3 players the Philadelphia 76ers should target from the Sacramento Kings
Marvin Bagley would benefit greatly from playing off of Joel Embiid.
Marvin Bagley III will forever go down as an NBA bust among both fans of the Sacramento Kings and the NBA in general.
A player with the unfortunate distinction of being drafted directly before both Trae Young and Luka Doncic, Bagley has always put up decent enough stats but feel in and out of favor with former head coach Luka Walton and entered the 2021-22 season being told he’d be out of the rotation entirely after averaging 14.1 points and 7.4 rebounds in 25.9 minutes per game.
Since making his way back onto the court for 20 games with seven starts, Bagley’s stats have dipped to new career lows, averaging just eight points and 7.1 rebounds in 20.6 minutes a night while hitting 42.5 percent of his shots from the field and 23.4 percent of his attempts from beyond the arc.
If there was ever a player who needed a change of scenery in this, the final year of their rookie contract, it would be Bagley.
With a cap hit of $11.3 million, the only way Bagley is going to get out of Sacramento this season is either via a buyout or as a supplemental piece in a bigger trade. For the Sixers, I doubt they’d be in on the former, as Bagley would surely have more attractive suiters with a more expansive available role for a 6-foot-11 hybrid big, but via trade alongside Tyrese Haliburton and Buddy Hield – or De’Aaron Fox, Harrison Barnes, or Davion Mitchell for that matter – Bagley is the sort of buy-low candidate who could earn snaps in the regular season at the four spot any maybe, just maybe, break into Doc Rivers’ rotations.
Why? Because Bagley can rebound, and the Sixers can’t.
Even now, with his stats in the ground compared to his rookie averages, Bagley’s 7.1 rebounds per game would rank fourth on the Sixers behind Joel Embiid, Andre Drummond, and Tobias Harris and would make up for 16.8 percent of the team’s total rebounds in any given game.
If Bagley brought only that to the table, he could likely have a spot in Rivers’ regular season rotation, but if he could unlock some of that offensive potential that made him a top-2 pick coming out of Duke in 2018, maybe playing off of Embiid and Georges Niang in a supersized frontcourt, maybe at the five as an athletic foil for Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers might just have the full Bird Rights of a very nice young player.
Either way, with his contract set to expire at the end of the season, I’d be willing to see how it shakes out, especially since his inclusion in a deal would be looked at as getting off of a negative asset by the Kings.
Could the Philadelphia 76ers target any one of those players? Two? Maybe even a trade for all three plus picks in a deal for Ben Simmons and two more players? Maybe, maybe not, but swapping out bench players and a point guard who refuses to take the court for living, breathing basketball players certainly would be nice.