With top odds at the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 draft more likely than a playoff berth, the 13-30 Kings will focus more on developing their young players during the second half of the season. As Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee writes, that means head coach Dave Joerger has begun to remove certain veteran players from the team’s rotation for a game at a time.
According to Jones, the Kings will sit at least two – and perhaps three – of their veterans in each game going forward. That group of vets includes George Hill, Kosta Koufos, Garrett Temple, Vince Carter, and Zach Randolph. Carter and Randolph didn’t get off the bench during Monday night’s loss to Oklahoma City.
“It’s not an easy conversation,” Joerger said. “They’re very professional, they’re competitive. All of them are rotation players on a playoff team. So to ask those guys to step aside at different times is not enjoyable for me. They handled it well, they’ve been pros.”
When the Kings put together their roster for 2017/18, the hope was that the veteran group, led by free agent additions Hill, Carter, and Randolph, would complement young players like De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, and Willie Cauley-Stein, forming a productive lineup. However, most of Sacramento’s young players aren’t yet ready to be impact players, and the club’s vets – particularly Hill – have been inconsistent.
With Joerger and the Kings focused on determining which young players should be part of the team’s long-term plans, it will be interesting to see if any of the vets are on the move before the February 8 trade deadline. The Hill and Randolph contracts may be tricky to move, but Carter is on an expiring deal, and Koufos and Temple have affordable player options for 2018/19.
Joerger needs to focus on developing Fox,Hield, and Giles. Those three are the Kings’ future, Bogdanovic should be the 6th man. Do not bring back Cauley-Stein and start moving contracts, trade George Hill with the current pick to move up in the draft and get Ayton.
Einstein
Please trade Vince Carter to a contender. He deserves to have a chance at winning a ring over sitting out games now at his age. Spurs would be a great suitor for him.
Carter knew what he was signing up for when he joined Sacramento
Man thank you, he took the money he knew damn well they wasn’t going to be good
If anything rather keep Carter this year, they all took the money, they knew what they were signing up for, and Carter has been doing a lot of teaching and coaching these rookies a lot so I rather keep him for the rest of the year and if he wants to go somewhere and go ring chasing he can but for this year he knew it was going too be a year or teaching not ring chasing.
Amazing. Imagine the flexibility they would have had if they hadn’t signed Randolph and Hill. They were bad signings then (for the Kings) and they are worse now.
Randolph is still really good.