News broke late Wednesday night that disgruntled center Dewayne Dedmon had been traded, along with two second-round picks, to the Atlanta Hawks for Jabari Parker and Alex Len.
The common reaction among both fans and members of the media was positive. Dedmon had to go and it's a good thing he went. And the price to unload him was not crazy. Landing Parker and Len is not an amazing trade by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also not a bad trade.
But that's just a little sad, isn't it? Doesn't the bar feel too low? Isn't the real issue how the Kings get themselves into these situations in the first place?
Dedmon was acquired as a free agent using $13.3 million in cap space just last summer. That same week, the Kings used another $12.2 million in cap space to add Trevor Ariza.
Ariza was also recently traded by the Kings for little more than bits and pieces. That trade was also viewed positively. And again, that is a totally fair way to view the deal in isolation.
However, you only need to peel back a couple layers of the onion on either of these trades before something starts to stink.
Sacramento got very little in exchange for the $25.5 million in cap space allocated to Dedmon and Ariza.
Good, useful players sign for that amount or less all the time. So while we can say that these trades are good in the moment, it gets much more bleak when looking at the big picture.
Let's go back a little further. The last big trade the Kings made was swapping Zach Randolph and Justin Jackson for Harrison Barnes at the trade deadline one year ago.
In isolation, that feels like a great trade. Sacramento added a functional player who has been able work just fine in their starting lineup. They gave up one player who didn't log a single minute on the court that season and another who wasn't anything special.
But add in the context and things get less impressive. Sacramento never should have paid Zach Randolph $12 million to ride the bench as a 37-year-old. And while Justin Jackson was disappointing in his second season, many of the players drafted around him were excelling, including Donovan Mitchell, Bam Adebayo and John Collins.
Even the shine of that trade has worn off over time. The Kings fell out of the playoff picture and re-signed Barnes to a new deal worth a whole lot of money. There's a chance that Barnes eventually becomes the next piece Sacramento must trade for parts in a season or two.
The George Hill trade in 2018 is even more similar to what we have seen this year with Dedmon and Ariza. Hill was signed using $20 million in cap space, but was quickly shipped away for a second-rounder and Iman Shumpert, who would also go on to be traded within a year.
The Kings traded down from pick 47 to pick 55 in the 2019 draft. They swapped Skal Labissiere for Caleb Swanigan. They sent Iman Shumpert away for Alec Burks and a second-rounder. They traded Garrett Temple for Ben McLemore and a second-rounder.
It's a whole lot of meh.
Some feel that Labissiere, Shumpert and Temple could have continued to help Sacramento, but Kings fans will never get to find out. And we know for sure Sacramento's use of cap space has not gone to plan for years.
In truth, none of these trades were disastrous. Some are underwhelming, but none of them are downright awful.
What is awful, however, is how frequently the Kings put themselves into a position where they must minimize the damage of past mistakes. The goal can't keep being to recover from your latest slip. The goal has to be to stop falling down in the first place.
It's time to stop mistaking the Kings' mop-up work for a positive.
