Four years ago, Vlade Divac made arguably one of the biggest mistakes in Sacramento Kings’ history. In its aftermath, was the damage as bad as it could have been?
Vlade Divac was hired by Vivek Ranadive and the Sacramento Kings to become their Vice President of Basketball Operations in March of 2015. It took only four months for him to put together what may have been the worst trade in franchise history.
On July 1, 2015, the Philadelphia 76ers agreed to take on the contracts of Jason Thompson, Nik Stauskas, and Carl Landry from the Kings in exchange for a future first-round pick from the Kings, as well as the right to swap first-round picks in 2016 and 2017. The goal for the Kings was to gain cap space to take one more swing at building around their franchise center, DeMarcus Cousins.
Of course, nearly four years later, that future first-round pick finally converted during the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery, effectively bringing the trade to an end. Now that the Kings have reached the other side of one of their biggest blunders, I thought now was a good time to review exactly what they gave up in the trade, as well as what (if anything) they gained.
Welcome to The Sixers 2015 Trade Post-Mortem.