The NBA trade deadline has come and gone, and with the smoke cleared, the front office made the decision to keep Bogdan Bogdanovic. Bogi expressed that he would like to stay in California’s capital, and the team matched his interest saying that they would match any offers for the restricted free agent in the summer.
The problem is that there is a weak free agent class this offseason meaning that Bogdanovic’s value will only be higher.
Bogi will be looking at contracts in the 4 years, $72-$80 million range, and the question has to be asked, is Bogi really worth that money?
The answer to that question may not even matter now since the Kings decided to keep him at the deadline instead of trading him for assets which would have been a lot better than watching him walk for nothing in the offseason.
But let’s be real for a second. Bogi is a good player. Nothing more, nothing less. He’s averaging a little over 13 points per game in his career while proving to be a reliable deep threat. He’s a better defender than most players on the Kings, but that may not be saying much.
[table “26” not found /]If we are looking at Bogdan’s career numbers alone, the man is not worth $20 million a year for the next four years.
To go along with this point, the Kings just paid Buddy Hield in the summer a good sum of money to keep his talents in Sacramento and at least he earned that contract with a stellar season in 2018-2019.
Buddy is coming off the bench for the moment, but he will eventually find his way back into the starting lineup, sending Bogi back to the bench.
Should the Kings really drop $20 million on a bench player who’s averaging 14.5 points on 42% shooting as a sixth man receiving starter minutes?
After overpaying for Barnes and seeing how Buddy has been playing after a large deal, the Kings shouldn’t be handing out contracts just because their cap space allows them to.
Bogi is a good player and there is a lot of talk about him being part of the Kings’ young core during the rebuild, but is Bogdanovic really a player that will significantly contribute success to this franchise?
We know what we will get from Bogdanovic as he probably as already reached his ceiling or isn’t too far away from it. He will never put up all star numbers, just good basketball off the bench.
I don’t see him being as important to the core as I see Fox, Hield, and (I really hope) Bagley. Even if Hield and Bagley don’t work out like we hoped, I still see their production outperforming what Bogdan will do. Bogdanovic has merely dazzled us with consistency, which isn’t bad, it just brings up the “is he worth it?” question.
There’s a lot of questions being asked and I don’t have most of those answers. I like Bogdanovic just as much as every other fan, but do the Kings just want to foster a culture of over-paying players just so that they have to stick with them through thick and thin and have trouble trading that said player because of their expensive contract? You tell me.
How it looks though is that Bogi will stay in Sacramento once the offseason hits. He will continue to grow with Fox, Hield, and company and try to take this team to the next level.
But going on 14 years without a playoff berth, there will be a lot of pressure on this core group of players to perform, and the front office and ownership needs to do everything with this team’s success in mind.
It will be an interesting offseason for Kings basketball, and we will have to wait and see how things play out in the summer.
