It's time to worry about the Kings pick

The NBA season is officially two months old and the Sacramento Kings look like a playoff team. That's one sentence NBA observers would have been shocked to read ahead of the 2018-19 campaign.

Over the past decade, Danny Ainge and the Celtics' front office have played their cards wisely when it comes to the future of their draft assets. They held onto them nearly all of them over the course of the rebuild, cashing them in for such players as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown before wisely selling high on the final Brooklyn unprotected first round pick in 2018 as the centerpiece of a trade package for Kyrie Irving. The Cavs probably thought they were getting much higher than the No. 8 pick when they made that deal.

Boston's front office has maintained that patient philosophy over the past offseason upon completing the rebuild as well, standing pat this summer with a cupboard full of draft picks, highlighted by the Kings/Sixers top-1 protected first round pick. That selection was widely seen across the league as one of the top draft assets owned by a different team. In a stacked Western Conference, the Kings looked like a lock for a bottom-five finish, which would have allowed the C's to add a top prospect to their already loaded young core next summer or use it a trade chip.

Yet, as the 30-game mark of the regular season approaches, it's not yet clear whether the Kings pick will even be the highest draft pick the Celtics own in the 2019 NBA Draft.

While the Grizzlies (16-13, dropped six of last ten) and Clippers (17-12, losers of three straight) have started to fall back towards the .500 mark, the Sacramento Kings have built upon the momentum of their surprising start. They are currently tied for the sixth seed in the West with a 16-13 record after ending the Mavericks' 12-game home winning streak on Sunday night.

The overall body of work looks better after looking at it more closely. Sacramento has won six of eight overall and has a schedule that is full of quality wins (Oklahoma City x 2, Indiana, Dallas) and solid losses (two losses to the Warriors by a combined six points). They are beating up on bad teams, hanging in with good ones and are one of only three squads in the Western Conference with a winning road record as of Sunday night.

The hot shooting start that we noticed in November has sustained itself. Sacramento is the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA thanks to its dynamic backcourt of De'Aaron Fox (18 ppg, 7.5 apg) and Buddy Hield (42.9 percent from 3-point range). Nine rotation players are shooting 35 percent or better from downtown, making this group one of the deepest perimeter rosters across the league. They play hard, they play fast and they are showing no signs of slowing down even as a brutal few weeks of the schedule awaits. They've already played the sixth toughest schedule in the league, according to Basketball-Reference, so they aren't beating up on just inferior talent thus far.

There's no guarantee that this group sniffs the playoffs in a loaded Western Conference (Minnesota is in 14th place in Western Conference but is just three games out of a playoff spot) at the end of an 82-game grind. However, we've reached a point in the season where we have enough of a sample size to figure out what teams are for real and which ones are smoke and mirrors. The Kings are a flawed group that doesn't play much defense but they can put up points with the best of them. That's going to be good enough for them to secure 35-plus wins this year and even that low of a win mark might require an injury or some wishful thinking at this point with a 19-34 finish being required to finish that low.

Barring some kind of major injury or unexpected collapse, the best case scenario now for the Celtics in projecting a Kings' finish looks like the 8-10 spot in the lottery and that will be a tough pill to swallow for the C's. That type of pick will have value but it can no longer be the centerpiece of a deal for a star-type player that many expected before the start of this campaign. At this point, it's highly probable it falls in the teens. It will obviously be useful as a trade asset but it's no longer going to push the needle in a big way like a potential top-5 pick might have.

There's really no one to blame for the situation. The Celtics could have conceivably tried moving the pick last summer at its peak value in a package for Kawhi Leonard but the Spurs were far more focused on getting a help-now piece in exchange for their All-Star, according to multiple league sources. An offer of Brown, the Sacramento pick and salary filler would have seemed like a major risk at the time because it was. No one knew what Leonard would look like after injury and he obviously was (and still is) a flight risk on an expiring deal. There were no other names on the open market last summer that was worth considering moving the Sacramento pick for, so it's not worth second guessing.

Boston's collection of assets (players and picks) have ultimately been building towards a run at Anthony Davis whenever he becomes available next summer and beyond. Danny Ainge is going to have to dig a little bit deeper than expected into his pocket now with the Kings pick declining in value.

Help can still be had in other ways. The Grizzlies could fall out of the playoffs and give the Celtics another lottery pick or even better a bottom eight finish (which would roll the pick over until 2020). The Clippers could continue their slide to the bottom of the West playoff picture as well. Even in those ideal scenarios, nothing will be able to make up for (on paper) the lost trade value of the Kings pick. The Celtics have had a lot of cards fall their way over the past decade. When you remember the original deal (Jayson Tatum and the pick for Markelle Fultz) the C's can't get too upset over this one.