Well, the deadline has passed, dead weight has been shed all over the league and barring some waiver wire magic from the only true muggles of the league, the Kings are pretty much set until the summer. Changes have come, sure. Dewayne Dedmon, we hardly knew thee (to be good). Trevor Ariza, seeing your play on the court was like drinking room temperature milk. Anyone else I missed, you probably won’t be missed. It’s 5 am, and I’m just, way past remembering to forget you. Now, the Kings are left paying for their hubris, for believing they could field a team worth sending into April and beyond. They get to stare at Marvin Bagley x-rays and Jabari Parker x-rays and Alex Len x-rays and endless draft boards from the smallest scouting department in the league looking for any sign of improvement to come. And we, as fans, get to sit there and watch.

The Miami Heat, who rarely rebuild but often remodel, recently renovated the team around Jimmy Butler and after moving dead weight at the deadline look very much like a dark horse championship contender. They’re in town tonight. Let’s talk Kings basketball.

When: Friday, February 7th, 7:00 PST

Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA

TV: NBCSCA

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

A Man Walks into (J)abar(i): There’s that joke about wanting to die like your grandfather, peacefully in his sleep, and not screaming like all the passengers in his car and I can’t help but think of the Kings, their management team and the various coaching staffs over the years whenever I hear some iteration of that joke play out. Recently, I saw high praise for trading the highly prized Dedmon for the shell of Jabari Parker. Not just praise, but high praise. Most reasoning works out to 5.5 points being less than 15 points and with that logic I praise and congratulate passing second grade arithmetic and that’s about where the goodness stops. I too however don’t exactly feel pissed off about it, for Vlade having to send out two second round draft picks to get out of a deal that he drew up. Second round picks, especially as low as those will be, are the currency for taking such deals and my suspicion is they’re stockpiled for exactly this reason. If you know your dog likes to get through the fence and crap all over the neighbor’s garden, you keep a lot of “Sorry About That” gift cards stockpiled. If you’re the Kings, you hold onto a bunch of second rounders, inevitably sending them out to teams willing to put up with your off-season mistakes. Would it be nice to spend a gift card or two on a Saturday afternoon Starbucks? Sure, but, there’s going to be crap on some petunia’s soon enough.

I can’t be excited for the deals that the Kings made at the deadline. They netted some interesting players that could be more than nothing for the rest of the season. They allowed themselves some flexibility to try this whole mess again in future years. I’m also not upset about the whole ordeal either. The Kings swung for a playoff spot and ended up ass over head on the floor. They gave up a couple of nothing second rounders to accommodate other teams alleviating their mistakes. This whole season is just, another day in the Kingdom. For some of us, we’ve been swerving around in grandpa’s car for a long time, his body having long since passed and decayed and crumbled into dust. The screaming has stopped, the fear of death has subsided and now we’re just sitting in a car with no driver asking around if anyone knows any good jokes.

Prediction

Jimmy Butler’s Patrick Bateman impression ruins the new team chemistry game one. Kelly Olynyk is the single player who knows who Huey Lewis and the News is. He’s the one who gets the ax.

Kings: 114, Heat: 109