Update: 3:30 p.m.
The Sacramento Kings lost again. De’Aaron Fox had 28 points and 11 assists. DeMar DeRozan played 39 minutes and had 27 points. Keon Ellis started, but finished with 15 minutes.
Good news? We don’t have to watch the Kings for a few days. Bad news? They play the Oklahoma City Thunder again next.
From Earlier Preview:
The Sacramento King fell to the Minnesota Timberwolves 110-124 on Friday, and the 14-point loss was actually an improvement over how they had been playing recently. Well, it doesn’t get any easier tonight as the Kings are in San Antonio to play the Spurs. Will the Kings extend their losing streak to 6 games, or will they finally pick up a win against a quality team? Let’s find out.
Who: Sacramento Kings (3-10) vs. San Antonio Spurs (8-4)
Where: Frost Bank Center, San Antonio, TX
When: 1:00 PM PT / 4:00 PM ET
Watch: NBCSCA / League Pass
De’Aaron Fox, Victor Wembanyama, and the Spurs are a significantly better team than the Sacramento Kings, but they aren’t playing their best basketball at the moment. After starting the season 5-0, the Spurs have gone 3-4 in their last 7 games, including two-straight losses to the Golden State Warriors heading into tonights matchup with the Kings. They’ll be without Dylan Harper tonight, and Wemby is questionable. For the Kings, Keegan Murray is still out while Domantas Sabonis and Precious Achiuwa are questionable.
It’ll also be interesting to see what Doug Christie does with the starting lineup today. Dennis Schroder got benched in favor of Russell Westbrook vs. the Timberwolves on Friday, and it kinda worked out for both players, despite the loss. Russ was solid with the starting unit, and Schroder, who had been struggling a lot recently, played a decent game off the bench.
Prediction: Kings 117, Spurs 111.
I hope Fox will get a nice round of applause and Vivek a nice round of boos.
Oops. Away game. Nm.
We should have little trouble with this small market, limited resources opponent.
Polar opposite examples of how a small market franchise should be run will be on display today.
Amazing how markets much smaller than Sacramento like Salt Lake, Indianapolis , Memphis and Oklahoma City have all had much greater success in the last several decades . What could it possibly be the difference ?
I saw the other day that the Kings as a franchise are worth more than OKC and San Antonio. Which means 2 things. First Vivek is winning in his mind, the Kings value continues to go up and they are the 20th most valuable franchise. Also there are many far more successful franchises, including OKC at #21 below them. We have the market, value, and ability to be good.
We’ll again see DeAaron tonight;
We were told his impact was light.
Some bridges were burned—
Little value returned—
Beyond Vivek’s fantasy shite!
+1 Fox has a message for Vivek!
I am confident the Spurs will play great today. Why? Everyone plays great against the Kangz.
Wemby out
bsky.app
Standard rest day for stars against the Kings.
Doesn’t even matter whether teams are missing their best players or not. That’s how confident teams are that they can beat us now.
Opponents keep resting their stars against the Kings. Because they can. Just one more embarrassing aspect of this franchise right now.
Happy Birthday Kayte. You know it’s ok to take time off. You don’t need to work every.dang.game
Kings defense looking amazing again. Allowing the Spurs all those open 3s, so nice of them to make the game easy for their opponents.
Fox and HB40 tank assist.
Doug may want to give some smelling salt to our perimeter defense.
Spurs had 36 points in the 1st, and they missed many wide open 3s.
Did they take a 3 that wasn’t wide open?
Two maybe?
Maybe 2.
DeRozans game is so boring…zero good defensive plays and otherwise just taking forever to put up a mid-range shot lol.
The longer I see him the more tired of his game that I get. Nobody has the balls to tell him he’s not a starting caliber NBA player anymore.
I want Keegan to get healthy so I can see how a lineup with Keon, Nique, and Keegan look. It’s really the only thing I am looking forward to with the current roster.
I’m going to sleep. Better for my health.
Good day/night folks.
Those precious achiuwa corner 3s are great offense!
Disjointed rotations impact continuity. Deep Thoughts with Kayte Christensen. Make sure you don’t say absolutely anything about the poorly structured roster.
Fox and Barnes thriving, away from BB Hell. Stealth tank rolls on.
No Doug McDermott?
WTF is the deal with the moving camera in the post game show?
Another win for the good guys.
Remember Vivek, we’re expecting a players-only meeting and then an interim coach.
19 wins, you got this.
Man I’d love for your 19 win prediction to happen.
But I fear the Kings aren’t smart enough to win 19. They have a really easy schedule starting around Thanksgiving and Christie is going to squeeze out every win possible for his buddy Vivek. Hope I’m wrong.
One of the things that pisses me off the most about the Kings sustained ineptitude is that 84 year-old Gary Gerould has had to deal with this crap for so long. You can hear the exhaustion in his voice. One of the truly good guys affiliated with the Kings for 40 years. He doesn’t deserve this.
