Matt Moore, Action Network – Sacramento Kings And NBA Offseason Rumors
that’s James ham I’m Kyle Madson and joining us now from the Action Network you can also hear him on the buckets podcast subscribe to that wherever you get your pods Matt Moore HP basketball on Twitter Matt thanks so much for hopping on with us man how are you good man thanks for having me appreciate you guys have me on yeah of course so um you uh you wrote In The Action Network uh you wrote a whole notebook of of offseason notes and one of the things that was in there that that jumped out to us here in Sacramento was that the Kings have uh called the Bulls about Zack LaVine uh my my immediate question on that is is that is that like a recent thing or has that been an ongoing discussion between those two clubs what have you been hearing there yeah I think there were discussions back at the trade deadline um based off what I heard that there were some conversations that happened to the trade deadlines the Bulls desperately tried to develop a market for Zack LaVine I think they’ve kind of been Revisited with the King still looking at various options for moves this summer and so um I think it’s always this is one of the things I think is hard to is when you get information off I can’t count how many times it’s been I’ll follow up on something with someone and be like hey I heard this I’m like well yeah that definitely happened six weeks ago uh and then you’re like okay cool just checking in so trying to figure out like what’s the most recent thing I think is really difficult but I do think those conversations have been going on because honestly a lot of the time not always there’s always things where it just happens very immediately but a lot of the times there’s deals that are Revisited that are brought up during the trade deadline and then they can’t get something done and and then they’re brought back up in the summer you have more time to kind of work it out and you understand a little bit more of what where your team’s at so you get to kind of think on it for a few months and that happens pretty pretty commonly I think in the league yeah Matt I I know that um I had heard a lot about Zach potentially coming to Sacramento or at least the idea of it um early in the season before he got hurt and uh you know we started hearing that Zach would love to pair with dearn fox in the back court and this is of course after LaVine years earlier had signed an offer sheet with the Kings the Bulls matched and he went back and then was like Hey I’m so glad I I didn’t get stuck in Sacramento um and so I think it’s interesting because these these deals do take a long time but just as a player the problem I’ve always had was Zach and I I like the offensive game I like his playmaking like I think he has a lot of positive attributes but two things stand out number one he can’t stay healthy at all and number two his contract is ridiculous yeah and I just do those things make him you know whether it’s the Kings or someone else do they make him one of the hardest players in the league to actually find a trade partner for yeah I think so I think the contract in particular is just really bad um for trying to get somebody to want to invest that kind of money to tie up that kind of cap space especially given the new apron rules right like everybody’s really scared of getting close to the apron so if you’re going to add a guy like that you’ve got to feel like Zack LaVine is a guy that’s going to be a pillar for your team and and there’s not a lot of confidence that he is that uh the injury stuff I think is pretty variable I think there’s concerns obviously he’s had a pretty pretty bad injury history but we’ve seen guys move past those um in their careers and I don’t think that livine so reliant on his athleticism that it’s going to decline at an extremely high rate the other thing I think that really happened to him honestly was I’m on a little bit of an island on this I think that Demar D Roan going to that team was one of the worst things in the world for him uh he had revamped his shot selection he had become much more of a playmaker he’ become much more of a Dynamic efficient player that led to like better offense and then Demar got there and it was like slowly over time in the beginning they were sharing duties and then dear just kept taking more and more more and more usage and the problem with dear is with the mid-range stuff is like all of your spacing is cramped and you just can’t really do it and when you have vuvi now it’s like you have a mid-range guy and you have a guy usually in the paint or if not it’s just a big kind of rotating up and in picking pop spots and it wasn’t really the kind of system I think that allows for LaVine to be what he’s really great at which is being a really explosive uh three-level scorer who can also make really great reads he wasn’t able to be that Guai with d rozan and so I think that really limited his upside where now you know he’s thought of as like the defensive liability just kind of a gunner why are you gonna pay this much for him when he was on track for like I thought he was like all NBA borderline before Demar season where he got there so I think there’s still like a lot of upside for him now that