MY ACCOUNT
Professional sports are usually cyclical with teams rising and falling at one point or another. Some franchises, however, seem to be stuck in a never-ending loop of nothingness.
That is where the Sacramento Kings have resided for far too long.
The Kings own the NBA’s longest active playoff drought at 15 seasons with the next closest team (Charlotte Hornets) at just five years. At 18-29 and 11th in the Western Conference, it doesn’t appear likely that Sacramento will end that run of futility this year with the 16-season drought becoming the longest in NBA history. The Clippers went 15 seasons without a playoff appearance from 1977-1992.
Those Clippers at least had a winning season during their dearth of postseason basketball, going 43-39 in 1978-79. The Kings’ best record in their sad stretch was 39-43 in 2018-19. Sacramento’s last winning season came in 2005-06 (44-38), at the end of a streak of eight consecutive playoff appearances that included the league’s best record in 2001-02 (61-21).
That success must seem like a century ago to the Kings’ beaten-down fanbase.
The Kings have been something of a vagabond franchise throughout their history, starting as the Rochester Royals in 1948 and winning their only championship two seasons later.
The team moved to Cincinnati in 1957-58 and then was shifted to Kansas City-Omaha in 1972, when they were renamed the Kings. Finally, they became the fourth NBA team in the state of California with the move to Sacramento in 1985.
Over the last five seasons, including the current one, the Kings rank 24th in winning percentage (.411). Trailing them are Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New York and Orlando, all teams that have experienced the playoffs in that span except for the Eastern Conference-leading Bulls who are headed there this season.
That Sacramento have only been moderately awful lately is one of the franchise’s biggest problems. While other teams have bottomed out and rebuilt (Cavaliers, Hawks and Bulls), the Kings have wallowed near the bottom without much of a plan to lead them back to their long-forgotten glory days.
There is a myriad of reasons why the Kings have been unable to reach the playoffs since George Walker Bush was in the White House, but chief among them is an 11-man coaching carousel.
David Joerger (2016-17-2018-19) coached the most games in that span (246) and had the most wins (98), recently fired Luke Walton had the best winning percentage (.422) and Kenny Natt had the worst (.190).
Walton was fired on November 21, 2021, after a 6-11 start and a 68-93 record, and replaced on an interim basis by Alvin Gentry. That move hasn’t provided much of a spark with Sacramento going 12-18 under Gentry.
While coaching, of course, plays a major role in any team’s fortunes, players are truly what defines a franchise. Because impact free agents aren’t flocking to Sacramento the way they do to Los Angeles or Miami, the Kings must hit on their draft picks, and they simply have had too many misses.
It can be unfair to look at a specific team’s drafts and pick apart what they should or shouldn’t have done in hindsight, but in Sacramento’s case, the misses have contributed to a lack of stars and therefore success.
The most egregious mistake came in 2018, when the Kings picked Marvin Bagley III second right before Dallas selected Luka Doncic and three picks before Trae Young went to Atlanta. While Bagley is a decent player, he’s never averaged more than 14.9 points and is down to 9.4 this season as a part-time starter.
Doncic, meanwhile, was a star right from the jump and has ascended into one of the greatest players of his generation, while Young’s career has followed a similar path.
Other big blunders were taking Thomas Robinson fifth overall in 2012, one spot ahead of Damian Lillard, choosing Nick Stauskas eighth in 2014 instead of Zach LaVine, who went 14th to Minnesota, and picking Willie Cauley-Stein sixth the following year while Devin Booker lasted until pick number 13.
Scoring points hasn’t been a big problem for the Kings over the years, ranking 10th in points per game (103.5) since 2006-07. The opposite end of the court is where they have failed. During that span, Sacramento is last in defensive scoring (107.6), 29th in opponent field-goal percentage (47.0) and 29th in opponent three-point percentage (36.5).
Even more so than the defensive failures, the Kings have lacked an identity for what seems like forever. It’s impossible to say what exactly is Kings basketball and what is it supposed to look like. The lack of star power, draft misses and a never-ending run of coaches has largely been responsible for that.
The franchise’s best player over the past decade and a half was DeMarcus Cousins, selected fifth overall in 2010. Cousins wasn’t only the Kings’ best player for several years but was among the league’s elite for a while, particularly from 2014-17 before he was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans in July 2017.
From 2014-2017, over a 196-game span, Cousins ranked fifth in the NBA in both scoring (26.1) and rebounding (11.7) while also adding 3.9 assists and 1.47 blocks with five triple-doubles. He was named to the All-NBA Second Team in consecutive seasons (2014-15, 2015-16) and was an All-Star in three straight years.
Cousins, though, had several incidents with the Kings, including being suspended from the team for unprofessional behaviour and conduct detrimental to the team in 2012. By 2017, the relationship had run its course and he was traded to the Pelicans for three players and two draft picks. Buddy Hield remains from that deal and the 2017 first-round pick turned into Zach Collins, who was dealt to Portland.
The best player on the current Kings is De’Aaron Fox, who is in his fifth season with the team after he was drafted five picks before Collins.
Fox had a breakout campaign in 2020-21 with 25.2 points and 7.2 assists but has dropped off to 21.0 points and 5.2 assists this season while his three-point percentage is down to a career-worst 24.8.
Fox has a world of talent but has been plagued by inconsistency, and his disappointing play surely played a role in Walton’s firing. The idea of trading him for a package of picks and players can’t be completely dismissed anymore.
Trading Fox would signal that the Kings are ready to do a complete rebuild, and if that was the case, why not also deal Bagley, Harrison Barnes and others?
Second-year point guard Tyrese Haliburton has a very bright future and rookie guard Davion Mitchell has elite defensive skills, but neither is ready to lead a team without ample veteran help. Hield is a terrific shooter but doesn’t offer a whole lot more so likely has more value on a contending team.
The Kings are at a crossroads right now because they aren’t competing for championships anytime soon and even making the playoffs soon seems unlikely. It could be time for a total rebuild similar to what Detroit and Houston are doing now, but that could be a hard sell for a fanbase that hasn’t seen a playoff game in forever.
With the franchise teetering on the edge of basketball irrelevance, the worst thing the Kings could do now is nothing. Continuing down the same path would be foolish, and general manager Monte McNair, who has only held the position since September 2020, needs to go in a discernible direction to end the perennial losing.
