Is Luka holding Austin Reaves back?
The Lakers lose one miracle guard, another steps up. PLUS: an early trade and reaction from dozens of weekend games.
The Lakers lose one miracle guard, another steps up. PLUS: an early trade and reaction from dozens of weekend games.
Good morning. Let's basketball.
We Have a Trade
The NBA season's first trade: the Kings trade Nique Clifford to the Thunder for two second-round picks. It's an interesting trade because the Kings first acquired Clifford in a trade with the Thunder: Sacramento traded the Spurs' top-16 protected 2027 pick to get Nique in the first round of the 2025 draft. So the Kings traded a low first for a player who soon become two seconds.
That's bad asset management, folks. And you can't even blame Sacramento's front office instability: Scott Perry was the GM who made the deal to land Clifford, and Scott Perry is the GM who made the deal to trade Clifford. Perry didn't hire Doug Christie – that's on Wes Wilcox and probably Vivek Ranadive. But Perry did agree to keep Christie this past summer. And Christie totally buried Clifford, who admittedly did not look very good this season.
Trading players on their rookie deals is a gnarly little trend. There's Clifford, traded in Year 2. Over the summer, the Kings traded 2024 lottery pick Devin Carter and a second for the No. 60 pick. The Kings drafted Davion Mitchell in the lottery in 2021 and traded him after his third season in the Sasha Vezenkov cap dump that also cost the Kings the pick that became Jamal Shead and a future second. (The Kings got Jalen McDaniels, who played zero games for Sacramento before being dumped with another second pick to San Antonio.) And of course, the Kings traded lottery pick Tyrese Haliburton midway through his second season for Domantas Sabonis.
Clifford will not be Haliburton, and probably not even Mitchell. But it's not good that Keegan Murray is the only recent first-round picks for the Kings who remains on the team beyond two or three years. It's, in fact, kind of a problem!
Scores
Friday
Wizards 132, Hawks 139 – Mike Gansey in Philly is your early season favorite for Executive of the Year, but Onsi Saleh in Atlanta should get a look. Atlanta's deep enough to survive Jalen Johnson absences against mid-tier opponents, all because the Hawks added some pieces in the summer. Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins both had big games here as neither team could miss.
Can someone explain Brian Keefe's starting lineup to me?
Don't tell me it's about defense, the Wizards' defense got smoked.
Celtics 119, Hornets 80 – Do you have to click the box score to see how this one went, or does the "game leaders" box on NBA.com do the job?