was several years ago so maybe not but I do think that that LaVine right now is a little bit underrated by where the market’s at in part because of how people view that contract Matt Moore The Action Network you can also check him out on the bucket podcast so do you think that there will be a trade market for LaVine uh this off season I think they I think they’re gonna move in I think they’re I think yesterday kind of shows the um willingness of that front office in Chicago to just basically do a deal and just reshape it they want to reshape that team for a number of reasons um they’re gonna my everything I’ve heard is that Demar D rozan is going to be back that they’re going to resign him on a huge deal and they’re going to build around d rozan good luck to you uh but I do think that lavine’s going to be gone and I think there’s enough teams looking for scoring options between I think the Wizards are actually a team that’s that’s interested in LaVine I think that the magic are at least willing to have those conversations because they do understand the need for them to add some scoring punch I think you look at some other um teams that might be willing to be like hey this could be a really good move for us if we get the right deal especially because if Chicago’s gonna set the kind of terms that they did with Caruso I think there’s a a pretty good opportunity there to get a bu low spot on LaVine and it doesn’t sound like the Bulls are dead set on getting Great Value return um which is going to be make it interesting if the Kings decide to keep those conversations up or if they return to them if they’re dormant of exactly you know how much do you have to give up because the Kings have a very good trade package that I’ve heard that is being uh offered around and I don’t necessarily know they have to give up all those pieces in order to get Zack LaVine outside of just satisfying the salary requirements yeah the salary requirements are I mean it’s it’s crazy because you’re going to basically have to package you know three players probably I mean we we’ve heard um whether it was last year even like the like Midway through the year the the package of of herder and Barnes being shopped it’s something that you also reported the one uh question I had for you is when you heard your information uh you mentioned both Caruso and LaVine and was that something like as a package because it seems to me that lavine’s contract is so prohibitive for most teams that you might have had to give up a Caruso to move off of of LaVine and that’s something that um like kind of stood out for me with with your reporting specifically that it was both of them that the kings were interested in yeah so I think that it was kind of a um we’ll take the living contract but we’re gonna need Caruso along with it and this goes into something with that an executive told me we T I talked about this with an executive last summer he said one of the problems that you run into in trades is it’s hard when you have an asset that the other team knows is available because if it’s just like you have that asset they’re gonna want that regardless even if you’re like but that’s not part of this deal I don’t want that as part of this this deal they’re like well you have it so you need to include it and so that kind of that’s one of the things I think that actually kind of switches here is the Kings now have to decide like is the LaVine deal and other teams have to too that I think were’re in involved in there are two teams I don’t know of that had also called about this package of LaVine and Caruso that um I think now you have to evaluate do you still want this because now it’s like you can’t ask for Caruso he’s gone you can’t get you you can’t get Caruso with this deal anymore but you could still pull this deal off and you can’t add add LaVine even if you take off some of the assets for it do you still want that deal or were you only in it to try and get Caruso now the Bulls I think manhandled this in terms of what they got for Caruso but I do wonder how that impacts the conversations about LaVine because you no longer have to resist including Caruso in a deal because he’s already gone talking with Matt Moore of the Action Network also check him out on the buckets podcast we’ve been talking a lot about Malik monk today here in Sacramento of course if anyone missed it four years 78 million for Malik monk to return to the Kings um I’m wondering if if if this tracks for you because it felt like the Orlando Magic were the were the team that was most likely offer monk a deal in the range of four years and 100 million we’ll just call it that and when you look at his skill set and kind of what they needed it’s like man that would be a really perfect fit but then he agrees to resign with the Kings before ever officially exploring the free agent Market do you think that that had anything to do with a the contract he was going to get from the magic or is that an indicator that the magic went yeah we like you but we’re really really going to pursue Klay Thompson first and then we’ll get back to you when that’s settled I actually think it has more to do I think with a testament to Sacramento’s culture of them having built an environment where players want