Whenever the Sacramento Kings make a trade, there’s an excellent chance it will blow up in their faces. That’s the case once again as the brief Nique Clifford era ended in Sacramento Monday.
The Kings sent Clifford, the No. 24 pick in the 2025 draft, to the Oklahoma City Thunder Monday, in exchange for two future second-round picks. It’s a great deal for the Thunder and a disastrous one for the Thunder, who traded the Clifford pick for a 2027 first-rounder less than a year and a half ago.
Sacramento Kings consistently lose trades
The Kings have a bad recent track record when it comes to making trades, but usually they don’t go bad quite as quickly as they did with the Clifford deal. One draft night in 2025, Sacramento traded a protected San Antonio Spurs first-round pick to get Clifford, a 23-year-old who averaged 8.6 points and started 28 games as a rookie.
This year, despite the Kings struggling to a 1-9 record, Clifford had fallen completely out of coach Doug Christie’s rotation. He was averaging the fewest minutes on the Kings’ entire 14-man roster, scoring 13 points in his eight games. Christie said the Kings had a “logjam” at Clifford’s position, but shouldn’t they have been prioritizing their first-rounder from a year ago?
There’s a logjam at shooting guard because the Kings took back Zach LaVine and his maximum salary when they traded De’Aaron Fox to the Spurs. They received two firsts in the deal, then traded one of them to get Clifford. Taking on LaVine’s bloated contract should have been worth a first-round pick by itself. Instead, the Kings have only a 2031 first-round pick and a handful of second-rounders in exchange for an All-Star guard.
Sacramento Kings may be botching rebuild
The Kings have somehow managed to get in financial straits while tearing down their roster. General manager Scott Perry traded the Kings’ first-round picks from 2024 and 2025 in salary dumps this year, to get the team space below the luxury tax. He got two seconds back for Clifford, but sacrificed one to get rid of 2024 first-rounder Devin Carter’s salary.
Perry wasn’t the one who drafted Carter, but he did select Clifford, and gave up on him very early. Last summer, Perry’s big signing was Dennis Schroder. Seven months later, he gave up a second-rounder to trade Schroder and Keon Ellis — a boon for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who wanted to get rid of Hunter’s contract.
In 2024, Perry traded Jonas Valanciunas for Dario Saric in a money-saving deal, not realizing Valanciunas was seeking a buyout to return to Europe. The Kings also gave up 2021 lottery pick Davion Mitchell and second-rounder Jamal Shead to dump Sasha Venzekov’s contract. Mitchell and Shead have thrived on other teams, while Venzekov waived his entire remaining salary to join a team in Greece.
The team simply doesn’t do well in trades. They traded two seconds to get former lottery pick Chris Duarte, then sent Duarte, Harrison Barnes, a first-round pick and two more seconds to get DeMar DeRozan, who they waived two seasons later. Of their last seven first-round picks, only Darius Acuff and Keegan Murray remain on the roster.
The future looks bleak outside of Acuff, who is averaging 25.9 points. Murray has played only 26 games since signing a $140M extension. Domantas Sabonis is hoping for a trade, but he’s owed $93M this season and next. The most Kings fans can hope for is lottery luck and a lot of cap space — not that the team is likely to use it well.