The Sacramento Kings Trading For Sasha Vezenkov Was Not A Token Gesture

As long as they continue to offer a “required tender“, NBA teams can keep the draft rights of players in perpetuity. And this is not always a good thing for players.

While there is a prestige to being an NBA draft pick, it does come with the caveat that that player can now only sign with that NBA team, or to whichever team said rights are later traded. This is usually not a problem, and almost every NBA draft pick signs with a team at some point. But some do not. And as long as whichever team holds their draft rights keeps offering an unguaranteed minimum salary contract as a tender (for second round picks, at least, for whom this situation is almost always about) every season, those draft rights remain on the books.

In practice, that usually leads only to relics. Most of the unsigned NBA draft picks currently in existence are for players who will ever play in the NBA, sometimes because they do not make the grade but often because they are simply retired. In the rather extreme case of the San Antonio Spurs, for example, they still possess the draft rights to Marcelo Nicola, a 51-year-old Italian forward now 15 years into a coaching career, including being an assistant coach of the selfsame Spurs’ 2009 summer league roster. It is fair to

By and large, outstanding draft rights are archaic relics, kept around only because they satisfy the NBA’s requirement that all parties in a trade are required to at least give up “something“. It is not an unusual occurrence for draft rights to long-forgotten players to be included in trades purely for that reason, to fulfil the outgoing requirement of a trade, or at least one of its constituent parts for trade math purposes. Indeed, at the last trade deadline, the unsigned draft rights to Ilkan Karaman, David Michineau and Vanja Marinkovic were all on the move, with none of the three threatening to make an NBA roster any time soon.

Sometimes, though, the player attached might still have some value. And that is potentially the case with the Sacramento Kings’ recent trade for the rights to Aleksandar “Sasha” Vezenkov.

Sacramento received those rights in a pre-draft trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers, one in which they traded away the 49th pick in this year’s draft (later used on Isaiah Mobley, older brother of star Cavs rookie Evan). In return, they received $1.75 million in cash, the right to swap 2022 second-round pick, and Vezenkov.

The amount of cash alone is in line with the going rate for late second-rounders, and is a decent return for a pick that low; if the Kings did indeed have their eye on anyone in particular at that spot, they needed them only to fall ten more spots before they could approach them in free agency. Yet the inclusion of Vezenkov was less arbitrary than second-round rights usually are.

Drafted 57th overall by the Brooklyn Nets in the 2017 NBA Draft with a protected second-round pick from the Boston Celtics that was not guaranteed to even convey, Vezenkov’s rights made their way to Sacramento three and a half years later, as a part of the trade for James Harden. Passing through the hands of three teams, and being passed over at least once by 27 others, might not be a glowing endorsement. But the same memo that necessitated that teams included something in deals also stipulated it need only be the one something. Put simply, the trade worked without Vezenkov’s inclusion, and since he had no value to them nor any cost to keep him, Cleveland would surely have done it without him in it too. Sacramento, it therefore seems, wanted him.

Since being drafted, Vezenkov has played five seasons in the EuroLeague, the last four with Greek giants Olympiacos. He has consistently grown throughout them, too, growing from a bit-part player in his first two seasons to this past year fully taking over from longstanding legend Georgios Printezis as the team’s primary frontcourt scorer and averaging a team-high 13.7 points per game, in doing so leading the Reds back to their first Final Four appearance in five years.

Primarily a face-up power forward, Vezenkov has played all across the front line, including stints at small ball center, and while he does not protect the rim enough to do so for the Kings, he nevertheless has grown as a scorer against the best defenses outside of the NBA. In particular, he now pairs his streaky yet decent outside shooting with much more aggressive attacking of the rim, particularly on close-outs, and he always did have a good feel for the game. Smooth with the dribble, with good passing vision and willing to use it, there may be no one area of the game in which Sasha can be given the ball and asked to go to work, but if the ball is moving around, he will pick spots and add some diversity.

If that profile sounds somewhat like Nemanja Bjelica, it was meant to, and although Vezenkov would have defensive deficiencies at the top level just as Bjelica does due to his fairly sedate lateral movement and vertical leap, he nevertheless plays a good amount of help defense and takes plenty of charges. There is a chance, then, that the Sacramento Kings may have landed a possible rotation player in Vezenkov. And it seems no one else has thought he could be that for five years.