The red-hot Sacramento Kings (7-7 in their last 14 games) are in Charlotte tonight to play a Hornets team with more reasons to win, but will they? Let’s get into it.
Who: Sacramento Kings (19-53) vs. Charlotte Hornets (37-34)
Where: Spectrum Center, Charlotte, NC
When: 5:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET
Watch: NBCSCA / League Pass
The Kings ruled rookie Nique Clifford out for Tuesday’s game against the Charlotte Hornets due to left foot soreness, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee’s Jason Anderson. Clifford joins Precious Achiuwa, Drew Eubanks, Killian Hayes, DeAndre Hunter, Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray, Domantas Sabonis, Isaiah Stevens, and Russell Westbrook in street clothes tonight. Daequon Plowden is also questionable.
To the extent anything can bum me out further at this point, Nique Clifford is one of the more interesting players to watch on this current version of the Sacramento Kings, so, there’s one less reason to watch the game tonight, if you were looking for more reasons.
Also one more excuse for Vivek Ranadive, who blamed injuries for how poorly the Kings’ season has gone in an interview with DiyaTV:
“Obviously, it’s tough to lose,” Ranadive said. “But injuries are a fact of life. I don’t think we’ve had a single game where we’ve had all our starters together. So we’ve had the injury plague this year.”
Cool. Yeah. It’s just the injuries. Not the most poorly constructed roster (with the intent of winning) that we’ve seen in Sacramento, maybe ever. Couldn’t be that.
Prediction: Kings 122, Hornets 115.
This long road trip starts at the Hive—
Guess we’ll see if our tank can survive.
Everyone knows the deal;
There’s a draft slot to seal.
And Vivek just keeps spouting jive!
+1 Stung again!
This organization gives me hives.
I’d prefer dealing with hives than having to watch Kings games these days.
Kings fans: This franchise has no idea what it’s doing, it discards GMs and coaches like they’re playing Uno, signs overpaid ball hogs who don’t play defense or even want to be here for anything besides money, and trades away good players for nothing just to get rid of bad decisions they made mere months ago. Even though it appears we don’t develop young talent before getting rid of it, the tank is our best hope, yet it appears the organization doesn’t even want to do that. We have zero idea when the team will actually be competitive again and thereby worth our time, money and mental health.
Vivek: It’s the injuries.
With everyone healthy and solid pick Vivek may see his team battle back to 35 wins . He has no idea how destructive that result would be !
Hornets will win. They still have a chance to be a top 6 seed.
So who the hell is playing today for the Kings? DDR gonna take 40 FGA?
Watching this at work. DDR, Monk, Carter, Baldwin Jr. and Maxi got the start.
My afternoon is free so I just tuned in as well. I’m more interested in seeing the Hornets. I don’t have league pass so this is the first I’ve seen of them.
Hornets are fun to watch. My childish sense of humor makes it difficult not to chuckle every time the announcers say Knueppel.
“Knueppel lets it loose!”
“Knueppel pulls up and shows out!”
You get the idea.
I gotta say, should the Kings decide to move Sabonis, this Hornets team could be a nice fit. With all these shooters playing at a high pace, his passing, screening, and rebounding could be a boon for them.
Based on today’s roster and the players the Kings have out, my joke theory is that Scott Perry *has* been telling Christie to tank but he’s been adamant about winning at all costs like he says in his postgame press conferences. He’s been daring Vivek to fire him, knowing he’s too cheap even to promote Woodson internally and have to pay three separate head coaches some/all of their salaries. So, Perry’s been pulling players one-by-one to force the tank. Wouldn’t put this level of dysfunctionality past this ‘organization.’
On one of the radio shows of the last week, I think I agree with what they said: it’s the coach and players jobs to win and that’s what they’re going to go out and do every night. They’re never going to try to lose games. It’s the GM’s job to put the players on the floor that will help the team win, or lose. In this case, Perry needs to make everyone unavailable (within reason) to help the tank
The problem is, he’s backed into a corner with the roster. They are only dressing 8 dudes, which is the league minimum. If three of those dudes end up being DDR, Russ, and Monk, they are bound to have nights where they go off and get a win because it’s in their nature. Those guys are pros who win games.
Had those kind of guys been moved for youth, fringe talent, and/or G-leaguers at the deadline, we wouldn’t be where we are today at the 4th spot in the lottery.
This front office has never tried not to win. It’s the injuries and and their own stupidity of roster construction that got us to where we are today.
I totally believe that had Sabonis, LaVine, and Keegan been healthy, this team would have been sitting at 33ish wins and on the play-in bubble.
Same as it ever was…
Yep. And like many TKHers have said this season, the extensive injuries so many of the players have had this season provide a convenient excuse for leadership to keep their blinders on about the real problems regarding this team’s construction.
I agree. It’s the front office’s job to tell the coach the direction of the franchise at a macro level and to have the coach then make that happen to the best of his or her ability (such as tanking, requesting more minutes for rookies to get them further experience, etc). It’s just that with this franchise, no level of idiocy and confusion is impossible (such as telling players trades or signings are happening and then they don’t). I have no doubt that even with our absolutely rock-bottom expectations for this franchise from the top down, we’d be shocked to know all the gory details of how horribly run everything is.
I blame the trip to India. Obviously, their conditioning still has not recovered yet – Vivek
It’s fun to watch the Kings build culture.
They have done a great job of building a culture of pure idiocy. From the top down.
youuuurrrt
Excramento Kings!!
I like it! Excremented Things.
44 point loss. Love to see it. Wizards play Jazz today.
Wizards will win
Badge Legend