… And here we go again. The Sacramento Kings have officially gotten through the NBA Trade Deadline with the core portions of the team still in tact, their value buying has netted them components to a deeper bench and Monte McNair remains slicker than an eel in an oil spill. The Kings are out here hedging bets on everything they possibly can and in the meantime have figured out their winning ways again, suddenly just a game and a half out of the “coveted” tenth spot. Excuse me for a second, I have to dab these few tears of blood from the corner of my eyes!
When: Saturday, March 27th, 7:00 PM PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA – Krista Blunk on the call, Kayte Hunter as color
Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM
For Your Consideration
The Final Stage is Acceptance: Before I get started I just wanted to thank Tony for filling in these last few games for me. I’m in the middle of a year plus project that requires most of free time during the week and having a trusty laptop go down in the middle of my busiest personal week in 2021 basically spelled doom for preview writing. Tony is a gentleman and scholar and was a great change of pace from the regular ravings of a lunatic.
This was my first time in almost a decade of not having a full day to dedicate myself to the trade deadline and all the happenings and stealing glances of Twitter and TKH during bathroom breaks made for an incredibly frustrating viewing experience. The outcome did too, personally, but more on that in another article at a different time. For now, the Kings have made their bed and are determined to lay in it and no matter how much hairpulling I do, it isn’t changing. This is the life of a Sacramento Kings fan much like life in general, I’m going to spend the rest of this season looking for a bit of joy in this ocean of indifference and the crushing reality of things to come. Luckily for us, the Kings are playing fairly well, so that isn’t too difficult to find.
The Sacramento Kings are officially getting hot again. Sure, some of this is playing a week schedule or tams that sat key components due to injury, but they’re also finally playing their five best players on the floor at the same time and wouldn’t you know it? They’re playing better. Now is that to say I blame a kid like Bagley for the losing? Absolutely not. Whether it was showcasing him for a trade or trying to get him starters reps that he earned during practice etc. it doesn’t change that Bagley didn’t pick his role or minutes. Should he start when he comes back? Absolutely not, but he also isn’t person we can all uniformly point to and say “he’s the problem”. He has problems in his game, as does Buddy, as does Fox and Haliburton and Barnes and Holmes. That starting unit didn’t cover damn near as well as they should. Now they are. Tyrese Haliburton has come alive of late, both in the box score and on the national highlight reels. ESPN loses Lamelo Ball for a second and suddenly Haliburton is everywhere online – very curious. Fox too has suddenly taken every game personally and reeled off two consecutive games in a row where he could have gone for fifty and gotten national coverage for it. The Kings could reasonable get to that 10th spot – a notion that means very little this year and exactly nothing every other year before the pandemic. It’s the lowest bar to clear and the Kings have a chance of clearing it. It’s the opposite of what I’d do. But it is what it is and in the meantime, I can still get my kicks on the side with a team like Oklahoma City. It’s just a game, right? RIGHT?
Tonight’s game against the Cavs is a unique, special affair that we want to give a little of talk time to. For the very first time, the Kings are going to feature exclusively women and non-binary people during the announcing and coverage of tonight’s game. Krista Blunk and Kayte Hunter will be rocking the play-by-play and color commentary. Laura Britt and WNBA player Layshia Clarendon will be doing pre and post game analysis and friend of The Kings Herald, Morgan Ragan will be doing the social for NBC Sports California all day today. This is an incredibly gifted group of people and I’m pretty damn excited to see this become a regular feature in future for not just the Kings but around the league. If you’re going to tune in to any game this season, make it this one.
Prediction
De’Aaron Fox puts Collin Sexton in the spin zone and finally gets to 50 in a game. Tyrese Haliburton drops 20 and 10 assists and we all have to turn around and get right back on this goddamn hype train.
Kings: 125, Cavs: 114
Fox has been showing Major League balls as of late.
Haliburton, too!
WATCH OUT, CLEVELAND
ha-ha , thanks for the laugh !
Time to bring the tank back to base, I suppose? Allright, then.
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Go Kings!
All in on the play-in!
“Play-in, Play-out…
Remember to breathe, Rik-san”
on a separate note I’ve just realised the two players that Divac persuaded in free agency aka Lavine & Randle got a lot better
Levine is as he always is. No D. And there is no way in hell Randle would have had this growth with the Kings. Plus, did you watch Randle the last few years until Tibs? Same shit.
