"Our team was kind of at a crossroads," Buchanan told The Athletic by phone on Friday while reflecting on the Haliburton trade. "We didn't really have a guy, like a young player, that you could really build around. Now Domas (Sabonis) was a terrific player and a very productive player. But we felt like in today's modern NBA, it's hard to build around a center unless you've got, like, a (Denver Nuggets star Nikola) Jokic – an MVP-caliber center.
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I still don’t buy that Haliburton and Fox couldn’t have played together. Sabonis at center is much more limiting to a defense than 2 iffy guards.
Most teams now ride the guard wave
Sabonis is probably the best player in the league who you 100% cannot win a championship with.
Great passer, great rebounder, good touch around the rim, very durable, very consistent. However, he offers pathetic rim protection (worse than Jokic!) and the Kings nor Pacers have never been able to build a good defensive team around him.
And I’m saying this as a huge Sabonis fan
That’s pretty good insight and true.
Haliburton is a top 10 player in the league now. Is Sabonis even top 50 in the playoffs? I know he’s great in the regular season but I can easily rattle off 20 centers I’d rather have in the playoffs. There’s 3 of them playing in this Finals (Chet Turner Hartenstein). Historically bad trade
Yall was on here saying Sabonis was a near T10 player after that cute lil 2023 Kings run btw
I agree. Unless your center is an elite facilitator it becomes really hard to build around a center. The only real exception was healthy Embiid who wasn’t the greatest passer but is elite in the post, elite in the midrange, an amazing defender and can space the floor.
He’s right, the Kings would have to build a team similar to the Nuggets but instead they built the Bulls west
Sabonis is an ultimate role player.
But he has very few real basketball skills. He has no point guard skills. He has no shot creation. He has no defense.
He is the ultimate try hard player that lacks real talent. Its commendable what he’s accomplished , but paying him anything over 20 million is an instant lose in reality. Yeah his stats say he’s worth more than that but stats can lie.
He wins games in regular seasons because of effort. Come playoff time everyone has effort and suddenly his lack of skills make him the worst player on the floor
Before the trade, Kevin Pritchard said in an interview that the Pacers didn’t have a star player. This caused a stir and he had to apologize to Domas, who was putting up big numbers. But history has absolved him, he was right all along.
Great take from our GM and absolutely true. Sabonis puts up amazing stat lines that have never really translated to winning/deep playoff runs.
> They’re very hard to acquire, obviously
Unless your trade partner has a room temperature IQ
This is the hopium talking, but I really hope Sabonis comes back strong next year and puts a lot of this talk to rest. People are talking crazy about him. Some article posted on the kings subreddit a couple weeks ago didn’t even have him in the top 20 centers. He’s a limited player, sure, but people are talking about him like he’s Nurkic-level.
I call dibs on posting tomorrow’s thread about the Halliburton-Sabonis trade and making fun of the Kings
I still really like Sabonis as a player and unironically think he would be a monster with Hali
People in here are way too low on Sabonis. Just because the kings, the Sacramento kings, haven’t built well around a player or created playoff success with them doesn’t mean you can’t win a championship with them.
In most if not all situations, you’re doing this trade lol.
“A Jokic” like they grow on trees
Not that it’s the only reason, but I wonder how important it is for a coach to always have the option to go small in today’s league
I just don’t know how to build a team around Domas.
Feel like you need a 3nD PF and his backup C needs to be an anchor. Off ball c&s guards too.
What are your opinions on any center being built around. Is Wembanyama someone you build around?
The fact is Sabonis is straight up not a good player in games that matter. He cant defend, cant create his own shot, poor spacing and the famous facilitating is just endless DHOs. His exceptional motor gets him great stats in regular season, but there are several teams who has 2 bigs better than him. Indiana made out like bandits.
Absolutely true, wow. Especially when you consider contracts Sabonis is basically a negative asset. How can you win paying him that much to not protect the rim, run your offense through of space? Just dribble hand offs and rebounds?
Thanks Monte/Wilcox/Vivek for not capitalizing
They didn’t want the DHO king? Shocking
Yup cool cool cool