Kings vs Jazz Preview and Predictions: The Wages of Syncopation

Its October the 25th and the Sacramento Kings are playing their first meaningful basketball just five days shy of six months. Nearly half a year has passed since Game 7 on Sacramento’s first round exit, the Steph Curry 50 piece, Kevon Looney’s stalking and mauling of every rebound in the gym, since the first season worth a damn came to a beam-dimming halt.

I begin writing this preview on April 30th. It’s 3:30 on the dot and I’m standing somewhere between Jeff Koon’s Piglet-inspired “Coloring Book #4″and the Macy’s at DOCO. 

Game 7 has ended and I’ve already dodged a dropped box of chow mein, complimented two men in gold jerseys and explained to my fiancé that believe it or not, this loss is most Kings appropriate outcome possible and that sixteen years of disappointment has trained me to close off my heart just enough to blunt the blow that the smattering of “WAAAARRIORS” still has on me. I’m meeting Brad Geiser for a hug and a picture at the piglet, walking my fiancé to the nearest restroom and then jumping in an Uber, to an unknown future and eventually to today, currently a million miles away, the first game of the new season.

It’s an hour or so later, and I’m waiting for that Uber on H and 10th just outside the Hostel. My one tweet about the end of the game was a cheeky reference to TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men (“This is the way the season ends. Not with a beam but a whimper.”) but as we weave between the exalted and exhausted alike, my mind keeps going to Langston Hughes and “Harlem”. What happens to a dream deferred? 

Today, we find out.

The Kings spent 17 years in vain, trying to build a team worthy of Sacramento’s love, drafting the wrong guys, signing the wrong guys, being led by the wrong guys at the wrong times.

Then the Beam Team happened. In a season of chaos, the Kings were the team that found their way and then, nearly as quickly as it began, on April 30th it ended. A season long celebration of all that it is to be a member of the Kings family, terminated in the harshest of ways. 88.5 games of the most fun this city has ever seen, and then a gasping dynasty rising once more to keep us in our place. For now.

They say you have your whole life to write your first hit album and the 18 months to write your second. Monte, Mike Brown and Co. had six months to make sure the biggest show in two decades in Sacramento doesn’t fall apart, a season after its inception.

With the surprise and joy of being unknown stripped away, the Western Conference stacked against them, and a Beam bright enough to motivate even the worst in the league to see it dimmed forever – this season isn’t a victory lap, it’s a gauntlet run.

And our Kings? Our Kings aren’t here to party. They’re here to stay.

They’re here to win.

Are you?

Let’s talk Kings basketball!

When: Wednesday, October 25th, 6:00 PM PT
Where: Delta Center, Salt Lake City, Utah
TV: NBC Sports California
Radio: Sactown Sports 1140

For Your Consideration

The Beam Deferred:  After a surprising season in which the Kings found themselves impossibly close to beating the defending champs, the front office did either the least, or most, surprising thing possible (depending entirely on if your a talking head for a major corporation) – they stayed the course. While the Beal’s, Paul’s, Smart’s and Porzingis’s of the basketball world were moving on, while the West continued stacking talented players, the Kings stayed the course. Trade rumors be damned, potential upgrades kicked down the road, the Kings brought back their guys, tinkered around the edges, extended Sabonis and committed themselves to the same eight guys who took Sacramento to their first playoff series since George W. Bush was president.

Conventional thought, outside of Mike Wilbon for some reason, is that the Kings will regress. They can’t do this again, they can’t overcome teams stacked with aged megastars dragging a growing list of nagging injuries. The healthiest team in the league last season, one of the youngest teams with playoff expectations, and with a bench most “championship caliber” teams would kill for, couldn’t possible keep up with the Joneses. Their style of play has been figured out, their All-NBA center has been exposed, their defense is too poor and its assumed that for whatever reason, Monte McNair, the King Tinkerer, won’t do anything in the coming seasons to address all that. Time to move on. Time to ship out Sabonis according to some, time to take down the beam and find a new gimmick according to others.

Excuse my language here, but fuck that.

The Kings are young, not Will’s-fantasy-basketball-team-slash-tank-dream-team-young, but when held up against the Warriors, the Lakers, the Suns – their core group are veritable toddlers in comparison. With that youth comes speed. Not bullshit speed – not hometown homeboy in a hellcat on the highway speed. They’re quick, but they don’t hurry. They’re efficient, historically so. They’re bolstered by a reigning Executive of the Year, Coach of the Year, who is in turn assisted by the best assistant coach in the NBA. They have two All-NBA players, they’re deep, both in assets and ballers to put out there on the hardwood. Sure, they’re no longer unknowns to the NBA, but, they’re also no longer unknown to themselves. After last season being their try-it-out season, figuring out what worked and what didn’t, its safe to say, they figured it out. All off-season they’ve preached physicality, they’ve said they’re throwing wrinkles in the greatest offense ever put to hardwood to make them even less predictable. This is a team on the edge of contention. A pup finally grown into its paws and learning to hunt.

Is the West tough? Absolutely.

Should we expect the Kings to win 60 games? No.

After last season’s show, there is nothing that is sacred to me. There is no unbeatable team. There is no jinx or curse. There is no conspiracy to holding the Sacramento Kings back.  There is no answer to the question “Why?” that isn’t simply “Why not?”

That Hughes poem I was meditating on after Game 7 –

What happens to a dream deferred?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

One Step Away: So I have no way to say this without just saying it here, on the season opener preview this season. I’m stepping away from the previews this season. There’s some life things that necessitated it- good, wonderful, amazing things. The hope is that I can come in once in awhile, a special Lakers insult session here, an OKC fawn job there, absolutely every single game of a playoff run. But for this season, and this season alone, I’m taking a step back.

Please continue to post your poetry, your rants, your crazy comments and with a little extra time on my hands, I’ll have to chance to enjoy them and comment back. Thank you for the eight straight season I’ve been able to rant and rave and freak out with all of you – I’m looking forwards to the time and place I can do that consistently again.

Prediction

60 goddamn wins and a Western Conference Finals run. We all get what we want and love and live in peace. Also, the Lakers get retracted.

Kings 121, Jazz 115

Fan Predictions

Also, this year we are going to be combining the Fan Predictions Contest with the Game Preview, so make sure to keep an eye out for that here this season as well!