ESPN decided to do a post-offseason Power Rankings list for the NBA the other day, even though the offseason is decidedly not over. But we are in a bit of a dead zone for NBA content, and how often can you rehash the same Damian Lillard rumors until you run out of things to write?
The Kings did well in these early Power Rankings, placing 12th in the entire league and 7th in the Western Conference. What I found most interesting however was that every single team in the Pacific Division (the division the Kings won last year) has been ranked higher. Should that be the case?
The Phoenix Suns achieved the highest ranking of the Pacific Division team, ranking 4th overall. Considering their midseason trade of Kevin Durant and then another big move to add Bradley Beal, the Suns are a favorite by many to contend for a championship. They definitely have the starpower, but do they have the depth? Will they manage to sustain three ball dominant scorers with no true point guard on the entire roster? Can Kevin Durant stay healthy? The Suns on paper are definitely intriguing but can they withstand the rigors of an 82 game season? Durant hasn’t played more than 55 games in any of the last three seasons. Beal tops out at 60 games in the last four seasons. Booker hasn’t had quite the injury history as those two but even he missed significant time last year.
The Lakers were ranked 7th by ESPN, and are widely considered to have had a very solid offseason. Ever since their trade deadline moves to trade Russell Westbrook, the Lakers have been on the rise. While they did only make the Play-In tournament with their regular season performance, they managed to get to the Western Conference Finals from there. This offseason, they’ve managed to retain their three biggest free agents (Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura and D’Angelo Russell) and shored up some depth with the signings of Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince and Jaxson Hayes. Like the Suns, the Lakers are reliant on two guys in LeBron James and Anthony Davis who haven’t exactly been the epitome of health and durability, but they do have far better depth surrounding those players.
ESPN put the Warriors immediately after at 8th, with their biggest offseason move being moving Jordan Poole for Chris Paul. Paul has definitely started to show his age, and it will be very interesting to see how he fits in with the Warriors system. While Poole was a gunner who could get out of control at times (see the series against Sacramento), Paul doesn’t offer the same offensive capabilities but should provide a more steady hand at the tiller. But can Paul be counted on to play the type of defense that Steve Kerr demands? Is he going to come off the bench or are the Warriors going to go super small with Paul and Curry playing together? The Warriors really didn’t make any other major moves this offseason, and Paul isn’t a particularly snug fit himself. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some growing pains, and the Warriors themselves seemed to have finally lost a bit of their luster, even though Stephen Curry is still playing at an unbelievable level.
Finally, the Clippers come in at 11th, one spot ahead of the Kings. The Clippers always seem to rate highly before the season starts, hoping that Paul George and Kawhi Leonard can finally have one fully healthy season. Since coming to the Clippers four seasons ago, the Clippers have never managed to have both healthy for an extended period of time. They are both incredible players, but if they can’t stay on the court it doesn’t matter. Now there are rumors that James Harden wants to be traded from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to form another Big 3. Harden hasn’t exactly been reliable himself lately, and trading for his huge salary will mean the Clippers will have to give up a decent chunk of their depth in order to make the trade feasible. The Clippers are running out of time to make this core work, with both George and Leonard having player options for next season.
Finally we have our own Sacramento Kings. The Kings didn’t really make any major moves in the offseason, opting to mostly run it back. The biggest additions were signing EuroLeague MVP Sasha Vezenkov and trading for Chris Duarte. The Kings are the youngest group of the bunch, and were the healthiest team in the entire NBA last season. Could that have been an anomaly? Sure, but it’s not as if this team has a bunch of players with deep injury histories like the others in our division. One of the perks of not making huge moves is that the Kings have continuity and won’t need to try to shake things up. Instead they can focus on integrating the new pieces into an established system and build on the foundation they have in place.
The Pacific Division is incredibly tough, and got even tougher this summer. But even with their success last season, the Kings haven’t proven that they can make it deep into the playoffs and have real lasting success. The other teams in our division have former MVPs, Hall of Famers, defensive players of the year and that pedigree tends to get more recognition. It takes time to earn respect, but the Kings are well on their way if they can build on what they learned last season.
July NBA power rankings?
I tried to care.
I failed.
Do I really care? I guess so but let’s see what happens after a quarter of the season has passed. There are some interesting old quotes. The proof is in the pudding. When the going gets tough the tough gets going. Never count you chickens before they hatch. Let’s just play ball and see what happens. I have good if not great vibes.
Someone went to Costco and purchased a crate of cliches.
You can say that again.
One more. It isn’t where you start it’s where you finish.
