Imagine if the NBA allowed one team each year to blow up its roster.
Boom. All gone.
Overpriced wannabe All-Stars? See ya later.
Disinterested veterans? Hit the pike.
Overrated prospects? Dismissed.
And a few decent players who otherwise you’d want to keep? Sorry, unfortunate casualties.
How many NBA teams do you think would sign up for the inaugural big bang, which would take place before draft day?
- You’d have to start with the worst team in the league, which a month ago (before the draft) was the Nets. Maybe still is.
- The Clippers really should consider it. They are – not the first time, mind you – a mess and are staring in the face of a year’s probation (or worse) in the wake of the Aspiration fiasco.
- Then you’ve got the Trail Blazers, not because they belong in this conversation, but because it seems new owner Tom Dundon is always looking to save a buck. This would be the ultimate.
- Finally, you’ve got the Wizards, who project about two years from now to be the Sacramento Kings.
And there’s your answer. While the Nets and Trail Blazers appear to have a plan, while the Wizards and Clippers are too stubborn to look in the mirror, nobody – and I mean NOBODY – could possibly gaze at the current state of the Kings without saying: Blow it up.
Unfortunately, fireworks are illegal in most parts of California.
On paper, the 2026 Kings sounded like a winning hand.
Domantas Sabonis is a double-double machine.
Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are big-time scorers.
Russell Westbrook and Malik Monk remain useful.
And Keegan Murray is an All-Star of the future.
Or so says each’s appeal for a monster contract, which is the price you pay in Sacramento when San Francisco is their preferred zip code.
In fact, Sabonis is a defensive black hole; LaVine and DeRozan have become big-time shooters; Westbrook and Monk are old; and Murray … well, he’d be that unfortunate casualty.
Then again, the Kings have been so nice to Murray, who prompted more trade offers than games played last season, maybe he’d agree to become the first member of the New Kings. He – like all the others who wore purple last season – would become free agents under the new pity rule.
The timing this summer would have been ideal, as very few teams in the NBA had money to spend, especially the kind it would have taken to attract Murray. So Sacramento’s chances of getting him back would have been … well, better than their odds of winning any given night.
So where would they stand, and how would this be a good idea?
First off, on any team where the whole is less than the sum of its parts, subtraction needs to be added to the equation. So losing a bunch of losers can produce a winner.
That’s NBA math at its best.
Then you’ve got max money to throw at two guys out there who remain in limbo because everyone else has exceeded their budget. So even as basically an expansion team, you become a player for two of the league’s best young big men – the Pistons’ Jalen Duren and the Nuggets’ Peyton Watson.
You draft well – Darius Acuff, Jr. looked good in the summer league – and then attract cheaper talent with the lure of raising a family in California, the chance for immediate playing time and the possibility of being along for the ride when Duren, Watson, Murray, Acuff grow up.
It sure beats – by about 20 points – the current state of the Kings, which is about as ugly as it gets, especially when you consider the NBA has just made it harder for the worst team to benefit the most in the draft.
Short of this franchise-saving piece of brilliance, the Kings don’t have much choice but to point their purple beam in the eyes of rival general managers and hope they become a bit more generous at Sacramento’s ongoing fire sale.
Can the Pistons be talked into taking Sabonis in a sign-and-trade for Duren, who wants out of Detroit?
Maybe the Nugget would accept LaVine or Monk and De’Andre Hunter in a sign-and-trade for Watson, if he provides enough pressure?
Big-time names with small-time interest have been the bane of the Kings’ recent existence. So they’re left with one plan of attack:
Start “We Love Jalen Duren and Peyton Watson” campaigns, pray that drives a bigger wedge between the restricted free agents and their ungrateful employers, and hope the Pistons and/or Nuggets eventually cave and agree to exchange headaches.
Either that or wait for Sacramento’s own Gavin Newsom to win the next election and get heavily involved in NBA rules-making.
