The Kings, for better or for worse, are trying to win games this year. I don’t think they have their pick, but tanking for the best second round pick is a real thing and they don’t care about that either apparently.
UPDATE: turns out that a whole bunch of stuff is going on with their second round picks and all the swaps and protections are making me really confused and angry. Do they make these things as complicated as possible so that the casual fan doesn’t know what’s going on? Security through obscurity.
And, wouldn’t you know it, De’Aaron Fox is helping them win some of those games. He didn’t really do much of that last year, but this year, he’s legit. He’s legitly scoring points and legitly having a decent plus-minus. He was +19 in a 6-point loss in the opener! He has transformed himself from a net-negative last year to a net-positive this year. Big caveat, it’s still early, and he could turn back into a pumpkin at any moment, hopefully just in time for Halloween, but maybe the decision to pass on a ball-handler in the draft so as to not stunt his development is looking like a decent one.