Let’s not put our cart before our horses.
Or our Ox either!
It’s content during a dead time, I’ll take it on TKH, although I’ll never venture onto espn.com.
If the NBA had relegation, ESPN would have the Kings finishing behind the South Bay Lakers in the G-League immediately after winning the Pacific and returning with the same starting g 5. It’s just how it is, and I really don’t give a damn.
If the NBA had relegation in the last fifteen years…..the Kings would be pioneers of the G League and then very likely playing for AAU tournament rankings against fifth graders.
No.
ESPN must have given votes to Malika Andrews and Kendrick Perkins .
espn is trash.
I know sites are starved for content, but all of these “on paper” discussions are a bit silly.
The Warriors are just old. Does Paul start? That would push Looney to the bench and Draymond and Wiggins would be the bigs. That team is going to need to be lucky with health, and have Moody, GP2, and Kuminga have really huge seasons. It would not be surprising if this team struggled all season.
Suns? Maybe it all works out. Perhaps Ayton flourishes under Vogel. Perhaps they get lucky with health. They still have guys who should be the 9th or 10th best guys on a team needing to be the 5th and 6th best on their team. Bates-Diop shot way over his career avg from 3 last year, maybe it is his new norm, maybe not. Watanabe shot over 50 from three the first half, under 30 the second half, which player is he? This is only team in the league Okogie would start for. Is Eric Gordon the fifth best player? He has mastered the old man at the gym game, but that guy is slow, and is Vince Carter-ing where he almost exclusively has to guard bigger players who can’t take him off the dribble. I am higher on Beal than most, I think, so this should be fun to watch at least.
Clips? Yikes. I am sure they will have stretches that makes Twitter believe the on-paper-iest of on-paper teams has come together, but its just hard to imagine Leonard being healthy, as well as PG, for a majority of the season/post season. Westbrook has a pretty defined ceiling for effectiveness. I like the Zubac/Plumlee combo, and Morris is occasionally effective, Covington has really aged. Batum is old, and I am not sure really physically up to how effective he needs to be for this team. He should be 15-18 minute a game 7th/8th man at this point. Mann and Martin Jr. are promising, but they are literally the only young talent on the team, and Powell is a pretty replacement level. I just don’t see it.
The Lakers seem fine, I would rank them a bit below the Kings talent level wise. James and AD are going to have to good. How good is a team where Austin Reaves is the 3rd best player, no knock on him. Russell is really a sixth man, Vanderbilt is good but limited, Vincent was a smart pickup but he isn’t the guy to change a teams trajectory. Prince and Hui are fine, but again, pretty replacement level. Perhaps Hayes can make a splash? They did not have any good bench bigs last season, so maybe that can make a difference. Good team, but again, not better than the Kings.
I am guessing the West is going to be very flat again this year, I would be surprised sans injuries/trades that the Pacific has too much spread between the teams, however, its the same convo every summer: “every team got better on paper”, “the west is stacked”, “if healthy…..”, and every season has huge disappointments.
Ok. I took a little extra ritalin this morning, that was Pookey-esque.
I did forget to say how excited I am to see Brown with a year under his belt, and largely the same team back. It was astounding to see the difference last year, and he only had one summer to implement everything, and now he knows his players so much better, they know him, and they know each other. There is a decent chance they might be a good margin better overall than last year, and I would take that bet in a second.
Agreed, there will be value from continuity when your players, coaches, and front office are all of high-quality.
I agree with your assessment. All this hype about the other teams in our division but I think it’ll be the same old story for those teams: age and injuries.
After 16 seasons of Kangz the 2022-23 teams became Kings very quickly – it is with reasonable doubt that they are judged IMO.
The highly competitive Western Conference will continue to be … highly competitive. Sacramento was lucky enough to go from parody to parity and make the most of it.
Call’em 12th, call’em last in the Pacific Division – whatever.
82 days before the 82 games begin.
All I see is great Vegas odds.
Clippers? Overrated. Same team from last year.
Golden State? Overrated – we should have won that series but the inexperience showed up at the end. They didn’t really upgrade anything – lost Poole, added Chris Paul.
Lakers? Is LeBron 38 or 39 this year? I forget. /Smh.
Suns? Basically the wildcard here. They have 3 great players, 1 solid player, a Gordon who is 35 and a G-League bench. Maybe Bol Bol breaks out this year? There will be no load management with this team and have shown all last year that they often get injured. Any one of those 3 get injured, they slide down the rankings.
+1000 odds and ranked last in the Pacific? Lmao, I’ll take it.
