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Sacramento’s Two New Shooters: Seth Curry and Duje Dukan

ByZack Zolmer|

For NBA teams, summertime is the best time to improve your roster. Young, promising prospects are drafted, long-negotiated trades are finally executed, and free agents big and small are recruited, signed and eagerly presented to their new fans. It’s an exciting and optimistic part of the offseason.

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Oh, and that Summer League thing also happens. It’s more-or-less an afterthought, but for basketball-starved fans, fringe-NBA players and team executives, it matters. It’s a hidden oasis of sorts in an increasingly overpopulated American sports landscape, when die-hard fans separate from the casual, where front offices can watch and sign low-risk, low- to moderate-reward free agents. The freshly-waived Eric Moreland is one example.

Seth Curry and Duje Dukan are two more examples—each of whom signed two-year contracts with the Sacramento Kings after encouraging summer performances.

In short, the 23-year-old Dukan and 24-year-old Curry are tasked with mending the team’s outside shooting woes. (Last season, the Kings ranked 21st in three point percentage and 28th in three pointers attempted and made, per NBA.com.)

Duje Dukan’s signing with Sacramento makes a lot of sense. With a vacancy at the forward spot following Luc Mbah a Moute’s failed physical, Duje was the immediate, inexpensive option. He’s been labeled a stretch-four due to his 6’10” frame and the Kings’s need for one, but that doesn’t do his versatility justice.

With the height of a power forward, the Croatian moves more like a small forward. Dukan profiles as a consistent three-point shooter with a quick stroke (he shot 42 percent from three over five Summer League games, per Real GM), and he knows his limits.

He doesn’t have the athleticism or the ball-handling ability to beat defenders off the dribble, and he probably never will. He takes his offense where he can get it, rarely forcing anything. If he’s open he’ll shoot. If not, he’ll pass, and play within the offense. Dukan is a role player in the truest sense.

As a potential stretch-four, Dukan presents a trade-off. He moves well for his height at the cost of strength, and though he’ll provide the Kings spacing and scoring offensively, he’ll cost the team on defense against stronger forwards. As a power forward, most – if not all – of his minutes will come alongside Cousins, since DeMarcus can make up for the rim protection and rebounding that Dukan cannot muster. But, most importantly, he can shoot.

Which brings us to Seth Curry. It’s fair to say that Curry’s Summer League performance is what earned him an NBA contract, and it’s also fair to say the contract he received from Sacramento was justified.

As a member of the New Orleans Pelicans Summer League team, Curry averaged 24.3 points on 45.9 percent shooting, leading the Las Vegas Summer League in scoring. He did so in spite of a 22.2 three-point percentage (a statistical anomaly, surely), which speaks to the improvement in his all-around offensive game.

An elite three-point shooter by reputation, Curry leveraged the opposition’s knowledge of his scouting report into higher-percentage attempts closer to the basket, using shot and ball fakes to force his defenders off-balance. Once inside the arc, Curry proved himself proficient at step-back jumpers and dribble pull-ups from mid range, and did well among bigger bodies when contested around the rim. His handle was better, too.

Undoubtedly, this Seth Curry is a marked improvement over the one of years’ past. He’s transformed from an off-ball shooter who deferred to Austin Rivers while at Duke, into an offensively dynamic – if unproven – NBA point guard.

Not to mention, VP Vlade absolutely stole him from the Pelicans and general manager Dell Demps.

A two-year contract worth two million total is outrageously inexpensive, even with full guarantees. If New Orleans really did want Curry, it should’ve done much better to secure him.

Come training camp and the eventual start of this NBA season, it’ll be interesting to see what Duje Dukan and Seth Curry’s respective roles will be on this team. Probably nothing much. Both Rajon Rondo and Darren Collison are sure to play over Curry, and Dukan has Rudy Gay, Omri Casspi, Caron Butler and possibly Quincy Acy in front of him.

Questions over playing time aside, the significance of these two otherwise-minor signings is profound. They signal a drastic shift in organizational philosophy—one that Kings fans have long been pleading for, and that Kings decision-makers have long been unable to fulfill. Perhaps more than any other team of the past 10 years, this Sacramento Kings team values–and has–shooting. At long last.

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