After winning 48 games and making the playoffs for the first time since the original Cars movie was in theaters, the Sacramento Kings went into this summer with a game plan of solid singles and running it back. They are banking on internal improvement to win the day. The Kings re-signed Harrison Barnes, Trey Lyles and Alex Len, and the most significant move they made was adding EuroLeague MVP Sasha Vezenkov.
What cap space they had left was spent on making All-NBA center Domantas Sabonis happy. The Kings re-negotiated his 2023-24 contract by adding most of their $17 million in cap space to bring him up to $36.1 million for this coming season, then extended him for four years off that number, making Sabons’ new total for the next five years $217 million. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN broke the news.
Sabonis was the heart of the Kings’ run to the playoffs last season, averaging 19.1 points, a league-best 12.3 rebounds, and 7.3 assists per game, earning him Third Team All-NBA honors (an impressive feat considering the depth at center in the league).
Generally, making your stars happy is a good policy in the NBA, and the Kings have now locked up their cornerstone stars — De’Aaron Fox and Sabonis — for the next three seasons. That’s the foundation of a team that should return to the playoffs annually for the next few years, even in a West that looks a little deeper and better entering next season. This move, plus re-signing Barnes and Lyles, feels like solid singles for the Kings this summer. After plenty of rough Julys in the past for Kings fans, this is a good thing.
The only question with this extension is, “who were you bidding against?” Would the Kings have been better off spending some of that $17 million in cap space on a free agent defender to fit into the rotation, then giving Sabonis a little less or re-signing him next summer as a free agent? Maybe, maybe not, it’s all hypothetical, but they are about to pay Sabonis 29% of the salary cap next year and more going forward. While he is very good, is he that good?
The answer may be he is that good, that important to Sacramento.
