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The Sacramento Kings had an active Fourth of July, as they’ve added to their rebuilding process with two veteran players. After an impressive draft haul that featured former Kentucky PG De’Aaron Fox, UNC SF Justin Jackson, Duke PF/C Harry Giles and Kansas PG Frank Mason III, it’s time to build around their young core roster.
As reported by The Vertical’s Shams Charania, the Kings put pen to paper on a three-year, $57 million deal with former Utah Jazz point guard George Hill.
Just minutes later, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that the Kings had also signed former Memphis Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph to a two-year, $24 million deal.
Free agent Zach Randolph has agreed to a two-year, $24M deal with the Kings, league sources tell ESPN.
The additions of Hill (31 years old) and Randolph (35) should add plenty of veteran leadership to a team whose roster previously featured just one player who is older than 28 years old in Garrett Temple (31). With the two new signings in place, let’s take a look at the current Kings roster and starting lineup heading into the 2017-18 season.
UPDATE
The Kings have also signed veteran Vince Carter to a one-year, $8 million deal, according to Wojnarowski. This is a move that should just add another veteran leader to the team’s roster.
Free agent Vince Carter has agreed to a one-year, $8M deal with Sacramento, agents Kurt Schoeppler and Jim Tanner tell ESPN.
C: Willie Cauley-Stein, Kosta Koufos, Georgios Papgiannis
PF: Zach Randolph, Skal Labissiere, Harry Giles
SF: Garrett Temple, Justin Jackson
SG: Buddy Hield, Vince Carter, Malachi Richardson, Bogdan Bogdanovic
PG: De’Aaron Fox, George Hill, Frank Mason III
Free Agents: Rudy Gay, Tyreke Evans, Ty Lawson, Anthony Tolliver, Arron Afflalo, Darren Collison (signed with Pacers), Ben McLemore (signed with Grizzlies), Langston Galloway (signed with Pistons)
As you can see, there’s been a pretty huge overhaul of the Kings roster recently, and they’ve opted to go into a complete rebuild mode, which was obviously after they traded DeMarcus Cousins last season. The Kings also have seen three players from last season who saw playing time leave town in free agency, so there’s a good chance that their rookies could see a lot of action in 2017-18.
Possibly the most interesting question with the signing of Hill and Randolph is what roles they’ll play. It would be surprising to see the Kings bring Fox along slowly unless they don’t believe he’s ready to play at the NBA level. On the flip side, $57 million over three years sounds like quite a bit for a player who’ll be coming off the bench if that’s the case with Hill. For what it’s worth, Hill did have a career year with the Jazz last year, averaging 16.9 points with 4.2 assists.
As for Randolph, he shouldn’t have much of an issue carving out his sixth-man role spot similar to what he held with the Grizzlies last year. He did see his scoring decrease to 14.1 points per game last year, while averaging 8.2 rebounds, but did so in just 24.5 minutes per game, down over five full minutes from the year before.
It’s not surprising to see the Kings add some veteran leadership to their roster, and it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out once the season begins.
