Sacramento Kings: Luka Doncic and other recent draft regrets

2016 – Georgios Papagiannis, 13th overall 

After picking Cauley-Stein the previous year, the front office made the decision to once again draft a center. Originally blessed with the 8th pick, the Kings traded down, giving the Phoenix Suns what later turned out to be Marquess Chriss, for the 13th pick and the rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic. Now Bogi has been a tremendous contributor to the team over the last few years so I have no issue with that trade. The issue is that they used the 13th pick to draft another big man in Georgios Papagiannis

Papagiannis was drafted to supposedly bring a combination of size, three levels of scoring and all the fundamentals you would expect from a European prospect. Instead, he produced an average of four points and three rebounds over his two-year NBA career.

While there wasn’t an abundance of stand-out prospects in this draft, its fair to say the Kings still picked the short straw. Firstly, if the Kings kept their original pick at 8 then they could have drafted Domantas Sabonis who is the definition of the modern-day big man, but I digress.

Instead of picking Papagiannis at 13, the Kings could have drafted Caris LeVert or Malik Beasley – two solid NBA-caliber players. Now hindsight is 20/20, but two of the more successful players in this draft were not even close to being chosen at this point – all-star Pascal Siakam was still on the board until he was chosen at 27, while Fred VanVleet went undrafted.