Oh, and screw Vlade and Vivek-always.
Must be Vivek or one of his supporters on here. Every time he is slammed, rightfully, there is a down vote.
What?!
Bagley’s absence coincided with us going on a 5 out of 6 streak, just as I suspected it would, the chaff removed from the wheat.
How or why are you are grouping Bagley with Fox and Ty , I mean c’mon, let’s not let, what is the emotion or sentiment you are expressing….uh…..pity or sympathy?
Just like there’s “no crying in baseball” there should be no misplaced emotion excusing a weak link.
Can we all agree Marviin is a good kid and this is NOT about character but performance? I have no problem with that. That should be a given at given at the outset, unspoken, but perhaps it need to be said:
Marvin is a good guy, a nice guy, a quality person, now can we move on to his performance?
Bagley SUCKS. He sucks at basketball. He mostly sucks at offense and defense. He is good at running the floor FWIW, 10% of the overall game.
By contrast Ty is awesome. Fox is awesome. Don’t dare equate these players and expect to retain any credbility with regard to your analysis.
Ty is having a better rookie season than a max player 30 PPG MVP player in Fox, owning the league, and terrorizing the opposition, you group this future MVP with Bagley, who is not even proven to be a capable rotational player?!
You are terrribly mischaracterizing all forementioned players if you try to excuse Marvin and add Ty and Fox into our 20-25 record, which is about to be .500 in 2-3 weeks. There are players who are part of the problem and part of the solution. McGenius knows the difference. That is why he tried his best to get rid of Marvin for the last 1-2 weeks if the reports are accurate, which I belief they are.
And I suspect he will inevitably succeed in this effort in the forthcoming weeks and months.
Marvin is effectively done as a King. Wait and see…..
Correlation does not equal causation.
We should start another war in Iraq, because, my god, the Kings played well then.
At the least, Bags gone means Haliburton starting and getting more minutes. That is improvement. And Bags shouldn’t be starting. Should only be getting minutes he earns.
Agreed on Marvin 100 percent, but for fucks sake you gotta ditch that McGenius thing … it’s terrible and not even remotely deserved.
Vlonte McDivac is much more accurate.
On the bench we should see some new guys.
At some point hope that they energize.
Don’t know if they’ll play
Gainst the Cavs here today.
Any minutes they get will surprise!
This is a game where I’d sit Fox or, at the very least, blow the Cavs out and sit him in the fourth. Kings suddenly have meaningful games to play next week.
Sit Fox? I’m not so sure we can beat the Cavs without him.
These are the kind of games that we can’t drop too many of if we want to reach the postseason.
Yeah the idea that THIS team should ever sit anybody for any reason is hilarious. Remember when Fox sat a game against a Magic team with nobody healthy earlier this year? How’d that turn out? The Kings got run off the floor by a G-League team.
But aren’t the Kings just a tweak away from being a dynasty? Isn’t that what we learned during the deadline?
In the position the Kings are in, every game is meaningful. Dropping a winnable game like this one because they’re looking ahead to next week would be a spectacularly Kangzy way to take themselves out of contention for the playoffs.
I am looking forward to seeing the bench and not seeing Bagley, CoJo, or a disgruntled Bejelica. Hopefully it really has improved.
Not seeing Bags is nice because I don’t have to listen to Kings announcers etc telling me how incredible Bagley’s average play is.
Is Davis debuting today? Not a good look at all for the organization. Anyway, i’m rooting for the Kings to win and for a good job from the broadcast team
I’m just hoping no one on the broadcast feels the need to provide cover for the organization on this.
Gross that they picked him up. Same old Kangz
This was very big of you.
Difference is, those other players help us win.
It will be interesting to see how fast they can incorporate the new guys. Theoretically, this is a more talented team than it was a week ago, so hopefully the transition is smooth and they don’t stumble for a few games.
Is it? I’ll give you Wright being better than Joseph, but are Harkless and Silva any better than what Nemanja could provide? I just mentioned in another thread, it was Pat Riley who gave up those two for Nemanja, and history strongly favors Pat Riley’s decision making.
Bjelica was disgruntled. His body language was bad and he wanted out. I suspect the team is better without him, even if he is a better player.
Good point. If anything, McNair mave have simply done him a solid by moving him.
Such strong decision making he signed Whiteside to 100 mill contract…there’s other misses.
