What's wrong with the Sacramento Kings trading for DeMar DeRozan?

Note: I’ll be in Las Vegas for Summer League today through Monday, so if you see me (a generic-looking white guy almost certainly rocking a Basketball Poetry or Basketball Intelligence T-shirt), say hi!

It’s been a few days since the DeMar DeRozan trade to the Sacramento Kings, and since I was up in the mountains with little WiFi, I had more time to reflect than I usually do before my trade reactions.

Here’s where I land: *insert shrug emoji*

I’ve seen a lot of very negative trade grades for this move, and I don’t think that’s fair. So much trade analysis is only concerned with how much a move improves a team’s championship equity or, alternatively, its chances of landing a top-four spot in the lottery.

However, most of the league operates outside those two poles. Opportunities to take home-run swings are few and far between, particularly for smaller markets like Sacramento. DeRozan does not make this a championship core, no. But is it a sin for a team to make a reasonably-priced move to improve their talent level?

For the price of one distant, albeit potentially valuable, first-round swap, two second-round picks, and two replaceable vets, the Kings have significantly increased their floor. Am I thrilled? I am not. But I (usually) will politely applaud reasonable attempts to incrementally improve the team.

Let’s start with DeRozan, long one of the league’s most underappreciated scorers. DeRozan famously doesn’t shoot many three-pointers (although he did attempt 2.8 per game last season, the second-highest mark of his career), but has found ways to maintain efficient and prolific scoring by drawing oodles of free throws.

DeRozan has toiled on mediocre San Antonio and Chicago teams for six years, so you’d be forgiven for forgetting just how reliable of a bucket-collector he is. He’s never hurt; he’s played 76, 74, and 79 games over his three Chicago seasons, and he led the league in minutes played last year at 34 years old. He’s scored at least 15 points in an astonishing 213 of those 229 games.

DeRozan does it in a unique way. 31% of his shot attempts come at least 14 feet away from the hoop, the highest share of any player in the NBA. An additional 30% come from the short midrange. You just don’t see shot charts that look like this anymore:

At his best, DeRozan commands the floor like a ballroom dancer, flitting around the court until he spots an opening. He utilizes nearly every square foot of the court to get shots off (although as you can see, his accuracy was generally diminished relative to league average the further he got from the basket). Opponents know he loves the turnaround jumper, but DeRozan leverages that anticipation to open up smooth pivots to the hoop for an easy lay-in:

It’s not all a slow dance. DeRozan knows when to pick up the tempo. He boasts arguably the most diverse bag of midrange tricks and finishes in the game:

Notice something interesting about that shot? He shot it with his left hand; he’s right-handed. It reminded me of an article from a decade ago about a fresh-faced DeRozan learning to write the alphabet with his left-hand to improve his ambidexterity. All those school lessons with his daughter sure paid off!

That creativity makes DeRozan a nightmare to guard in isolation, where he averaged an excellent 1.1 points per possession. He was also in the league’s top decile when shooting out of the pick-and-roll. Those two abilities make him one of the league’s premier crunch-time assassins. He finished third in the inaugural Clutch Player of the Year voting in 2022 (which was won by new teammate De’Aaron Fox) and finished second last season. Remember when DeRozan bridged the New Year with back-to-back game-winners?

DeRozan is primarily a scorer first, but his playmaking has become an underappreciated part of his game. He averaged five assists last season against just 1.7 turnovers, boasting superb positional marks. He’s not a flashy passer, but he runs a perfectly functional pick-and-roll and should make magic with All-NBA center Domantas Sabonis, a better screener and finisher than DeRozan’s old dance partner, Nikola Vucevic.

So there’s a lot to like, but DeRozan is far from a perfect player or fit.

DeRozan shot fewer than three triples per game last season, and he will be operating in similar parts of the court as Sabonis. When DeRozan doesn’t have the ball, teams will sag off of him more than departed forward Harrison Barnes, who was a reliable three-point shooter at the power forward position.

Sacramento’s offense is based on using Sabonis, who averaged the third-most touches in the league last season, as a high-post hub with cutters whirring around like sharpshooting dragonflies. 39.9% of Sacramento’s shots were threes last season, third-most in the league. It’s hard to imagine even a best-case scenario where DeRozan doesn’t drag that number down.

