The Sacramento Kings spent the summer of 2024 trying to clean up their books, and the move they made to do it has only gotten worse in hindsight.
At the time, the logic was straightforward enough. The Kings were coming off their best two-year stretch in a long time, with Mike Brown guiding them to the playoffs for the first time in decades and then a 46-win follow-up season.
They were good. They were also expensive, sitting on a roster that projected to land over the luxury tax while still needing changes after barely missing the playoffs.
So the front office started shuffling pieces. Malik Monk was re-signed.
Harrison Barnes was sent out for DeMar DeRozan. Before that, though, Sacramento had to deal with Sasha Vezenkov’s contract, a move that became costly in a hurry.
Vezenkov and Davion Mitchell were sent to the Toronto Raptors for Jalen McDaniels, and the Kings also attached two second-round picks to the deal. The hope had been that Vezenkov would become a rotation forward, but injuries slowed his adjustment to the NBA and Sacramento decided to move on.
Toronto came out far ahead. Vezenkov eventually returned to Europe and reached a full buyout with the Raptors, clearing his money from their books.
And the two second-rounders? Those turned into a pair of defensive guards, Alijah Martin and Jamal Shead.
Shead’s new deal is the part that stings now. He just signed a three-year, $24 million extension that almost certainly comes in below his value. He brings exactly the kind of edge teams love at the point of attack: strong, disruptive defense, the ability to battle bigger players, and enough offensive competence to keep the machine moving with solid ball-handling, passing and transition finishing even though his shot is below average.
That makes the Kings’ decision look even rougher. Mitchell, meanwhile, is now with the Miami Heat and appears set to start at point guard for at least this season, feeding stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo. He’s on a bargain deal too, and he would have been a real help in Sacramento over the last couple of seasons.
Instead, the Kings gave up a useful player and a pair of picks to save money on a deal they probably shouldn’t have made in the first place. Vezenkov was going to leave anyway and return the money to the books. Sacramento just didn’t wait long enough to find out.
That’s the larger problem here: rush the process, target the wrong guys, and you end up paying extra to escape one mistake only to create the next one. The result is a cycle of transactions that has been dubbed the “Sacramento Spiral.”
And now Toronto has Shead on a bargain contract for the next few years, while the Kings keep searching for role players they might have had already. Maybe it will be Alex Karaban, whom they drafted in the late first round this year after trading up from the second round. The pick they sent away became Meleek Thomas, who led Summer League in scoring.
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