Coming out of Kansas, Ben McLemore was supposed to be one of the best prospects in the 2013 draft. In a league with a think shoot guard pool, McLemore was an athletic wing with a good jumper and a solid game off the dribble. He had all of the tools and size to excel at the NBA level at a position in desperate need of depth. On draft night, he fell to the seventh pick and the Sacramento Kings swooped him up. Ever since then, he's been wildly ordinary and unable to separate himself from even the pack on his own team.
After three seasons in the league and with the Kings acquiring Arron Afflalo and rookie Malachi Richardson, it now looks like McLemore is available on the trade market. Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee is reporting that he's been available for months after Sacramento signed Afflalo and traded Marco Belinelli to the Charlotte Hornets for the draft pick they used on Richardson.
Sacramento also has made shooting guard Ben McLemore, in the final year of his rookie contract, available for months, after acquiring Malachi Richardson in a draft-day deal and signing veteran Arron Afflalo.
In his second season, McLemore started to look like he might be figuring things out a bit. He was still pretty inconsistent but he managed 12.1 points per game on 43.7 percent from the field and 35.8 percent from 3-point range in 32.6 minutes. Last season in a full year under offense-obsessed George Karl, McLemore regressed to just 21.2 minutes a night. His true shooting percentage dropped from 55.2 percent to 53.1 percent and he just couldn't separate himself from Belinelli, whom they opted to play more often than McLemore.
The question becomes what the Kings are asking for him. Do they think they deserve a first-round pick or a prospect in return? Or are the Kings willing to punt on the McLemore experience completely and just grab a decent veteran for the end of the bench? He's only 23 years old and McLemore has been trying to develop in a highly chaotic Kings environment, so there's still hope he can become a valuable role player. Some team could potentially buy low and get to work on developing him.
