Hollinger: On Vlade Divac, his Luka miss, what he got right and what’s next由asjkfj 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
NBA front offices are nothing if not paranoid, so a funny thing happened in the lead-up to the 2018 NBA Draft. At the time, Slovenian prodigy Luka Doncic was starring for Real Madrid and all but certain to be a top-five pick, but teams were still sleuthing around Europe trying to collect additional background.
And who would know European prospects better than Kings general manager Vlade Divac? Especially with a front office that included fellow Serbs Peja Stojakovic and Peja Drobnjak. Their front office had connections (and spoke languages) that most of the rest of us didn’t.
So it caught everyone’s attention when the Kings seemed weirdly cold on selecting Doncic. This franchise had fallen over itself to put other Balkan players on the roster, trading a lottery pick for Bogdan Bogdanovic and Georgios Papagiannis, signing Nemanja Bjelica out of Philly at the last minute and even weirdly inking little-known Duje Dukan.
Because this went so strongly against their trend line, a worrying thought began circulating among teams picking near the top of the draft: Do the Kings know something about Doncic we don’t?
(Narrator: They did not.)
Obviously, that draft was the catalyst for Friday’s move that led to a parting of ways between the franchise and Divac. The Kings took Marvin Bagley III instead of Doncic (or Trae Young, or Jaren Jackson Jr., or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or Michael Porter Jr. or …), only to see him struggle to match the massive production of some of his highly drafted peers.
The draft is hard, and it’s not the first time the second-overall pick turned out to be a relative dud. For instance, the second overall pick in 2014 was left on the Kings’ doorstep at the trade deadline in 2020. Bagley is wild on defense and doesn’t stretch the floor, but he’s not a lost cause — one could easily see him turning into a steady 20-10 guy in a couple of years.
But that pick obscures the other big issues facing the Kings, such as the series of free-agent misses the team made in the summer of 2019. Sacramento went all-in on middling veterans based on the wayward logic that they were one or two pieces away from being really good, and those deals will handcuff them going forward. Divac’s 2019 free-agency coda was one for the ages: Four years, $85 million for Harrison Barnes; three years, $37 million for Cory Joseph; two years, $25 million for Trevor Ariza; three years, $40 million for Dewayne Dedmon; and a four-year, $94 million extension for Buddy Hield.
The end mirrored the beginning in some ways. Divac took the job with no experience and no knowledge of the salary cap, and it showed. He was almost immediately clowned by Philadelphia in a trade that cost it a lottery pick and merely allowed the Kings to overpay veteran players they didn’t need in free agency.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, the Kings gave Zach Randolph and Arron Afflalo each two-year, $24 million deals on their way out of the league and George Hill three years and $57 million to play with get-me-out-of-here enthusiasm.
Before we dump on Divac, let’s give credit where credit is due. He boldly and correctly cashed in his DeMarcus Cousins stock while it was high, bet correctly on De’Aaron Fox in the 2017 draft and found bargain value in Bjelica and Richaun Holmes.
Overall, however, the impression the Kings left was that they were too reactive, too heavily staffed with Divac’s Serbian cronies and too lightly staffed everywhere else. While the Kings made a decent-sized investment in analytics, you never got the sense it seeped very far into their basketball operations or coaching decisions.
That job will now fall to the next general manager, who presumably will decide the fate of embattled head coach Luke Walton at some point as well. Walton is reportedly safe and signed through 2022-23, according to The Athletic’s Sam Amick, but head coaches rarely survive a management change for long. Walton’s record doesn’t suggest he’ll be the one to buck the trend.
For the moment, Joe Dumars will be calling the shots, per Amick, while the team looks to hire a new GM.
These “temporary” situations have a way of becoming permanent, so it’s worth combing through Dumars’ track record. It starts with a brilliant three-year stretch to put together a historic Pistons team that managed to win a title without a high lottery pick or a superstar free agent, shifted to an epic bust with the second overall pick (no, seriously!) in Darko Milicic, and ended with a series of free-agent blunders toward the end of his run. The last of them, Josh Smith, will finally be removed from Detroit’s salary-cap sheet in October.