I don’t gamble, so if I’m interpreting the odds correctly, $100 on the Kings would net you $1,000 if the Kings won the division?
I remember Bill Simmons talking about the odds for the Kings to win the division last year during the second half of the season. I don’t remember the exact odds but he was pushing it as a great bet.
At +1000, $1 gets $10 +your $1 bet for a total of $11. Implied probability is 9.1% to win the Pacific. I feel like the odds should be more like 35 to 40% to win the Pacific.
So, $1 bet at +2500 would be $26 total – I bagged $520 last year when +2500 were the odds last year 1 month into the season. Some lucky dudes got in at +25000 odds during the off-season last year. That was $250 for every $1…or 0.4% probability. It’s fun betting a little bit for a good bit of money and riding on that all season. Nothing too serious.
I don’t think the other four teams in our division value the regular season, especially with all their ageing, injury prone stars. So I see the Kings having a legit shot at winning the Pacific again which wouldn’t mean they’re the best team in the division or likely Finals contenders.
PHX doesn’t have the depth to be a high win regular season team.
LAL – LBJ will be in load management mode and AD will miss games as always.
Duds – old roster that will require load management.
LAC – we already know PG and KL only play when they feel like it.
I’d put my money on the Kings to win the Pacific.
Yeah, the biggest difference between the Kings and the other Pacific Division teams is that our core is just entering their prime age wise, whereas everyone else is showing their age.
If a whole bunch of old/injury-prone guys can each play sixty-five games for their teams, the assessment isn’t out of line.
Big “if.” Empire State Building big.
Heard all this before.
Some of it is just being blind to last year, assessing that the Kings did not improve as well as others and assuming that age/injury will not occur.
These pickers don’t play and love to guess. It is like draft prognosticators- all group think and guesses.
Maybe they will be proven correct, maybe not.
I would rather be picked last and do better than picked first and suck, like they all did last year. Then it becomes the parade of excuses and “if only”, like my brother who insists that the duds won 12 championships in a row (where he substitutes could have, should have, if only…) for each losing year. The best- if only Durant had stayed another year, they would have won, so that counts as a win.
I have, for my entire life, always found that being underestimated provided a real tactical advantage.
Spot On estimates are the thin line between over- and under-estimating.
But what’s the fun in that?
That’s why there is a big electrified city in a desert in Nevada .
Ok -random thought: it’s the long hot Summer after all and there’s no true hoop happening atm.
Let’s just say the NBA is expanding to 32 teams, because in every which way 32 makes ultimate sense.
And let’s just say Las Vegas and Seattle are granted Expansion franchises (not having OKC Thunder or Washington Wizards who were lowest two in attendance moving Washington to LV and OKC back to Seattle as an exercise in irony – I digress)
Names!
Seattle Supersonics seems the 99% likelihood there. Too easy.
But Las Vegas…
suggestions?
Aces is taken and a very strong gambling reference.Like calling them The Slots, or The Casinos or The Strippers ain’t gonna happen.
The Silver is my favorite (The Silver State, Raiders, Golden Knights). Secure the web name today!. Commish would like that one too. What about Gems? Diamonds? The (Hoover) Dams?
You got an imagination on you. What say you?
The Heat should be moved to Las Vegas. Done.
Then Miami should get a new team and name them the Miami Iguanas.
Or… The Magic should move to Las Vegas. Done.
Then Orlando should get a new team and call themselves the Orlando Mickey’s.
Maybe the Orlando Book Banners?
The Las Vegas What Happens.
Their logo can be this emoji ????♂️
The Las Vegas Gamblers
The Las Vegas Dealers
The Las Vegas Sin
The Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Bighorns
The Las Vegas High Rollers
The Las Vegas Bachelors
The Las Vegas Glitz
The Las Vegas Addicts
The Las Vegas Fuck this Place
Well, if you’re gonna just go silly-
let me place a stake on
Las Vegas Vegans
The Las Vegas Bo Begas Banana Fana Fo Fegas Me Mi Mo Megas Vegas.
Since it’s a power ranking, not who has the most talent, nor a prediction for the season, I will use the power ranking criteria/model to answer. IMHO:
– Lakers – went to WCF and had a good offseason, so definitely should be higher than us.
– Warriors – beat us in first round, probably got better in the short term by adding CP and removing Poole. Also strong yes.
– Phoenix – advanced to second round and picked up another star, so yes.
– Clips – lost in first round, had lower record than us, and no major improvements? Definitely not.
For what it’s worth, The Athletic dropped their offseason power ranking last week, had us at # 8 below GSW, Pho, and LAL but above LAC.