Every Gm has their whiffs obviously, so I’m not saying Riley is a bad GM…just that he isn’t immune to losing a deal.
Prolly a wash overall. Belly better offense, Harkless better defense/switchable, latter needed more by Kings. Benefits both teams on the margins probably.
I agree, it’s pretty much a wash. I could care less about Harkless as he is UFA, but I’d rather see if Siva has anything at all worth keeping next year on the cheap.
i think Wright replacing Joseph fills a really big hole. The Kings were playing one of the worst players in the league for 20 MPG. I’m not good at math, but basically they’re losing ground to their opponents 40% of the game when Joseph is on the court based on on/off data. The Bjelly/Harkless swap is different. Bjelly’s minutes weren’t high enough to make as big of an impact. I kinda buy into the argument that for this team Harkless is a better fit since he’s a better defender than Bjelly.
I’ve always liked the Harkless of past seasons and have often thought it would be great to add him to the Kings, but the last two seasons of Harkless leave something to be desired. My fingers are crossed and anything above average would be a blessing. He’s only 27, so who knows.
Bjelica was pure garbage this season, with a handful of shining moments. Marvin Bagley was exponentially better and more productive than our flabby Serb.
LOL, what? The same guy that Luke had to bring in in the fourth quarter because Marvin couldn’t hang?
Oooooookaaaaay
This is the path the Kings have chosen, with that in mind tonight is a big game and one they should win and absolutely can’t afford to lose. A win tonight, and the upcoming games with San Antonio should provide about as much excitement a Kings fan can get.
FYI the time on the banner at the top of the page is wrong… says game is at 430pm
Never saw the point of a tank. Ever since the NBA came up with the coin flip the idea of lets lose all our games so we get the superstar number 1 pick has had problems. The Kings had the #2 pick three years ago and to date that player is not a superstar, not nearly as good as the #12 pick from last year. If the Kings’ goals are an above .500 team and a play in playoff spot, that’s fine with me.
I mean, you’re really talking about the Kings draft in 2018 as a reason not to tank? The guy everyone in the universe but Vlade Divac would have picked in that draft is on his way to the playoffs twice in his first three years.
“I will also be declining any future dividends from my 2018 investments, as they turned out to be less valuable than expected.”
Agreed, we suck at drafting, ergo it’s irrelevant for us. But but but Fox and Hali, sure … otherwise, check out Wiki from about 2010 on and you’ll throw up a little in your mouth.
OT: Smits and I were talking earlier about this, but man does the buyout market hurt the league. Something needs to change.
Nets land Griffin and Aldridge in buyouts at the vet’s minimum. This only hurts the teams who had them under contract. Why would any contender negotiate in good faith with teams at the deadline if they can just sit it out and wait for basement dwellers to buy out their high paid talent. The NBA needs to address this. IMO, it is becoming more of a problem.
I honestly don’t understand what incentive teams have to buy out players, when the end result is rich teams get richer. I think if a team chooses to buy a player out, they should maintain control of his rights, and be compensated by any team that signs him. Why should large market teams always gain additional advantage entering the stretch run and playoffs?
I agree, there needs to be a balancing. I think the only incentive is they end up paying less than the guaranteed deal. Those teams hands are tied, so might as well save a few million than letting players walk for nothing. It’s a flawed system.
Either compensate the teams that did the buyout, make the buyout date much earlier than the deadline, or make buying teams pay more than the vet-minimum.
The easy fix is to make the new team pay the actual remainder of the contract … hey Nets, cool, you want Griffin? Super, you still owe him $18 million for this year and $25 million next year.
That will slow it down.
totally agree but the team buying out the player does save some money. Those players should go into a waiver wire like baseball with the team with the worst record having first crack at them.
I love that idea. They could call it a supplementary free agent draft if they want.
But why would a non-playoff team want an established vet at the minimum? These buyout guys tend to be expiring deals so there is no incentive for a non-playoff team to want them.
They do go through waivers once their original team waives them. That’s how the Kings got Travis Outlaw.
Then why would a team needing rebounding not grab Drummond before the Lakers get their hooks in him? I don’t think a team is restricted as far as offering a longer deal, but I may be wrong about that.
LOL, poor Pervis … roasted when he plays, absence credited with being the reason they’re winning.
Please trade this fellow and put us all out of our misery, including him.
It will truly be Kangzness if he comes back the last week or two, regains his starting spot and we lose the last handful of games to miss the playoffs.
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