On the other end, DeRozan has been a below-average defender his entire career, and he turns 35 in a month. He’s a little too slow for quicker wings, a little too weak for bigger forwards, and spacey off the ball. Unlike most players, who have at least one position they can comfortably guard, DeRozan can’t really guard anyone at an average level.

He’s not a travesty, necessarily, but a team with many defensive weak links just got weaker. The Kings finished a better-than-expected but still mediocre 18th in defensive rating last season; it’s hard to imagine them getting out of the 20s after this move.

So why bother? The sneaky secret about Sacramento is that despite their high-flying reputation, their offense did need help. After shocking the league with a record-breaking attack in 2023, Sacramento fell all the way to 14th in 2024 despite running back essentially the same squad and having healthy seasons from its two best players. The scoring was good but not great with Fox and Sabonis on the floor, and it fell off a cliff when Sabonis sat. DeRozan will absolutely help when one or both rest, and he should be an asset as part of a three-headed offensive monster — if Fox’s shooting touch is real.

De’Aaron Fox significantly altered his game last season, shooting by far the most threes of his career at 37% from deep. If Fox becomes a 32% three-point shooter again (a number he never surpassed in the four seasons prior to the last), this offense will gum up faster than a Wrigley factory. But if he stays prolific and reasonably accurate, the team should be able to find enough shooting from its other roster spots to let DeRozan and Sabonis breathe.

Which leads to one of the most fascinating lineup questions in the league: who is the Kings’ fifth starter?

Right now, we know the Kings will be rolling out a Fox/Sabonis/DeRozan trio with rising third-year player Keegan Murray, a promising shooter who made tremendous defensive strides last season.

The pinky spot will come down to a 3-and-D guard in Keon Ellis, an offensive-minded combo guard in Malik Monk (recently re-signed to a $78 million, four-year deal that guarantees a prominent role, if not a starting spot), and shooting specialist Kevin Huerter.

All three bring different strengths and weaknesses to the team. Ellis theoretically makes the most sense as by far the best defender of the trio, but he also is the one least likely to command defensive attention. Monk just got a big bag, but his skill set heavily overlaps with DeRozan and Fox. Huerter has excellent off-ball chemistry with Sabonis and possesses the most gravity, but he lost his shooting touch at times last season and is the weakest defender of the three.

All three may get a shot as a starter as coach Mike Brown searches for the chemistry that can take this team to a higher level. And make no mistake: Sacramento will be battling uphill.

Even after this trade, the Kings are far from guaranteed a play-in spot, much less a playoff berth. While the West isn’t quite as elite at the top as it has been, it’s as deep as ever. The Thunder, Nuggets, Timberwolves, and Mavericks are playoff locks. The Pelicans and Warriors both made offseason moves that should improve the team, while the Grizzlies will get back Ja Morant and might have a real center again in rookie Zach Edey (can’t wait to see what he looks like in Summer League!). The Suns, Lakers, and remade Clippers have their usual playoff expectations. The Rockets and Spurs are both young teams who will push for play-in berths. That is a lot of competition for the play-in seeds, much less the guaranteed playoff berths of the top six.

Speaking of the Spurs, we should commend them. They somehow nabbed an unprotected 2031 swap with the Kings and a useful veteran in Harrison Barnes, who has declined as a player but fits nicely next to Victor Wembanyama, without having to give up anything of value. Barnes, at least, can take and make threes, something Wembanyama’s teammates have been unable to do during his brief career.

I do think the swap is overvalued, however. We have no idea what the Kings and Spurs will look like in 2031. Health, freak circumstance, general league turnover, and so much more will impact both rosters in ways impossible to foresee. It’s a good bet that the Kings will be worse than the Spurs in seven years, perhaps significantly, but it’s far from a certainty. Sacramento didn’t have to dip too far into their war chest of other tradable assets, either, leaving them plenty of ammunition if another opportunity to improve presents itself.

The Kings may have improved their team in such a way that only keeps them treading water. But a core of Fox and Sabonis is too good for outright tanking, and the DeRozan move at least gives them a chance to make some noise without compromising too much of the future.

What’s wrong with that?