Despite their push to sign veteran players and mentors this past offseason, the Sacramento Kings were just a half-game out of last place in the NBA on trade deadline day. With that in mind, some movement around the trade deadline seemed almost inevitable. However, the Kings were not expected to be one of the league's more active teams on February 8th.

Instead of staying silent, however, the Kings remodeled their roster in more dramatic fashion than any team in the league outside of the Cleveland Cavaliers. While much of that activity was tied to Cleveland's own massive trade deadline day, the Kings' roster will look very different when they play the Portland Trail Blazers on February 9th. Here is the rundown on a surprisingly active day from Vlade Divac and the front office.

Making Moves

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Sacramento Kings have circled each other for weeks about George Hill. The Cavs desperately needed strong defensive play and (less desperately) needed outside shooting--Hill provides both when fully engaged. Cleveland can also let Hill play off-ball most of the time around LeBron James, negating Hill's biggest weakness in terms of pure point guard skills.

In return, the Kings will shed long-term salary. Joe Johnson will come off the books after this season if the Kings do not buy him out before then (which seems exceedingly likely). Iman Shumpert is out indefinitely with plantar fasciitis, and may well decide to opt in for next season at his hefty $11 million price tag if his health issues continue to hamper him. While the Kings did also manage to get Miami's 2020 second-round pick in this trade, they go basically no long-term assets in return for Hill.

The Kings also traded Malachi Richardson to the Toronto Raptors in return for fellow Hashtag Basketball writer Jordan Kligman's (least) favorite player, Bruno Caboclo. Fran Fraschilla famously declared that Bruno was "two years away from being two years away" when he was drafted in 2014. Since that timeline is finally up after this year, maybe Vivek thought it was high time to buy low on Caboclo. However, Bruno has played a grand total of seven minutes this year and 113 minutes for his career; he has also yet to show a single viable NBA skill beyond being 6'9" with a 7'7" wingspan. Even though Malachi has been buried on the bench during his two years in Sacramento, it is still surprising that the Kings gave up on him this early in his career.

The only thing more surprising than how early Sacramento gave up on Malachi, however, is how quickly they gave up on Georgios Papagiannis. The Kings did not exactly get much of a return for Richardson, but at least they did not waive him to make a roster spot--as they did for Papagiannis. The Athletic's Sam Vecenie has repeatedly called Papagiannis "the worst lottery pick of the decade" and he does not appear to have been far off the mark. Papagiannis' skill set at this point in his career is virtually identical to Bruno's in that they have both proven to be quite tall despite being able to do nothing of any value while they were on the court. Papagiannis will eternally be the turd in the punch bowl of Vlade Divac's best trade--the 8th pick (Marquese Chriss) in 2016 in exchange for the 13th pick (wasted on Georgios), the 28th pick (wisely used to take Skal Labissiere) and the rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic. While blowing the 13th pick on Papagiannis certainly soured the deal, the Kings can at least avoid wasting development minutes on him that should instead go to Skal or Willie Cauley-Stein.

The Sacramento Kings made a couple of puzzling moves at the trade deadline and failed to get much in the way of future assets from their biggest deal. While the team's moves can at least wash the stink off of some recent bad decisions, the Kings failed to do much beyond opening up cap space for this summer. Given that the biggest signing from the last offseason was just shipped off to create that 2018 cap space, having a bunch of money on hand is not exactly an enticing proposition for a team that really needs to focus first and foremost on their future.