We lost in the first round, so yeah from a power ranking perspective it’s fair that majority of teams that advanced would be ranked higher. It will be more instresting (and better debate fodder) once actual preseason preditions start to drop
Here’s the thing – young teams usually start to improve after first making the playoffs. This entire experience is going to carry over to next season. Lakers got lucky with their matchup, imo. Kings should have beaten GSW but inexperience showed against a #6 seed. Everyone was cold and the Kings weren’t playing like they did all season. Everyone shot bricks because of nerves. GSW got past us and I felt like GSW were actually a pretty weak team. Of course the Lakers would beat the Warriors. The Lakers beat a Morant-less Memphis team and then a #6 seed GSW. Lucky. GSW did not improve, Lakers did not improve. Both of them were old and just got even older. Clippers? Yeah, Sac is ahead of them. Suns? If they’re healthy, sure.. but one of those guys goes down, with no bench or load management and the entire thing falls apart. The Suns starters need to buck the trend of being injured often in prior years or else they’re the 2022 Nets all over again. Good on paper, can’t stay on the court.
Yup, agree with majority of what you said. But again, it’s a Power Ranking not preseason predictions, so if a team has a good week you go up in the rankings. Have a bad week — even if it’s injuries, cold shooting, bad scheduling, or what have you — you still go down in the ranking. Since it’s an offseason Power Ranking it has to be based on how the teams ended the season and to a certain extent offseason moves.
I also think the wheels will come off at least one of the teams above us, but until that happens we’re not going to get ranked higher than them in this format. Which is why I am more interested in seeing actual preseason predictions rather than Power Rankings. I do have a feeling that Sac will get underestimated again by most writers (superstar bias) but curious to see how they will justify it.
It’s definitely early to do power rankings, and things could change if Harden goes to the Clips. But I could honestly see the Kings finishing anywhere from first to last in the Pacific next year. If I was betting, I would probably go dead-center. the Clippers just don’t have to the health (or desire?) to do much in the regular season. The Warriors haven’t done anything to make me believe they will be any better than they were last season. I view Chris Paul as a better player in his prime but not now.
Phx looks scary good on paper, but they looked scary good on paper last year and weren’t. Probably of all the WC teams, the redacteds have improved the most from who they were most of the regular season last year to who they are now. Unlike Phx and GS, they have some serious depth behind their stars now. Much as I hate to say it, I could see them being one of the best teams in the west next year IF their big two stay healthy.
The 2022 Nets also looked good on paper.
You’re not wrong. But until the season starts, paper is all we’ve got.
Toilet Paper
Wait, you’ve got toilet paper?
Take advantage. Place your bets accordingly.
Rankings, tankings, bankings. Yada yada. I got a ranking too. Somewhere between 1 and 30.
Coach of the year, unanimously. Exec of the year. Clutch player of the year. All rookie dude. All NBA dudes, one who played with a Christmas thumb fracture, the other broke a finger mid-playoffs and went back out there. Continuity with a delicious young core.
My ranking for this team going into next season with a new, sweet MVP Euro big is: Fuckin’ NICE.
When You put it that way…
Kings power ranking = 2
Only because it would be wrong to rank them over the current champions
Big market bias. Now that the Kansas City Chiefs are defending Super Bowl champs for the second time in four years, ESPN may rank them in the top half of NFL teams.
The disrespect is unreal. I understand teams will “try” to hunt us this season. But understand this, we are the apex predators and we’re about to whoop some ass.
Yawn.
We’ve been saying this for years. Even Fox had complained about it in the past. And then we proceeded to lay gigantic egg after gigantic egg. One season does not change that.
And more importantly; the Kings don’t play the media, they play other NBA teams.
It’s just triggering angst of us Kings fans with our inferiority complex.
Keep underestimating them, please ESPN!
Now it’ll be on the team to prove them wrong. I think they will.
ESPN pre season rankings are just as valuable as the summer league championship.
Actually less. Much less
Summer league champion…..was an amazing season. Nobody thought they would lose again.
What happened?
Oh yeah…..the Kings had all of their talent in the Summer League….the rest of the NBA used actual NBA talent during the season.
We have to remember the Kings lost in the first round to a team who did not advance. They also won many games where the opponents best player was sidelined. I’d say about 8th in the west is appropriate. Having said that now is the time to use draft picks and and bust the salary cap for a championship run. They are at least one top player from seriously competing for a championship. Look for some team ready to tear it down at the mid season trade deadline. Maybe Siakam or KAT.
Badge Legend