By Sam Amick
samick@sacbee.com
The Kings have agreed on a trade to send forward Shelden Williams and point guard Bobby Brown to Minnesota in exchange for fourth-year guard Rashad McCants and veteran big man Calvin Booth, according to two league sources.
On the financial front, the deal - which is done but pending league approval - takes the Kings off the hook for the $736,420 owed to Brown next season (player option) while giving them two players who have expiring contracts in McCants ($2.6 million, restricted free agent this summer) and Booth ($1.1 million). On the floor, McCants enters as a fiery addition to the backcourt who will be looking to breath new life into his career in Sacramento after falling out of the TImberwolves' rotation this season. The 6-foot-4, North Carolina product who was drafted 14th overall in 2005 scored a season-high 23 points at New York on Dec. 26, but has struggled to find minutes or make an impact otherwise. Booth hasn't played this season.
With Williams and Brown leaving Sacramento, they become the latest Kings experiments that simply didn't pay off. Brown was signed last summer as a hot commodity, an undrafted point guard out of Cal State Fullerton who played one season in Germany and drew league-wide interest during July's summer league in Las Vegas in which he flourished while playing wtih New Orleans. Yet even with Kings starting point guard Beno Udrih struggling this season, Brown didn't pan out as Kings basketball president Geoff Petrie had hoped.
Williams was the No. 5 pick out of Duke in the 2006 draft who came to the Kings from Atlanta on Feb. 16, 2008 in the trade that sent Mike Bibby to the Hawks. The Kings had hoped he would prove his critics wrong in Sacramento, but he struggled to find playing time and had little impact during his year-long stay.
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