Is Ben McLemore changing his Sacramento Kings number?

It seems like the Young King is not only changing the design of his uniform this season, but his number as well. For the past few weeks, Ben McLemore has been posting clues on his twitter account hinting that the soon-to-be second year pro is changing his jersey number for the 2014-2015 NBA season.

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They were rumors earlier this year saying that McLemore did request a number change for the upcoming season, but McLemore was wearing the number 16 during his play at Summer League. It seemed that those rumors were put to bed, but there have been recent posts on McLemore’s twitter account that has lead Kings fans like myself that a number change is happening.

Earlier this month on twitter McLemore hosted a fan Q&A, and though there were a bevy of questions asked, one in particular popped off of my screen.

The post that caught my attention was posted by @T_Grianger_ESPN asking Ben “Are you switching your number?” and McLemore being straightforward about it replied with a simple “yeah”.

Then earlier this morning McLemore posted a tweet stating, “A little math for you this morning… (30/3+5) + (84-76)= ??  Coming soon…”. You don’t need to be a mathematician to know that the equation equals to 23 (McLemore’s number in college / parts of high school), which also hints that McLemore is changing his number back to 23.

So it seems to be the indication that Ben McLemore will wear 23 next season. If the number change from 16 to 23 stays accurate, it leads to the possibility of the Kings retiring former sharpshooting Peja Stojakovic’s number. Throughout its existence, the Kings have been historically awful, but there was a span from the late 90s to early 2000s where the Kings were elite. Stojakovic played a crucial role during that span for the Kings and I feel the Kings want to show their appreciation for Peja by retiring his number. If the Kings do decide to retire Stojakovic’s number, he will be the third player to retired by the organization from that regime (Chris Webber #4 / Vlade Divac #21). Nothing is set in concrete yet, but it wouldn’t be a shock to me to watch a ceremony this season retiring Peja’s number.