to make these kind of decisions and stay because they want to be part of something where they can compete and compete at the level that they want with the guys that they want and the reason I say that is like I don’t think Orlando was the only I don’t even think Orlando was the highest bidder now this could a lot of the way that this works out is sometimes it’s the players representation is spreading stuff and so yeah no there was this offer for x amount of dollars that’s that later you ask and they’re like no that that was never out there but my understanding was that Detroit and Charlotte were both willing to make huge offers for monk like very considerable offers north of 100 million for Monk and that what wound up happening and like that there was a shock in the league circles I talked to last night of he didn’t even like there he left so much money on the table to come back to sack now maybe that’s not true maybe Monk’s uh value on the market maybe that shifted the last couple of days and I I have heard things about charet maybe pivoting to taking on being more of a rebuild situation where they want to take on bad contracts in exchange for assets and if you’re doing that you don’t necessarily want to hand out that kind of money so maybe that’s one of the things that shifted in the last couple of weeks but my understanding was like he was gonna have no problem getting an offer north of what the Kings could max out offer and so the fact that he came back like I have to attribute that to how much they’ve done to endear that kind of response from the players that there’s that kind of trust and support so really I think it’s a testament to Sacramento and to what Malik wants for his career because you just don’t see guys leave money on the table very often and at least from my vantage point I think he did yeah that’s a really interesting take and you know to be honest I we heard some murmur earlier in the day that that was very true that there was a a potential deal out there that was north of a 100 million or or 20 million plus more than what the Kings could offer um and and so it started to get a little dark and gloomy and then to see the Tweet come through was pretty crazy um you also mentioned Kyle kusma in in your piece uh with regard to the Kings where is this at because this has been I I mean from the time that he was almost traded for Buddy heeld along with montz heral from the Lakers uh to even last summer kma and the Kings has been like this weird on the outskirts just never gets consummated type deal um where where are you at what are you hearing with this so I actually heard that some of those conversations were a three-way deal with Chicago that it was going to involve um either LaVine and and kozma both coming to sack which thought that was a bit much given the requirements where the South the roster at so that didn’t make much sense to me or that LaVine was going to wind up in Washington then kosma goes with Caruso to the Kings um with Caruso I think that that changes some of that Dynamic uh I do know that Washington I think has uh at least some interest in LaVine and which is crazy given the Jordan pool situation but it is what it is um but I do think that look I think kma is going to continue to be an option um tied to the Kings for for quite a while I think that there’s a willingness on both sides from kma and the kings are interested in him as a player and kma I think is interested in the Kings as an organization to facilitate that but this may also be wind up being one of those where I my inclination is that it probably won’t happen based off of the fact I think Washington values kozma a little bit more than the market does that’s pretty common right Everyone likes their own players more than the the market does and if you’re looking for a king’s ransom for pardon the pun for uh kosma I don’t think you’re really going to get it um I think that the barn herder draft pick is honestly with Caruso going for no picks like I’m very curious to see what happens with the market now because now you have this player that everybody was like man we would love to have Alex guso and not getting a single pick for it that has impacts on these other things so now I think it’s hard for you to be like yeah we’ll throw in a pick for this other guy who may not be as impactful not necessarily saying that’s kozma because kozma is more of an offensive guy um a little bit more balanced I think he has better defensive days in front of him on teams that aren’t you know the Wizards so I think there’s a lot of UPS side there but I do think that there’s enough for those conversations to keep intact and even itwi it may end up happening that the kings are involved in a three-way trade and kman winds up going back I think that those those kind of conversations I think will probably continue as we get closer to the end of free agency uh Matt Moore this is great stuff everybody make sure to follow along uh HP basketball on Twitter you can find his work at the Action Network you can also hear them on the buckets podcast wherever you get your pods Matt this was great thank you so much for stopping by man thanks for having me good good seeing you buddy
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