Always draft the best player, regardless of position, then figure out the rest later. Always.
That brings us to Vlade Divac, the Hall of Fame basketball player who spent five years as the Sacramento Kings general manager. As he has done before and will have to until his dying days, Divac defended his 2018 choice of drafting Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic with the No. 2 pick (the Suns took Deandre Ayton No. 1 that year). This time, Doncic did it to Croatian online newspaper Index (hat tip Hoopshype).
“At that position, I already had De’Aaron Fox, whom I had drafted a year earlier. At the time, I believed Fox was a player who could become a franchise star in the coming years. Time will tell if I was wrong. As things stand now, it seems I was, but I still have faith in Fox having a great career.”
We shouldn’t diminish Fox, an All-NBA player who has won the Clutch Player of the Year award, and averaged 26.6 points and 5.6 assists a game last season. However, he’s no Doncic, a top-five player in the league and a perennial MVP candidate. Why not play them next to each other, like Doncic and Kyrie Irving do now, a combo that took the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals a season ago?
“No. Irving is a classic scorer, just like Luka. Fox isn’t; he’s a playmaker who needs the ball, just like Luka. I could’ve taken Luka, but then I’d have had to trade Fox. Interestingly, Phoenix also passed on Luka, and at the time, their coach was Igor Kokoškov, who had coached Luka in Slovenia. Atlanta drafted Luka, but they traded him away. It was Dallas that eventually took him. I love watching Luka; I really enjoy his style of basketball. I had my own reasons for making that decision. Maybe I made a mistake, but time will tell.”
Time has told. Fox is an outstanding player, a top-10 point guard in the NBA right now, but Doncic is on top of that list—a future Hall of Famer.
Divac made clear that one of “my own reasons” for the pick was not a feud with Doncic’s father, a rumor he has shot down before. Divac believed Bagley’s ceiling was higher than Doncic’s, and to be fair at the time other scouts thought that as well (they didn’t anticipate the shift in the NBA away from traditional bigs). There was a segment of the scouting community that did not buy in on Doncic pre-draft (and a segment that emphatically did).
Phoenix drafted Ayton No. 1 because then owner Robert Sarver ordered it, believing in the traditional center and that taking the Arizona standout and keeping him in the state was good for the box office, according to league sources. Many teams were high on Ayton at the time, while Doncic suffered from the outdated mindset of “Sure, he dominated the EuroLeague, but this is the NBA, and it will be different.” Atlanta was betting on Trae Young in that trade.
Which brings us back to the opening paragraph of this story: Always draft the best player, regardless of position, then figure out the rest later.
For Kings fans, this will always sting. Divac’s decision will be remembered in the same category as the Trail Blazers drafting Sam Bowie in front of Michael Jordan because Portland had Clyde Drexler and didn’t need a wing player. Divac missed and the franchise continues to pay the price.