Zach LaVine will undergo surgery on his right hand after the All-Star break and is expected to be sidelined for the rest of the Kings‘ season, reports league insider Chris Haynes (via Twitter).
LaVine has missed the last three games for the Kings with what was described as a right fifth finger tendon injury.
The 30-year-old guard is averaging 19.2 points per game this year, his lowest scoring rate since the 2017/18 season, and is also posting career lows in assists (2.3) and rebounds (2.8) per night. The Kings are currently tied for their longest losing streak in franchise history at 14 games and hold the worst record in the NBA.
LaVine holds a $48.9MM player option for next season, which he is expected to exercise.
Ok, where’s the King’s fine for tanking?
There’s a huge difference between what the Kings are/have been doing and what the Jazz are/have been doing. You know that.
The Kings haven’t been playing their guys at all. Tanking is tanking at the end of the day. All tanking teams should face punishment.
Have you been watching basketball this year? They actually been playing their guys. They actually just suck. Suck and so I’m cool with them. Shutting down players, especially Zach Levin. They’ll just lose the same with him playing. He’s a non-factor
I think they’ve actually been trying to win but are just terrible. Also Lavine not playing probably makes them better because he is a bum who plays no defense.
They’ve been tanking for 20+ years.
What can you do to Kings. Thats worse than what they do to themselves …..
Tank you very much!
LoL. Every losing team getting into the tanking action. Who is this year’s Flagg or Wemby??
Doesn’t matter for the Bulls. They’d send in the wrong name anyway.
Watch the tournament. You will see a big or player you like 8-12. Cenac and Richard is a huge upgrade over Vuc. With upside and a future.
AJ Dybantsa (BYU), Darryn Peterson (Kansas), and Cameron Boozer (Duke)
They should be top three. I guess Kings could use either one. Silver will look out for Kings. Can’t go wrong with either imo.
There’s multiple Flaggs in this draft, this bad boy is LOADED. I’d say all the top 10 are Flagg-esque and there’s a bunch of future all-stars or instant rotation players in the 20s-30s. Back end of the Draft is a little rough though.
IMO this is a little aggressive take. The top 2 would have gone before Flagg but Boozer may or may not.
Wilson, flemings, Brown, Wagler, and maybe Ament have great upside but not Flagg level. All have great potential but real questions.
I think this draft is top heavy. Top 3 are premium, next 4-5 are high value. It drops off quickly after that.
It’s why the Pacers protection in the Clippers trade is so weird.
Great draft, potentially all time great but I don’t see instant rotation guys in the 20s and 30s
If it is a “potentially all time great” draft then that literally means there will be instant rotation guys in the 20s and 30s.
I mean, “instant rotation guys” on bad teams aren’t exactly “elite superstars” so maybe you are misinterpreting my words here.
Not misinterpreting at all. I don’t think the top 10 are all in Flaggs range and I provided names that I think make out the top 8. I can provide reasons why 4-10 are not Flagg level prospects if you like. They all have too many open questions.
If you look at the 20s and 30s on any mock draft you will see names like Jefferson, Stirtz, Anderson, swain, ngongba, Evan’s, Sarr.
IMO, these are guys that eventually become rotation guys or are out of the league. I don’t see them as instant rotational guys. We’ll see how testing goes but right now I see this draft as a premium top 3, great top 7/8 (with a couple guys that might expand it to 10), then a dropoff to guys that might be rotational guys.
If this draft has multiple superstars and a few all stars that would make it historically great. Drafts are not graded by rotational guys.
Every draft has guys that surprise, and maybe we agree to disagree but I don’t see it as deep as you do.
I agreed with you up until this part:
“If this draft has multiple superstars and a few all stars that would make it historically great. Drafts are not graded by rotational guys.”
Where does it say that?
Why do you think the 1984, 1996, 2003, and 2018 drafts are considered so great?
It’s not because of the role players. It’s because they have multiple superstars and all stars. HOF level guys.
Any google search, ChatGPT, or copilot search for historically great drafts will respond with the number of elite players, HOF level type of guys from those drafts to justify their “greatness”.
Rotational guys can be signed for cheap, superstars are hard to come by.
IMO, this draft has that potential, but so did the Andrew Wiggins draft which didn’t quite pan out.
Last years draft has an interesting chance as well although more likely it will be one super and several all star level guys so maybe just short of those other drafts, but I love it.
