The Sacramento Kings’ puzzling offseason continued on Tuesday morning as Vlade Divac’s plan for this upcoming season remains a complete and total mystery to most.
After drafting Marvin Bagley III with the second overall pick, the Kings threw a massive four-year, $80 million offer sheet at Zach LaVine only to see the Bulls match it. With adding younger wing players still apparently the top priority, the Kings went out and made a deal with the Grizzlies, sending Garrett Temple to Memphis in exchange for a reunion with Ben McLemore as well as Deyonta Davis, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Sacramento is finalizing a trade to send forward Garrett Temple to Memphis for Ben McLemore, Deyonta Davis and cash, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 17, 2018
The general sentiment following the report of the trade was confusion as to why Sacramento would do this — although, that’s quite often the reaction to the Kings doing anything — and that Memphis gets a significant upgrade. McLemore simply didn’t pan out in Memphis due to a variety of factors, and for a Grizzlies team hellbent on competing this season despite having the second worst record in the league last year, adding Temple will certainly help.
Temple shot the ball well in Sacramento last year, hitting 39.2 percent of his three-point attempts, and he figures to fit a need quite snugly on the perimeter for the Grizzlies who are always in need of more shooting. Memphis has needed wing help for some time, failing to find it with signings of guys like Chandler Parsons and McLemore, but trading for Temple seems to be a very low-risk move that could yield a pretty solid reward.
