game 6 of the World Series goes down as a notorious superspreader event, too.
As a reminder: the NBA’s plan for the 2020-21 season is similar to what MLB and NFL have been doing. And the NBA is hoping to start in two months. No one in the league office should crow just yet.
Links
Got a quick programming note for you. There will be no GMIB on Tuesday, November 3, or Wednesday, November 4. Just a heads up. Taking a couple of days to Not Be Online and doing some civic duties.
LeBron James demanded to guard Jimmy Butler for Game 6 to close out the Heat.
If the NBA begins in December, will stars skip the early part of the schedule?
An interview between President Obama and LeBron on voting will come out later this week.
David Thorpe on whether the Warriors will shoot for James Wiseman.
Kansas City is trying hard to host the Raptors this season. Shades of Oklahoma City stepping up to host the Hornets after Hurricane Katrina.
Ahmad Rashad talks about the 30-year anniversary of Inside Stuff. I loved this show so much in the ‘90s as a kid/teen. Any segment with Shaq was pure gold. I’ll never forget when NBA snuck this into a Knicks-Bulls playoff game in 1992. I was 10 and fell in love with Shaq immediately.
Updated mock draft from Kevin O’Connor.
Why this is the first year that Bradley Beal will vote.
Kelly Dwyer on Nate Bjorkgren in Indiana and Stan Van Gundy in New Orleans. ($)
Nancy Armour on the impact WNBA players have had on the Georgia special Senate election.
Be excellent to each other.
