The Sacramento Kings are a bad basketball team, have been a bad basketball team for some time and look to remain a bad basketball team for the foreseeable future. The Sacramento Kings' most notable free agent signings of the past decade are Carl Landry and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. Abdur-Rahim earned a medical retirement a few years into his deal based on an injury that allowed the Kings to sign him in the first place by scaring off others. Landry ... well, we'll get to him.

Sacramento is not a particularly glamorous city by NBA standards, and so long as the team is bad there is little to entice top-flight free agents. In certain situations, even bad, uninteresting teams can recruit decent free agents (see Shareef and Landry), but it usually takes a big overpay and some luck. You've got to target the right player at the right time.

The Kings believe Lady Luck is in town (she's not, she never stops here) and so they decided to proactively open up some cap space to target some of those leftover free agents. Sacramento shipped Nik Stauskas -- a protected future first and two future pick swaps -- to the Sixers in order to clear Jason Thompson and the dead weight contract of Carl Landry (there he is!) off of the books. This move opens up an additional $16 million of cap space for the Kings to spend on ...

The Kings clearing the salary cap space to pursue free agents Rajon Rondo and Wes Matthews, league sources tell Yahoo Sports. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 2, 2015

The Kings are seriously interested in free agent guard Monta Ellis too, league sources tell Yahoo Sports . — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 2, 2015

Now we know the picks have swapped. The Sixers will pick at No. 3 in the 2017 NBA draft with the Kings' pick. Sacramento will choose at No. 5 and also No. 10 following the DeMarcus Cousins trade. Here's a brand new mock draft.

Yes, that's right: the Kings are chasing Wes Matthews, Rajon Rondo and Monta Ellis. Matthews is an excellent fit as a top-notch defender and deep shooter. He also tore his Achilles tendon in March and is seeking at least $15 million per season. Rondo is reportedly looking for a one-year deal to rehab his value which tells you EXACTLY how his season went. And Ellis ... well, let's just say that an offense featuring Monta Ellis and Rudy Gay might set the analytics movement back a decade, okay?

All three have some problems. Better yet, the Kings aren't even the frontrunner for any of them but Rondo! It's quite possible that the Kings could strike out with Matthews, who wants to win and has talked with the Mavericks and Raptors, and Ellis, who met with the Pacers. Then what? Rondo shouldn't break $10 million (God help us if he wants the max). Do you keep chugging down the free agent list to fill that other $16 million in cap space?

You can't just sit on it. Not after giving up Stauskas, a future first and two pick swaps for it. You can't sit on it given that just about every other team in the NBA will have enough cap space for a max player a year from now when the salary cap rises 30 percent. You can't sit on it because if you do, chances are you're going to continue to be a bad basketball team, and oh look, now you don't even have your own pick every other year.

Why now? The Sixers weren't exactly chomping at the bit to use their cap space. Go recruit the free agent targets first, then swing the trade to officially open up space. Agents are smart, even if us louts on the Internet can't grok how you have the space to offer Matthews $65 million over four years, you can explain your rock-solid Hinkie Surprise to the agents. Nope, the Kings just went ahead with the trade and now are trying to poach the free agents. The cart isn't just before the horse here: the cart has lapped the horse. The horse might be in Vlade Divac's stables back in Belgrade. The horse may not even exist.

Some are downplaying the importance of the pick and pick swaps in this deal. One argument is that the Kings are horrible at drafting players anyway, so who cares? Well yes, being bad at the draft is a problem! Unfortunately it is the most rock-solid method to rebuild in the NBA. Rebuilding is hard with high picks. It is even more difficult without picks altogether.

Another argument is that if the Kings are so bad that the pick swaps down the line matter, then Sacramento has bigger problems than 2015 free agency hauls. Amusingly, this same argument was made to make light the insane J.J. Hickson trade the Kings made in 2011. In that deal, the Kings sent Omri Casspi and a protected first to Cleveland for Hickson.

Hickson was a full-blown disaster and actually got waived at midseason. That pick (now owned by Chicago) was quite well-protected. It's now protected in the top 10. The Kings have been garbage enough to retain it in order to pick guys like Stauskas. If it's not conveyed by 2017, it will become a second-round pick.

The argument back in 2011 was that if the Kings lost the pick between 2012 and 2017, it meant the Kings were actually pretty good (or at least not abjectly terrible) and no one would care about the loss of a mid to low first-pick. If the Kings never conveyed the first, it would've meant that things went horribly wrong and the pick would be beside the point because of all of the other suffering happening in the fan base.

Guess what? We're two more bad seasons from that very thing happening. And now we get to play that same emotional roulette from the top.

The Kings just made a huge bet on a pot we aren't even sure is worth winning. It could work out and be just the lucky victory the franchise needs. Or it could turn out like every other hare-brained scheme the fans in Sacramento have survived over the past decade. I know which which side I'd put my money on.

★★★