Sacramento Kings: Grading the Kings’ deadline trades one month later

Grades:

Sacramento Kings – C

Cleveland Cavaliers – A

Houston Rockets – B-minus

There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s just get into it. From the Kings perspective this deal is a bit puzzling. Despite adding Harrison Barnes to take over the starting small forward role from Iman Shumpert, keeping Shumpert on-board would’ve been a wise move to provide some much-needed wing depth, especially since the Kings jettisoned Justin Jackson.

It’s important to keep in mind the Kings traded Shumpert to Houston before they acquired Barnes and sent off Jackson, so we don’t know what the thought process was for the Kings front office when they made the move. Still, it seems like a pointless trade at best.

Shumpert was a leader in the Kings locker room and championed “The Scores” and his trade left a lot of Kings players hurt and they weren’t the only ones. Kings fans from across the country panned the move, angry that Shumpert was sent off for Alec Burks, a veteran two-guard who owns career averages of 9.6 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists.

This, of course, isn’t a knock on Burks, but rather illustrating just how much Shumpert meant to this team and this fan base. And if we’re playing a bit of revisionist history, is it possible to the Kings are in a better playoff position if they still have Shumpert to fill in after Marvin Bagley III went down?

After Bagley’s injury, Harrison Barnes moved to power forward and Bogdan Bogdanovic joined the starting lineup as a small forward. This, to put it bluntly, has been a disaster. Barnes hasn’t been awful as a small-ball four, but Bogdanovic has struggled immensely. He’s being torched regularly on defense and his shot isn’t falling, this is mostly due to his role changing as a starter to 3 and D wing instead of a primary ball-handler with the second-unit, but the negative impact is there regardless.

Had the Kings kept Shumpert, they could’ve trotted him out as their starting small forward and kept Bogi on the bench where he should be, as a sixth man — but they didn’t. Shumpert is in Houston and the Kings are stuck with what they have.

Looking at the trade objectively, however, you can see some reason behind the move and even with the undefeated 20/20 hindsight suggesting this move is more deserving of a failing grade, it was a relatively low-risk trade that won’t hurt the Kings long-term and that much hasn’t changed.

Shumpert was going to have his minutes slashed immensely once Barnes was acquired, and the move to the Rockets not only insures he still has a role (16.4 minute per game in Houston), but that he also joins a contender. Burks also adds a veteran locker room presence to help fill the void left by Shumpert and Jackson, while also *potentially* adding more on-court production. Burks adds another shot-creator off the bench who can operate as the team’s second point guard, a role that Yogi Ferrell and Frank Mason III have both failed to seize despite ample opportunity to do so.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but the thinking behind the move seems sound. And for what it’s worth, Burks — like Barnes — has seemed to find his stride with the Kings as of late, performing well when called upon and helping orchestrate Sacramento’s near-comeback against the Washington Wizards on Monday night. As a result, this gets an average ‘C’ grade for the Kings.

For the Rockets, they had to send out a ton of draft capital, but managed to finagle their way out from under Brandon Knight’s contract while adding a solid veteran in Iman Shumpert. The Rockets aren’t going to get an ‘A’ just for attaching a draft pick to a bad contract, but they did as best they could under the circumstances, which warrants a respectable ‘B-minus’.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, however, are the real winners of this trade. Not only were they able to move some veteran players for draft capital, but they got a considerable amount of it. Sure a 2022 second rounder isn’t anything to lose your minds over (“The Process” notwithstanding), but adding a 2019 first is a big get for a team without a bright future, even if they have to take on two years of Brandon Knight.

Of course, it’s important to note that pick is lottery-protected, but the Rockets aren’t bottoming out this year anyway (obviously). And it could also be a good asset to attach to Kevin Love to move him after signing him to a massive contract-extension over the summer, though it remains to be seen if that’s what Cleveland wants to do. Still, they come away with an ‘A’ here, and for good reason.