Former Kings GM Vlade Divac on Why He Didn’t Draft Luka Doncic: ‘I Already Had De’Aaron Fox’

Always draft the best player, regardless of position, and figure out the rest later. Always.

Which brings us to Vlade Divac, the Hall of Fame basketball player who served as general manager of the Sacramento Kings for five years. As he has done before and will have to do so until his dying day, Divac defended his 2018 choice to draft Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic with the second pick (the Suns selected Deandre Ayton first that year). This time around, Doncic did it to Croatian online newspaper Index (hats off Hoopshype).

“At that position, I already had De’Aaron Fox, who I drafted a year earlier. At the time, I believed Fox was a player who could become a star for the franchise in the years to come. Time will tell if I was wrong. As it stands now, it appears I was wrong, but I still have confidence that Fox will have a great career.”

We shouldn’t underestimate Fox, an All-NBA player who won the Clutch Player of the Year award and averaged 26.6 points and 5.6 assists per game last season. But he’s no Doncic, a top-five player in the league and a perennial MVP candidate. Why not have them play alongside each other, like Doncic and Kyrie Irving do now, a pairing that took the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals last season?

“No. Irving is a classic scorer, just like Luka. Fox is not; he is a playmaker who needs the ball, just like Luka. I could have taken Luka, but then I would have had to trade Fox. Interestingly enough, Phoenix also passed on Luka, and at the time their coach was Igor Kokoškov, who had coached Luka in Slovenia. Atlanta drafted Luka, but they traded him away. In the end, it was Dallas that took him. I love watching Luka; I really enjoy his style of basketball. I had my own reasons for making that decision. Maybe I made a mistake, but time will tell.”

Time has shown. Fox is a great player, a top 10 point guard in the NBA right now, but Doncic is at the top of that list—a future Hall of Famer.

Divac made it clear that one of “my own reasons” for the choice was not a feud with Doncic’s father, a rumor he previously debunkedDivac believed Bagley had a higher ceiling than Doncic, and to be fair, other scouts at the time thought so too (they hadn’t anticipated the NBA’s shift away from traditional bigs). There was a segment of the scouting community that didn’t believe in Doncic before the draft (and a segment that emphatically did).

Phoenix drafted Ayton No. 1 because then-owner Robert Sarver ordered it, believing in the traditional center and that taking the Arizona star and keeping him in-state would be good for the box office, according to league sources. Many teams were enamored with Ayton at the time, while Doncic suffered from the outdated mentality of “Sure, he dominated the EuroLeague, but this is the NBA and it’s going to be different.” Atlanta went with Trae Young in that trade.

And that brings us back to the opening paragraph of this story: always select the best player, regardless of position, and only think later about what the rest will mean.

For Kings fans, this will always hurt. Divac’s decision will be remembered in the same category as the Trail Blazers drafting Sam Bowie for Michael Jordan because Portland had Clyde Drexler and didn’t need a winger. Divac missed out, and the franchise continues to pay the price.