Day has been very pro-Luka Dončić so much.
In the 2018 NBA Draft, the Sacramento Kings had to choose between Western guard Luka Doni and Duke great man Marvin Bagley.
As most Kings fans are really informed, the team chose Bagley, therefore watched Dončić become one of the leading players in the NBA, with five right All-NBA first-team nods after his freshman season. Bagley, however, has become a fairly average center, and is no greater on the Kings.
It would appear the Kings made a franchise-altering mistake in that draft, but do n't tell that to former general manager Vlade Divac, the man responsible for the decision. He obviously thinks the judge is still out.
In an appointment with Croatian outlet Index. personnel, Divac was asked to explain passing over Dončić. Divac cited the presence of Kings protect De'Aaron Fox as a justification for Bagley's superior choice, as he did right after the draft, and suggested Fox could also prove wrong if his or her career was stronger than Doni.
From Index, interpreted through Google Translate:
" I had De'Aaron Fox at that place, whom I drafted a month earlier. I assumed Fox would be a company player in the future. Time will tell if I'm mistaken. As points stand now, it looks like I am, but I have faith in small Fox that he will have a better job".
Since that document, Dončić and the Mavericks have reached the quarterfinals four days, with an NBA Finals looks next year. Fox and the Kings have reached the quarterfinals again in 2023, losing in the first round to the Golden State Warriors.
Do n't think Divac should have taken him, in fact.
Given that the Mavericks reached the Finals with Doni and stage guard Kyrie Irving as their leading performers, it's even difficult to accept the notion that Doni and Fox were company stars at the same time.
Index pressed Divac on that point and got the discussion that Irving and Fox are different types of performers, and an attempt to shift some of the questioning to the Phoenix Suns:
" Irving is a typical scoring, as is Luka. Fox is certainly a player who needs the game, just like Luka does. Luka is the only option I have, but Fox is the other way around. Incidentally, Phoenix also skipped Luka, and therefore their coach was Igor Kokoškov, who was his coach in Slovenia".
There is a bit to analyze it. Given that one of Irving's struggles has been that he has always needed the ball as a score-first point guard, unlike Fox, it's odd to present him as a player who does n't always need the ball in his hands.
By portraying Irving as a typical scoring like Doni and then trying to portray Fox as a player who needs the game like Doni, Divac even reasonably contradicts himself. Most NBA fans would characterize traditional performers as people who need the basketball in their arms, perhaps because there was a translation problem here.
This is all the built on the presence that a team with Dončić and Fox just would n't work, which seems silly. Maybe they would have to sacrifice some of what makes them great to work together, but Dončić was a 37.8 % shooter on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers last year while Fox shot 39.1 %. Having to handle both those multi-dimensional risks sounds like a bigger problem for the defense than the act.
Divac did acknowledge that Doni was "on the right path" to becoming the next MVP, and he also refuted a long-held story that he had a disagreement with his parents Sasa.
Even if the Kings must also accept what many consider to be a missed opportunity on a Hall of Fame skill, this is all in the past, nevertheless. Divac stepped down as Kings GM in 2020 and was replaced with Monte McNair.
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