Gary, how long have you dealt with crappy Kangz products?
Literally!
Sooooo, it’s not going to salvage anything, but if this slide continues, wonder what the over under is that we’re gonna have an interim head coach.
I don’t see Vivek paying 3 head coaches. He’s too cheap for that.
I thought he was exonerated from the Mike Brown payments because NY hired Brown. Maybe I’m mistaken…
I read about that somewhere too.
I heard the Kings had to pay a certain amount of the contract, but it wasn’t a huge amount.
Yep. The combined amount of Brown’s payout, Doug’s salary & Woodson’s interim salary will still be less than a lot of HCs make.
Per an article in Sports Illustrated:
Eight of the top nine players in minutes were guards, and most of them are combo guards. We’re all blinded by the light of your genius, Vivek.
4’ on 5’.
We keep hearing this team doesn’t guard anybody. Perhaps a certain chap heard that differently than the rest of us. We got the guard now.
Ironic – too many guards but no guarding.
Beam team Kings combined for 48, 4 and 12 tonight. They shot 7-14 from 3, were 4-6 from the line, and combined for just two turnovers. The only problem is… they played for the Spurs.
Keep fueling the dumpster fire until the whole house of cards burns down.
The team’s current pace is 17-18 wins, 59 games behind OKC.
OKC: blueprint for success
SAC: blueprint for failure
OKC: Success
Sac: Succs
Success vs SucksAss
That’s the 2008-09 Sac Kings pace, which is worst in Sac history. Finished worst in the league, Theus (another ex-Kings coach) was fired after a 6-18 start. Doug is already behind Reggie’s win pace.
The good news is, the Kings were sold a few years after throwing up that stinker of a year.
Man, I remember too having the best shot at winning the lottery, only to have the worst case outcome happen and dropped to the 4th pick.
Remember when we got the number 2 pick and took Marvin Bagley? Man that was a good time…
And then still missed on Curry, whom I’d bet on never reaching the heights he has with Golden State had the Kings drafted him. Curry would have been paired with JT, Hawes, KMart, Garcia, and Casspi. Those dudes aren’t exactly future hall of famers like Green and Klay.
I am of two minds on the season. On one level this is the best I have felt in years. We are god awful, with a feckless coach with little suggest the results will change over the year. Welcome the tank I have wanted for years, in what looks like a great class.
But the other part of me knows that our form being unintentional may undermine all the benefits. If this team does not operate with pragmatism in regards to its current situation it doesn’t really matter. After all under Vivek we have had draft luck, the 2nd pick hitting on Tyrese and yet has always found a way for it to lead to disaster.
The team has an opportunity. The league has a lot of teams in an arms race or seeking competitiveness. However crap we are we do have isolated assets that are movable. Shop this roster now and I expect we could fetch a few firsts and or expiring/prospects with some combination of our roster. That to boot with our own picks, a strong draft class is not a terrible foundation. Especially when few are on that rebuild timeline.
But there’s only so much strategy if the decisions are made by an awful owner. I personally find myself unable to talk myself into these optimistic hypotheticals because at the end of the day it’s reliant on sentience and organizational awareness that’s just not evident in the owner, coach of GM.
If they did this right, like you detailed, things could turn around quicker than I expect. Adding one of the top 3 guys in the draft (which means the Kings will pick 4th, lol) would be nice. Either one of Peterson, Boozer, Dybantsa would fit nicely as a building block.
But I expect the Kings to win enough games to be 7-10 in the draft and miss out on a shot at the top talent. Sure hope I’m wrong.
I thought the team played hard in both of these last two games, so I’ll give props to Doug for calling out the team last week. Seems to have worked, for now. Not a good thing to have to go nuclear so early in the season, but that’s where we’re at.
Bummer Keon had poor performances in his recent starts. Hope his minutes don’t disappear.
I think the team is better with only 1 of the Chicago guys in at a time.
If the team keeps putting in the effort, we can go back to just criticizing the front office for this terribly mismatched roster.
It’s hard for Keon offensively when there are so many ball pounders in the starting lineup with him. He was barely involved in the Spurs game. Against the Wolves, he played well. Missed some open 3s, but overall an okay game.
I don’t see how any players can function at a high level with the group of Russ/Schroder, LaVine, DDR, and Domas on the court. There is no pecking order, flow, etc. Just dudes trying to hoop and get their own.
I agree. I think it’s been better with Russ over Dennis. I think DeMar is willing to defer to Russ, but not to anyone else on the roster.
And so it begins?
https://x.com/PMasih007/status/1990493270666035698?s=20
Take those minutes to New Orleans or the Wizards
Suspend him for a game
Play better, Zach. Messing with guys minutes is a way to ruffle some feathers. Christie has addressed the effort in press conferences, the next thing is a minutes restriction.
The shit show continues in Sacramento. Terrible offense, terrible defense, no cohesion, etc.
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