The Sacramento Kings might have had one of the most solid offseasons in the NBA. As you’re reading this, you probably checked the date to see if it wasn’t 2002 again and Chris Webber wasn’t about to suit up after another heartbreaker in the playoffs against the Lakers. But, it’s true.
It’s not often that a rebuilding team’s key acquisitions include three free agents over the age of 30, but in signing George Hill, Zach Randolph, and now the ageless wonder Vince Carter, that’s exactly what happened.
Let’s start with Hill, a guy many pundits had pegged to go to one of the point guard needy destinations like Denver or Minnesota. Instead he finds himself in a situation where he can be Men In Black Agent K to DeAaron Fox’s Agent J, tutoring the young guard to the rigors of the NBA and putting Fox in a situation to where head coach Dave Joeger can slowly spoon feed Fox minutes until he’s ready to take the reins in a year or two.
While that’s nice, who’s there to tutor Skal Labissiere, Willie Cauley Stein, and the recently drafted Harry Giles? Enter the godfather of the Grindhouse, the man the with the second most famous hyphenated in the world (okay that might be a bit of hyperbole), Zach Randolph.
Randolph managed to not only keep the lights on in Memphis, but also help lead that franchise to national relevance for the first time in the franchise’s history. Randolph, a man who once was checked in the locker by Brandon Roy, has become one of the most respected veterans in the NBA.
Randolph’s ability to score around the rim despite having a vertical the height of a sheet of paper should be something passed on to players like Labissiere and Giles. Along with Hill and Carter, showing the young frontcourt how to play basketball and more importantly how to win, is a value that you simply can’t put a price tag on (even if the Kings tried to).
Which brings us to why the Kings signing these three this summer was so important, leaving young kids with a year or less of college basketball under their belt to their own devices wasn’t working for the Kings. If anything, it proved to be an abject failure, since 2010, the only player to get a second contract with the Kings was Demarcus Cousins, and he was recently shipped out for pennies on the dollar to New Orleans.
It’s a strategy smaller markets teams have used in the past, to change the culture from within by signing veterans with known work ethics and are willing to show younger players the ropes and curtail as many bad habits as humanly possible. With solid veterans around, losing is not simply accepted as an excuse of being a young team trying to figure it out on their own, but rather to take that loss, dissect what went wrong and adapt as soon as possible.
If it doesn’t work, or the vet has done their job sooner than expected, you trade the vet to a more desirable situation where they can win a ring and yet the younger player flourish.
At the end of the day, the youth movement will be served in Sacramento in small bits and pieces. More importantly, it’s being done right with these veteran additions. With a bit more of the old Memphis grit-n-grind spirit, the Kings are that much closer to their next goal: the Western Conference Playoffs.
