Kings GM Monte McNair on Vezenkov: 'I think people will be surprised' / News - Basketnews.com

The Kings followed Vezenkov for multiple years before trading for him last year. The organization's GM Monte McNair believes that the fans will fall in love with Vezenkov when they see him play.

Credit: Stefanos Kyriazis/ZUMA Press Wire Credit Stefanos Kyriazis/ZUMA Press Wire

The Sacramento Kings did not make any splashy moves this offseason. Instead, they opted to sign a player from Europe - Sasha Vezenkov.

Aleksandr Vezenkov

Position:PFAge:27Height:206 cmWeight:102 kgBirth place:Nicosia, Côte d'IvoireProfileNewsStatistics

After Olympiacos Piraeus fell short of the EuroLeague title by a single shot last season, the Kings' general manager Monte McNair felt that they had to give a competitive offer to Vezenkov to lure him away from deciding to stay in Europe to complete the unfinished business.

"[Would Vezenkov] want to go back and kind of [complete] that unfinished business? So for us, we knew we'd have to put a competitive offer out there," he told in an interview with Anthony Slater and Sam Amick from The Athletic.

The Kings ended up offering a three-year $20 million deal to Vezenkov with the third year being a team option. The player agreed.

McNair thinks that Kings fans will grow up to love Vezenkov.

"A lot of people hear 'international' and they don't know them, and then they come over and all of a sudden it's [Nikola] Mirotic or it's the [Bogdan and Bojan] Bogdanovics or [Nemanja] Bjelica. Or you can obviously go back to the Pejas and Turkoglus," he said.

"Once they’re over here, then people get excited about them. But I think people will be surprised, just because they don't know him very well and what he can do," McNair told about Vezenkov.

The Kings noticed Vezenkov a couple of years ago, McNair said. Then a process began when multiple people from the entire organization evaluated the player until it was decided to trade for him in the summer of 2022.

"Per our process, we have some international consultants that have seen him, but our domestic scouts, on up to [Kings vice president of player personnel] Phil Jabour and [assistant general manager] Wes Wilcox, who do a lot of our personnel from the more traditional scouting side, started watching him more and were like, ‘Yeah, this guy is really good.’ So that was a multi-month, if not a couple of years [process], in the lead-up to just trading for him. At the time, we didn’t know if he’d come over."

Sacramento might not be the ideal place for hanging out after the games but it's more and more becoming a great place to play basketball alongside stars like De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis.

"We’re probably never going to be South Beach, right? But the other way to draw folks to your team is to win," McNair concluded.

Thank you for being with us! Subscribe to BN+ and browse ad-free.