If the Kings are serious about hiring somebody else to lead the franchise, two names they should certainly be calling about are Toronto general manager Bobby Webster and Boston assistant general manager Michael Zarren. While I don’t have an inside scoop on this, two other names that bear watching from Dumars’ Detroit years are Orlando general manager John Hammond and Knicks general manager Scott Perry.
Whoever is in charge faces some interesting decisions for a franchise that desperately wants to make the playoffs but probably isn’t good enough to pull it off, especially in this Western Conference. The Kings have to decide how much to value Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent who will generate interest from other teams, and will need to negotiate an extension with Fox, who bloomed as an All-Star-caliber point guard this year.
Free agency is an area where the Kings have consistently riddled their feet with bullets, including last year, but the Kings are set up to try again. They’ll have their full midlevel exception in addition to a small trade exception from their February Dedmon salary dump.
If they’re being realistic, they should probably think about taking a step back instead. They can start by trading the 32-year-old Bjelica, who has one year left on a $7.1 million deal and should generate strong interest from contenders. They should also listen to offers on Barnes and Hield, both of whom failed to live up to cap-clogging contract extensions given to them last summer.
After 14 straight years outside the playoffs, however, one wonders if the organizational will exists to face that reality or if the mantra of “all-in for the No. 8 seed” will prevail. In the short term, Dumars and the remaining Kings front-office staff need to sort this out, as Sacramento oddly waited five months to gather information from eight more games and then drop the ax on Divac. That leaves little time to get a new GM onboarded, but with a late lottery pick and multiple second-rounders, Dumars will need to get up to speed on the draft quickly.
Most importantly, however, this might be an offseason in which the Kings look to observe the Hippocratic oath. With a major transition in the front office and a roster that is more set for next year than not, “First, do no harm” should be the primary order of business. Too many times in this franchise’s recent past, it’s failed to heed that advice.
NBA front offices are nothing if not paranoid, so a funny thing happened in the lead-up to the 2018 NBA Draft. At the time, Slovenian prodigy Luka Doncic was starring for Real Madrid and all but certain to be a top-five pick, but teams were still sleuthing around Europe trying to collect additional background.
And who would know European prospects better than Kings general manager Vlade Divac? Especially with a front office that included fellow Serbs Peja Stojakovic and Peja Drobnjak. Their front office had connections (and spoke languages) that most of the rest of us didn’t.
So it caught everyone’s attention when the Kings seemed weirdly cold on selecting Doncic. This franchise had fallen over itself to put other Balkan players on the roster, trading a lottery pick for Bogdan Bogdanovic and Georgios Papagiannis, signing Nemanja Bjelica out of Philly at the last minute and even weirdly inking little-known Duje Dukan.
Because this went so strongly against their trend line, a worrying thought began circulating among teams picking near the top of the draft: Do the Kings know something about Doncic we don’t?
(Narrator: They did not.)
Obviously, that draft was the catalyst for Friday’s move that led to a parting of ways between the franchise and Divac. The Kings took Marvin Bagley III instead of Doncic (or Trae Young, or Jaren Jackson Jr., or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or Michael Porter Jr. or …), only to see him struggle to match the massive production of some of his highly drafted peers.
The draft is hard, and it’s not the first time the second-overall pick turned out to be a relative dud. For instance, the second overall pick in 2014 was left on the Kings’ doorstep at the trade deadline in 2020. Bagley is wild on defense and doesn’t stretch the floor, but he’s not a lost cause — one could easily see him turning into a steady 20-10 guy in a couple of years.
