The Sacramento Kings have ton of cap space, but have elected to save it thus far — despite multiple salary dumps having already taken place around the league this season. While preserving their cap space heading into the summer may not be a bad call, you have to wonder if they’d even be able to use it anyway.
Sacramento isn’t exactly a top-tier free agent destination, and while that may change slightly after a good season this year, does the front office really believe they’ll be able to attract a max-level free agent? At this point, it’s hard to gauge, but if they’re not leveraging cap space for draft picks in a year where they don’t have a first round pick it makes you wonder what their plans are.
Making a small trade to bring back a lower-tier first rounder by trading expiring contracts and taking back salary would seemingly be the smart thing to do — yet they haven’t, even though there are multiple opportunities for them to do so. The simplest of which might be a deal with Houston that looks something like this:
Knight is in the fourth year of a five-year, $70 million contract and is owed $15.6 million next season, but the Kings would get back a first round pick — which is the point. There could be other opportunities as more trades go down across the league, but whether or not something happens is still in the air.