Now, I do agree with you that deep drafts have great upside. There is value in those drafts. The Jazz for example should be very happy getting Collier and Filipowski so late in a trash draft, but I don’t think those type of “hits” make a draft historically great.
I love all drafts too to bottom and appreciate your point. I am always happy to find a fellow draft guy. Makes my day to have these type of conversations even if we disagree on some finer points.
Being the nature of the draft, with many sinking/swimming, I think “most players to play 10+ years in the NBA” is the metric to be used here. Rotation piece, bench scrub or superstar, playing 10+ years in this league is a huge accomplishment.
+ one other thing, as aside if you will, I will never use ChatGPT until the year 2040 and no one should either, it is too influenced by how you phrase questions, you can get it to agree with you about anything as long as you use the right type of questioning. It has been rolled out too early, and requires much larger sample sizes to pull from. Ai in 2026 is not worthwhile. Googling is just fine for me, I like doing my own research. But this is just a little aside, not meant to blow out into a big argument or anything…
Playing 10+ years is a huge accomplishment but no one, I mean no one in their right mind, would choose a draft with 5 Brook Lopez’s as a better draft than a draft with 2 Lebron James just because 5 role players stayed in the league a long time. We can all have different opinions but that methodology doesn’t resonate with me nor does it align with any reasonable discussion I’ve ever read or listened to in the draft.
That’s great you like google. I’d encourage you to ask it for the best drafts and see what it says and why. There will be several articles on the topic.
On the AI front. Agree to disagree. I use many forms of AI and it has increased my productivity in many areas, including my profession and my investments. I agree you have to know how to ask the right question and validate / verify results, but that is a matter of training and education. It has been incredibly profitable for me, both financially and in time management. I’m sorry you are missing out.
Trusting AI that isn’t running locally is very brave. These LLMs are trained on your data meaning everything you give to and take from their service is stored and tagged directly to you and your identity. Maybe a little tin foil hat-y but you should look into the pentagons use of Anthropic’s “Claude” during the operation to remove a certain someone from being the president of a certain country a couple weeks ago. Anthropic’s policy is 0 tolerance on violence. It’s amazing how fast those policies change when Palantir comes knocking.
That’s not the only way AI works. Refusing to use AI tools doesn’t protect you from someone using it against you. The example you provided is a perfect use case of what I mean.
I came out here to discuss basketball anyway. Not listen to AI fear monger’s. Probably best for all of us to move on to different topics. I wish you both the best.
Not a fear monger brother. I use AI every day. Just spreading the good word. Be safe out there.
I sleep REALLY well at night. You probably shouldnt if you are out here boiling the ocean.
Okay Juggernaut
Get outta here! That’s odd. I never expected anything like that could happen. LaVine is so durable.
Kings shooting for the #1 pick
Not how the lottery works
Yes, it’s exactly how the lottery works. The more you lose the better your shot at a top pick.
Please explain to me the difference between the worst team’s odds vs the 4th worst team’s odds. Ill wait.
Worst team can’t get any worse than the 5th pick.
The 5th pick… you know… NOT WINNING THE LOTTERY?!
Except in the new format the worst records tend to fall out and the middles have been rising.
They were already so bad with Zach. But I don’t think players are opting for surgery to benefit their teams lottery chances. I think sac just sucks.
Is DeMar getting released next???
#FreeDemar
Only the Kings would think that a combo of LaVine/DeRozan/Westbrook would work lol.
How any Kings fan defends their always-incompetent front office is beyond me. Hali and De’Aaron would have them in the top 4 right now.
They didn’t play well off each other. Neither wanted to be a spot up shooter for other.
No Kings fan has ever defended the FO…
All of this losing will probably get the kings the 5th overall pick with the jazz and wizards lottery treatment
With Indiana and San Antonio getting the top picks
What’s extremely obvious and funny to many, KINGS aren’t even tanking. they just svck.
Great fans, poverty franchise.
Kings weren’t trying to tank. Vivek legit thought he had a winner.
It’s been tough times for Sac fans, but, the 2000s team were tough bones to gnaw. They could really have beat the Lakers, actually, the Kobe foul on Mike Bibby in that late game inbound that wasn’t called in 01 (or 02), is just a picture of the difficulty they showed to the Lakers on that series. And some 2 or 3 years after, they were a good team still.
After that team dismantled, they were never relevant, except for that season with Fox, Sabonis and Mike Brown. When Fox demanded the trade, it was done.