Kings not at all regal in trading Robinson

I can’t help but think the Sacramento Kings were particularly hasty in sending Thomas Robinson to Houston as a part of yesterday’s three-team trade, less than a year after taking the power forward with the fifth pick in the NBA draft.

The Kings have seemingly exercised neither patience with the former Kansas star or made any attempt to study the tea leaves.

Sacramento could be forgiven for being more enamoured with their other front court lynchpin DeMarcus Cousins, who despite some concerns regarding his attitude, has put together a much more convincing body of work over his first three professional seasons.

However Robinson’s NBA career is barely half a season long which truly baffles me as to why the Kings have already cut the cord.

Sacramento has likely only looked at the bottom line which indicates that the very minor success this club has had this season has coincided with Robinson playing a very limited role. The Kings are for instance is 6-2 when Robinson’s minutes have been of the single figure variety and 7-3 when his shots are limited to 2 or less field goal attempts a game.

Evidently the Kings have made little effort to see that overall the statistical differences between when Robinson is on the court as opposed to off it are negligible, which isn’t something you can say about the bulk of the Sacramento players.

Most importantly it would seem the Kings have paid no attention to Robinson’s very dramatic college career arc in Kansas and though there’s absolutely no evidence for replication in the NBA, it should certainly have bared consideration before Sacramento picked up the Houston phone call.

When the former Washington DC high schooler landed at the University of Kansas he had some enormous wraps but constituted something of a flop in his first year under Bill Self. He averaged just two points and as many rebounds over a largely forgettable seven minutes per game.

By Robinson’s third and final season he had become one of the most dominant players in all of college basketball, leading Kansas to the National Championship game while averaging 18 points and 12 rebounds. His production earned him second place to Anthony Davis in National Player of the Year voting and some speculation he could be taken as high as number two in the draft. Thankfully Kansas didn’t separate themselves from Robinson after his first year on campus.

For mine, Sacramento has made the kind of mistake in dealing Robinson which if nothing else proves true to form with the majority of the moves this franchise has made over the last seven seasons. It’s hard to think this one won’t bite them quite viciously in their soon to be Seattle based behind.