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.
Apparently what the Kings had learned about Clifford in eight games this season was enough to dump him for a pair of second-rounders. Obviously, November 2026 is the time to find out what you've got in Zach LaVine and Malik Monk. "It's always about competition, you know, that's what it is," said Christie, when asked in a presser why Clifford fell out of the rotation. "[Rookie] Emanuel [Sharp], I thought, has played really, really good. Malik came back. There's a logjam in there. So that's part of the issue."
So the Thunder got the Spurs' first-round pick, let the Kings test out Clifford for 83 games, then got him back, at the cost of two measly second-rounders from their enormous surplus. It's possible that the Kings have accurately evaluated their own players, and know something about Clifford the market does not. It seems considerably more possible that Kings general manager Scott Perry just went out there and did some stuff, and that the Thunder have once again identified a toolsy player who will slot right into their democratic system and fill out the wing depth that had been abruptly depleted by injuries to Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace. Whatever the case, Clifford now has a chance to reach heights that would have been impossible to touch in Sacramento.
As a general rule, if Thunder GM Sam Presti is registering interest in a player on your roster, it's a decent signal that you should not trade that player. Maybe that's how bad teams should conduct their own talent evaluation: Just dangle the guy in front of Presti's face and say, Hey, is this anything? Then, for the next step, find a head coach who isn't Doug Christie.
