Hey remember how as recent as the start of the pandemic necessitated Bubble season the Kings and Suns shared the exact same reputation and prospects and now the Suns are going to win 60 games and the Kings are going to be damn lucky to win half of that? OH, ahaha, the Sun-Kings, if you put them together you might have a halfway decent NBA roster aaaahaha…
Sorry, sorry, don’t mind me over here – I’m still processing saying good-bye to Arco Arena yesterday and a little testy about these raw emotions flowing unimpeded by my usually morning caffeine kick so, let’s just get to the main jibber-jabber.
Let’s talk Kings basketball!
When: Sunday, March 20th, 3:00 PM PT
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA – Mark Jones (play-by-play)
Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM
For Your Consideration
The Gravity of Suns: Just because I enjoy a light sprinkling of pain to go with my semi-daily morning musings on all things Kings, I counted up the Kings’ L’s since the All-Star Break and decided to compare them to this Suns team, that less than two years ago were our cellar-dwelling sidekicks. Barring a miracle tonight, you’ll be able to go back to the first game post-All Star weekend to find the start of a ten losses in thirteen games flop. Meanwhile if you’re trying to count back to ten losses ago for the Suns, you’ll have to go all the way back to December 13th, where, since that loss at the hands of the Clippers, they’ve had streaks of 5 wins, 11 wins and 8 wins during that time span, 36 wins in total sandwiched between those 10 losses. It’s amazing, they’re amazing and I’ve not so much pressing the space bar between each of these words as I am slamming my hand into it like a million dollars in game show money depends on it.
We can thank a lot of individuals for the rising of the Suns: James Jones, Executive of the Year and the organizer of an island of once misfit toys, Monte Williams, their inspiring head coach, Chris Paul, the league’s elder curmudgeon and Hall of Fame point guard, and Devin Booker, the All-world scorer who just needed a little help from his friends. These men, along with many other unnamed individuals who do their thankless parts, are all to be commended for pulling the team out of the mud in spectacular fashion. You know who I won’t list in there though? Robert Sarver, the owner. Plentiful are his issues, both legal and social, and this team has lost as much or more due to his stewardship of the franchise than it has won. But, the Suns, as a franchise, have won recently regardless of his brand of humanity.
I won’t put the owner of the Sacramento Kings in the same sentence as Sarver. Comparing their issues wouldn’t be right. But what I will say is that for all our talk about changing the culture and it starting at the top and on and on, it’s been refreshing to see a team like the Suns, with a problematic owner and a decent-sized recent history of ineptitude, pull themselves out the only way a team can – winning. The worst of our suspicions could be right, Vivek might be meddlesome and all the boogiemen we fear in the organization might truly be what frightens us, but the Suns help give me a bit of hope that the Kings can still turn this thing around despite them. A good GM picks a good coach who game plans the right way, attracts the right free agents. A good GM makes the right risky moves, makes the right picks in the draft regardless of position. A good GM suddenly sees a good team go supernova, gets an award or two and vies for an NBA championship. Sure, Sarver’s penny pinching could doom the Suns: they could let Ayton leave in restricted free agency, or he could tell Cam Johnson to hit the bricks next season after paying up for Ayton. This team is still in it’s league-wide threat infancy and the minute moves will be the difference between their dissolution and dynasty, but for now, they’re standing tall despite this Sarver-shaped Sword of Damocles.
It’s something small obviously, but… that smidge of hope certainly makes a difference when scheduling your life around a potential 3 pm Sunday beatdown.
Prediction
The Suns collapse into a black hole in Sacramento. Sabonis gets a 30-20-10 triple double as an encore to his performance against the Celts, Davion puts Devin Booker in a padded cell and Harrison Barnes has a stat line better than 0 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist on 0-4 shooting in 24 minutes. Just… just praying to the basketball gods on that last one.
Kings: 118, Suns: 112
The Suns are in solid first place
While we trail in the “play-in race”.
They shot up the standings
By doing some grand things
While we just fell flat on our face!
I remember thinking a few years ago, when the Suns were the league’s hapless bottom-feeders, that they would still make the playoffs before we did. I didn’t think the discrepancy in the quality of the two teams would be quite this large. Unfortunately I’m not really confident that we’ll make the playoffs before any of the teams currently “below” is in the standings.
They should just shelve him for the last few games. No point in worsening the injury or their lottery chances.
Agreed.
Kings need to win the rest of their games to equal last year’s team record.
I don’t think it was Walton. Or Marvin. Or Buddy.
It is rarely 1,2 or even 3 factors that make a team play as poorly as the Kings have. It was and is a poorly constructed roster. Monte has a lot of work to do in the off season. Walton is not a good head coach, both Bagley and Buddy needed a change of scenery and certainly weren’t helping in the win column.
Agreed. This is a systemic organizational issue, starting at the very top.
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