NBA draft week bought its first main deal Wednesday, when the Portland Trail Blazers agreed to accumulate Jerami Grant from the Detroit Pistons for a protected 2025 first-round decide and different draft concerns. League executives have been forecasting the potential for a busy commerce market Thursday, and the Kings have been an everyday subject of dialog.
Sacramento is synonymous with perplexing draft selections: The Kings took Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic and Trae Young in 2018 after reaching for little-known middle Georgios Papagiannis within the 2016 lottery, amongst different whiffs. This yr, the Kings maintain the No. 4 decide but have acquired the chilly shoulder from the consensus fourth-best prospect: Purdue’s Jaden Ivey.
During a name with reporters this week, Ivey confirmed that he hadn’t labored out for or met with the Kings. “If I got drafted there, it wouldn’t be the worst option,” Ivey added, according to the Sacramento Bee. That’s not precisely a ringing endorsement or a slogan worthy of a T-shirt. It’s additionally price noting that Ivey is represented by the identical company as Tyrese Haliburton, whom the Kings blindsided with a commerce deadline deal that despatched him to the Indiana Pacers.
Ivey, an attack-minded scoring guard, would match on a number of lottery groups, together with the Pacers, Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards and New York Knicks. That places Sacramento in place to public sale its decide if it concludes De’Aaron Fox and Ivey have redundant talent units. If the Kings can’t discover a commerce associate, they may all the time default to a different prospect, corresponding to Iowa’s Keegan Murray or Arizona’s Bennedict Mathurin.