The Sacramento Kings Are Certainly Something
The Kings have the worst record in the NBA and are once again at a crossroads.
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There are lots of bad teams in the NBA right now. You have the Indiana Pacers, the Washington Wizards, the New Orleans Pelicans, the Brooklyn Nets, the Utah Jazz, and the Sacramento Kings. All different, but all bad nonetheless. The latter now owns the worst record in the NBA at 12-40. The Pelicans also have 40 losses on the season, but they have notched one more win than the Kings. The tremendous trio made up of Monte McNair/Wes Wilcox/Mike Brown in Sacramento basketball already feels like a lifetime ago. As doom and gloom as it is right now in Sacramento, the Kings do have their first-round pick in this year’s draft, which is not something another team with 40 losses in the West can say. In fact, the Kings own their own first-round pick the rest of this decade.
That’s something, right?
Just take a gander at the starting five for the Kings on ESPN’s Depth Chart page. Those names include Russell Westbrook, Zach LaVine, DeAndre Hunter, DeMar DeRozan, and Domantas Sabonis. That’s 20 All-Star appearances among those five names – only Hunter has never made an NBA All-Star team. The former Virginia wing is also the youngest in the group at 28 years old. With Keegan Murray out due to injury, what stands out most about this 5-man unit is that all should not be on the Kings past today’s NBA Trade Deadline.
But the Kings just traded for Hunter, which I will get to later on in this piece. The Kings have their own pick in what looks to be one of the best NBA Drafts in a long time. But they need to do more. Murray doesn’t project as a multi-time All-Star, and although he’s 25 now, he could easily integrate into the next timeline for Sacramento if they were to pivot that way starting after the 2026 NBA Draft. For everyone else in that temporary starting lineup, they should be somewhere else. The collection of Westbrook, LaVine, DeRozan, and Sabonis could all help lots of teams going for it right now, and yet all of them may be with Sacramento past today’s NBA Trade Deadline.
The Kings have made one quasi-major move ahead of today’s trade deadline, trading Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Hunter in a three-team deal. Reserve veteran big man Dario Saric was sent to the Chicago Bulls in the trade as well. It was an uninspiring deal for the Kings, as Ellis was maybe the team’s best trade chip, outside of Murray and Sabonis. Moving off Schroder is fine, but moving off Ellis, too, without getting a young guard in return like Sam Merrill, Tyrese Proctor, or Jaylon Tyson is a bit sad if you’re a Kings fan, I imagine. Ellis seems like a perfect complement to James Harden and Donovan Mitchell when the Cavs stagger their two star guards at different times this season. For the Kings, Hunter doesn’t fit their timeline, or at least he shouldn’t, and you moved a guy seemingly everybody else in the NBA Media Conglomerate likes as a throw-in to get a guy who will be an unrestricted free agent after next season.
I think a lot about GMIB’s Tom Ziller and his piece on his Kings fandom at SB Nation from half a decade ago now. It’s got to be just as dispiriting as ever for a franchise that looked as though they were finally turning the corner as a stable organization with McNair, Brown, Wilcox leading the way and a core of quality NBA players in Sabonis, Murray & De’Aron Fox. The Kings won 48 games in the 2022-23 NBA season and made the playoffs for the first time since Rick Adelman was the head coach in 2005-06. One playoff appearance in two decades is brutal. Just brutal.
That 2022-23 Kings squad was No. 1 in the NBA in ORtg. First! Now, this year’s Kings are on pace to have their worst DRtg in franchise history at 120.6. It’s the third-worst figure in the NBA this season. They also have the second-worst offense in the NBA this season. The Kings are a bad basketball team, but they are also both a bad AND old basketball team. It’s just not where you ever want to be in the NBA. The saving grace, though, is that the Kings have their first-round picks through 2030. There is still time to move guys like Sabonis and LaVine. If you’re general manager Scott Perry, you look at what the other bad teams in the West have done: Utah, Memphis, and Dallas are all making moves. Different kinds of moves, with the Jazz readying to compete next season while Memphis and Dallas are shifting their focus to their young guys in Cooper Flagg, Cedric Coward, and Zach Edey. Ja Morant has been linked to the Kings, but Morant does not make any sense for the Kings.
So we’ll see what the Kings do today and later this summer. We’ll see where the ping pong balls fall in the lottery. The Kings could wind up with a Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, or Cameron Boozer, and things look a lot better sooner rather than later. Look at how fast things deteriorated from that 2022-23 playoff squad to now. The same could theoretically happen the other way. It starts with moving Sabonis and LaVine. Maybe DeRozan, too. It continues with some lottery luck. It could all happen, but, man, I understand if you’re a Kings fan reading this and don’t expect it to happen.