But that pick obscures the other big issues facing the Kings, such as the series of free-agent misses the team made in the summer of 2019. Sacramento went all-in on middling veterans based on the wayward logic that they were one or two pieces away from being really good, and those deals will handcuff them going forward. Divac’s 2019 free-agency coda was one for the ages: Four years, $85 million for Harrison Barnes; three years, $37 million for Cory Joseph; two years, $25 million for Trevor Ariza; three years, $40 million for Dewayne Dedmon; and a four-year, $94 million extension for Buddy Hield.
The end mirrored the beginning in some ways. Divac took the job with no experience and no knowledge of the salary cap, and it showed. He was almost immediately clowned by Philadelphia in a trade that cost it a lottery pick and merely allowed the Kings to overpay veteran players they didn’t need in free agency.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, the Kings gave Zach Randolph and Arron Afflalo each two-year, $24 million deals on their way out of the league and George Hill three years and $57 million to play with get-me-out-of-here enthusiasm.
Before we dump on Divac, let’s give credit where credit is due. He boldly and correctly cashed in his DeMarcus Cousins stock while it was high, bet correctly on De’Aaron Fox in the 2017 draft and found bargain value in Bjelica and Richaun Holmes.
Overall, however, the impression the Kings left was that they were too reactive, too heavily staffed with Divac’s Serbian cronies and too lightly staffed everywhere else. While the Kings made a decent-sized investment in analytics, you never got the sense it seeped very far into their basketball operations or coaching decisions.
That job will now fall to the next general manager, who presumably will decide the fate of embattled head coach Luke Walton at some point as well. Walton is reportedly safe and signed through 2022-23, according to The Athletic’s Sam Amick, but head coaches rarely survive a management change for long. Walton’s record doesn’t suggest he’ll be the one to buck the trend.
For the moment, Joe Dumars will be calling the shots, per Amick, while the team looks to hire a new GM.
These “temporary” situations have a way of becoming permanent, so it’s worth combing through Dumars’ track record. It starts with a brilliant three-year stretch to put together a historic Pistons team that managed to win a title without a high lottery pick or a superstar free agent, shifted to an epic bust with the second overall pick (no, seriously!) in Darko Milicic, and ended with a series of free-agent blunders toward the end of his run. The last of them, Josh Smith, will finally be removed from Detroit’s salary-cap sheet in October.
If the Kings are serious about hiring somebody else to lead the franchise, two names they should certainly be calling about are Toronto general manager Bobby Webster and Boston assistant general manager Michael Zarren. While I don’t have an inside scoop on this, two other names that bear watching from Dumars’ Detroit years are Orlando general manager John Hammond and Knicks general manager Scott Perry.
Whoever is in charge faces some interesting decisions for a franchise that desperately wants to make the playoffs but probably isn’t good enough to pull it off, especially in this Western Conference. The Kings have to decide how much to value Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent who will generate interest from other teams, and will need to negotiate an extension with Fox, who bloomed as an All-Star-caliber point guard this year.
Free agency is an area where the Kings have consistently riddled their feet with bullets, including last year, but the Kings are set up to try again. They’ll have their full midlevel exception in addition to a small trade exception from their February Dedmon salary dump.
If they’re being realistic, they should probably think about taking a step back instead. They can start by trading the 32-year-old Bjelica, who has one year left on a $7.1 million deal and should generate strong interest from contenders. They should also listen to offers on Barnes and Hield, both of whom failed to live up to cap-clogging contract extensions given to them last summer.
After 14 straight years outside the playoffs, however, one wonders if the organizational will exists to face that reality or if the mantra of “all-in for the No. 8 seed” will prevail. In the short term, Dumars and the remaining Kings front-office staff need to sort this out, as Sacramento oddly waited five months to gather information from eight more games and then drop the ax on Divac. That leaves little time to get a new GM onboarded, but with a late lottery pick and multiple second-rounders, Dumars will need to get up to speed on the draft quickly.
Most importantly, however, this might be an offseason in which the Kings look to observe the Hippocratic oath. With a major transition in the front office and a roster that is more set for next year than not, “First, do no harm” should be the primary order of business. Too many times in this franchise’s recent past, it’s failed to heed that advice.
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