The Sacramento Kings faced a choice in the 2018 NBA Draft: select Duke center Marvin Bagley or European guard Luka Dončić?
As most Kings fans know, the team drafted Bagley and then watched Dončić become one of the best players in the NBA, earning five consecutive All-NBA first-team nods following his rookie season. Bagley, meanwhile, has become a fairly mediocre center and is no longer with the Kings.
It would appear that the Kings made a franchise-changing mistake in that draft, but don’t tell that to former general manager Vlade Divac, the man responsible for the decision. Apparently, he believes the jury is still out.
In Interview with Croatian media Index.hrDivac was asked to explain why he didn’t choose Dončić. As he did right after the draft, Divac pointed to the presence of Kings guard De’Aaron Fox as the reason Bagley was the better choice, and hinted that Fox could still justify the decision if he has a better career than Dončić.
From the index, interpreted through Google Translate:
“In that position I had De’Aaron Fox, who I had drafted a year earlier. At the time, I thought Fox was a player who could become a franchise player in the next period. Time will tell if I was wrong. As things stand now, it seems that way, but I have faith that little Fox will have a better career.”
Since that draft, Dončić and the Mavericks have made the playoffs four times, with an NBA Finals appearance last season. Fox and the Kings have made the playoffs once, in 2023, losing in the first round to the Golden State Warriors.
Dončić certainly seems to think Divac should have picked him.
The logic that Dončić and Fox were mutually exclusive as franchise stars is also hard to accept considering the Mavericks reached the Finals with Dončić and guard Kyrie Irving as their leading scorers.
Index pressed Divac on that fact and got the argument that Irving and Fox are different types of scorers, and an attempt to shift some of the blame to the Phoenix Suns:
“Irving is a classic goal scorer, just like Luka. Fox is not, he is a player who needs the ball, just like Luka. I could only take Luka, but then I would have to change Fox. Interestingly, Phoenix also dispensed with Luka, and then his coach was Igor Kokoškov, who was his coach in Slovenia.”
There’s a lot to unpack. For starters, presenting Irving as a player who doesn’t always need the ball in his hands, unlike Fox, is curious, given that one of the criticisms leveled at Irving throughout his career is that he actually needs the ball as a point guard who always scores.
Divac also logically contradicts himself by portraying Irving as a classic scorer, like Dončić, and then trying to paint Fox as a player who needs the ball, like Dončić. Perhaps there was a translation error, but most NBA fans would describe classic scorers as players who need the ball in their hands.
This is all based on the premise that a team with Dončić and Fox just wouldn’t work, which seems silly. Maybe they’d have to sacrifice some of what makes them great to work together, but Dončić converted 37.8% of his catch-and-shoot 3s last year, while Fox shot 39.1%. Having to manage those two multidimensional threats seems like a bigger problem for the defense than the offense.
Divac praised Dončić as a player “on the right path” to winning the MVP, and also denied a long-standing rumor that he overlooked the Slovenian due to a conflict with his father Sasa.
However, that is all in the past, even if the Kings still have to deal with what many consider a missed opportunity with a Hall of Fame talent. Divac stepped down as the Kings’ general manager in 2020 and was replaced by Monte McNair.
