Kings Give Up On First-Round Pick After 83 Games, Trade Him For Basically Nothing

Not all franchises are made equal. Some are widely understood by their peers to be operated by dullards. These imbalances are clear to everyone—fans, analysts, other executives—if not to the dullards themselves. Is it bullying whenever the Oklahoma City Thunder do business with, say, the Sacramento Kings? Maybe it is.

During the 2025 NBA Draft, these two teams kicked off the first phase of this saga. The Kings sent a top-16 protected pick belonging to the San Antonio Spurs; the Thunder sent the No. 24 pick. The Kings then used that pick to select Nique Clifford, a versatile 6-foot-5 prospect. The knock on Clifford was his age—already 23 at draft night—but he was considered a good athlete with positional size, feel, and ball skills. After a solid rookie season, he was a modest source of hope on a Sacramento roster that badly needed any. Any evaluation of Clifford would also have to factor in that he was playing under full-time head coach Doug Christie, who is the NBA franchise equivalent of swapping on the donut tire on your car and then taking it on a cross-country road trip. Christie had poor Clifford playing point guard for stretches of the season, struggling to make plays out of isolation. But at least Clifford was in no rush to prove himself, having joined a play-in franchise on a clear downward trajectory which included conducting confusing trades for middling players.

Alas, Clifford just couldn’t keep up with the furious pace of innovation in Sacramento. Just 16 months after the Kings acquired him, Clifford had slipped out of the rotation. On Sunday, they traded him back to the Thunder, and in return received two-second round picks. Particularly strange is the timing of the trade. What was Sacramento’s rush to move on from the sophomore? The 1-9 Kings are headed nowhere but hell. They have a lively point guard now in Darius Acuff Jr., who has been happily taking on galactic usage; their best wing, Keegan Murray, finally returned from an ankle injury yesterday. If anything, now is the time to properly test out all their rookie-scale players and assess their quality.