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Should Kings Fans Be Concerned by Lack of Top Prospects in Pre-Draft Workouts?

The Sacramento Kings continue to host draft prospects for workouts, but not the ones fans are expecting.
James Mccauley|
Apr 3, 2026; Sacramento, California, USA; Sacramento Kings head coach Doug Christie during the first quarter against the New Orleans Pelicans at Golden 1 Center.
Apr 3, 2026; Sacramento, California, USA; Sacramento Kings head coach Doug Christie during the first quarter against the New Orleans Pelicans at Golden 1 Center. | Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

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Sacramento Kings

As we get closer to the NBA Draft, Kings fans are probably a little confused about the lack of high-level prospects that have come to town for pre-draft workouts. As of Monday, Sacramento has had four group workouts. 

None of those groups has included prospects slated to be picked near the Kings’ No. 7 overall pick. Should this concern Kings fans? Are players so turned off by the organization that they no longer even entertain working out there anymore? 

Simply put, no. This is not a problem. 

Prospects (especially the high-level ones) are working out with teams less than ever - especially in these group setting-style runs. If anything, Sacramento has done relatively well in who they have brought in so far. 

Trevon Brazile, Zuby Ejufor, Alex Karaban, Nick Martinelly, and Baba Miller, some of the better prospects at the first-to-second round turn, have all worked out for the Kings so far. Sacramento is clearly doing its homework for its second-round picks. 

Considering how well they did with Maxime Raynaud in the second and Dylan Cardwell as a UDFA last year, this is not a surprise. Players in this range should see Sacramento, at essentially ground zero of a rebuild, as a place with ample opportunity to get early playing time and establish themselves in the league, as Raynaud and Cardwell did last season. Ideally, Sacramento is able to acquire more future second-round picks at some point to continue this trend. 

Why This Trend Has Developed

For high-level prospects, there is little upside to doing a workout tour. If anything, a poor showing at a workout could get recorded, go viral, and hurt the player’s stock. Agents clearly know this and try to limit exposure as much as possible. Most of their workouts look like the Peterson clip below: 

Even workouts as controlled as the above are very limited when it comes to top prospects. Peterson and Dybantsa, for example, are reportedly only conducting private visits and workouts with the Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz. Players not in the top four will obviously cast a wider net than this, but the point stands: players are picking and choosing when and with whom they engage during this process more than ever. 

This even occurs at the portions these prospects must attend. Top prospects do only what is absolutely necessary at the Combine. They will get their measurements taken, do the agility drills, go through some basic shooting drills, get their medicals done, meet with some teams, and leave. 

In addition to the lottery-level prospects mostly opting out of workouts, mid-to-late first-round talents are returning to college at a higher rate than ever. This is largely due to massive NIL spending, which can pay players as much as they would make if they were a lottery pick.

For example, Tounde Yessafou’s NIL contract with St. John’s is reportedly worth over $7M. For comparison, that puts him right between what the 8th and 9th picks in the NBA draft will make on the first year of their rookie scale contracts. 

This is obviously the high end of the market, but high-level players routinely earn as much as they would if they were a mid-first round pick. This trend runs the draft talent pool down all the way to the second round, where early-second-round prospect Andrej Stojakovic opted to return to Illinois instead of remaining in the draft, where he absolutely would have been a target for teams in the 30s. 

So, you essentially have the top prospects not working out, the middle class of prospects returning to college at a high rate, and then have more fringe prospects left for these workouts. When looking at the workout lists through this lens, the relatively underwhelming workout groups make sense. 

Are Any of the Top Prospects Doing Workouts? 

Yes. Some are, and they have good reasons to do so. Mikel Brown Jr. seems to be the highest-rated prospect doing the (publicly reported) team workouts. He has worked out with the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Clippers, and reportedly plans to do one with the Chicago Bulls, too. 

Brown has an incentive to do this after being medically cleared by the NBA at the Combine last month. He missed significant time with injuries during his lone season at Louisville, and probably wanted to come give teams a closer look. The Flemings/Acuff/Brown/Wagler tier feels incredibly close, so good showings here could potentially elevate his status in that 5-10 range.

Similarly, Nate Ament is a high-profile prospect doing what resembles an actual workout tour. Ament came into the season as a potential top-5 pick, and did not quite live up to that billing, leaving him as a polarizing evaluation. The idea of him is very intriguing, though, and he is likely trying to show teams in the top ten that he has made progress toward realizing his potential. 

Outside of Brown and Ament, Allen Graves and Bennett Stirtz are other first-round prospects who have been working out for teams. Some more prospects can clearly work out with teams in the three weeks remaining before the draft, but that is not a great hit rate as of now. 

This is all a long way of saying that Kings fans should keep their expectations low regarding who we will see come to town in the weeks leading up to the draft, and it is not just a Sacramento thing. At least fans get to avoid the pain of looking back on more prospects like Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard, CJ McCollum, and Donovan Mitchell in Kings practice jerseys, wondering what could have been.

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James Mccauley
JAMES MCCAULEY

James Mccauley covers the NBA and Sacramento Kings for Sacramento Kings On SI.

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