Same as it ever was – David Byrne/Talking Heads
Well, it’s Groundhog Day…again… – Phil Connors
It’s not the despair…I can stand the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand – John Cleese
Lather, rinse, repeat – Head & Shoulders
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – Rita Mae Brown
We had a better deal two days ago – Vlade Divac
It’s not the itching, it’s the swelling – David Letterman
I come here not to pee in your Cheerios. I come here not to remind you that my old boss used to say, “If you have to eat a turd, don’t chew it on the way down.” I come here to commiserate, not to depress. To revel in your loyalty. To respect and admire your tolerance for pain. To celebrate your ability to find humor in what would otherwise be a stark and bottomless existence.
The grooming of a Kings fan has taken place over decades, but it seemingly begins the moment you jump on (“under” might be more appropriate) the bandwagon, except for the select few that cut their teeth on C-Webb, Vlade (v1.0), Peja, J-Will and Doug (v1.0). Whether it was geography or genetics or bad clams that brought you to this point, you made the 1 in 30 choice to root for the Sacramento Kings. That’s right. While there are very likely people close to you that root for teams with guys named Steph or LeBron, you have hitched your wagon to a team that never gets in the way of your April – June plans (except for lottery and draft days).
Show of hands: When you read any national article that ranks anything NBA, how do you search for how rank the Kings are? Power rankings? We start at the bottom and work our way up, right? Owner /front office rankings? Under 25 talent? Head coach? As a fan base, we search to find a reason to “could be worse” our lot in life (thank you, new Blazers ownership! Bless you, next team that hires Luke Walton as a head coach! Thanks for taking Scott Perry off our hands, Knicks!)
How did you feel going into the ping pong ball drop? Did you already have “Fi…” on your lips, just waiting to exhale the “xxxxxx!!!!!!”? Did you pause to think about how Spurs fans just expect the #1 pick, even when they are not in the lottery? And how on the few occasions that the Kings moved up in the draft, they still screwed it up (they moved up and then back down a little in ’17 due to the Philly trade, and Bagley’d the ’18 pick). With that as a backdrop, was your enthusiasm for moving up at least a little muted? Is that a tick burrowing into the back of your neck, or is it just the foreboding of the past becoming the present and making your future your past?
And yet, here we are, trying to laugh off the pain of Mike Brown winning an NBA championship in the wake of the Kings indicating he is the wrong fit for the supposed direction that has never existed. We are eagerly scouring the web for the latest mock draft rankings, big boards, and player profiles on at least TBD players. We’re all a bunch of sick, hopeful, hopeless souls. We are a social experiment gone horribly wrong. We are charted by very confused alien life forces.
Anyone surprised by having the 7th pick?
The Utah Jazz are $500k lighter in the wallet and selecting 2nd. Your Sacramento Kings took their version of the high road and will be selecting 7th. Think the Kings would pay $500k right now to swap picks with the Jazz?
The drop from five to seven is not especially egregious, if the first four picks play out per consensus (Dybantsa, Peterson, Boozer and Wilson, in whatever order you would like to place them). But if a Wagler or Acuff jumps into the top four, one of those guys would be available at five. This can be parsed in a lot of different ways, but at the end of the day the talent pool is at its deepest at the very beginning of the draft, and it will be six players shallower by the time the Kings pick…if they pick. The “play-in or bust” mentality of this organization could easily see the Kings shipping out the pick (with contract as needed) for the next sub-elite player that, in their eyes, will bring coveted short-term wins to 2026-27.
It is a fair statement to say that Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Paul George and Reggie Miller and others were had at 7 or later in their drafts. It would also be a fair statement to note that these guys are the rare exception. The percentages say that we will get a player, and history tells us that we will be disappointed in him if does become elite. There are those of us who are already voicing disappointment over Keegan Murray, and those of us who were not enamored of De’Aaron Fox. There are those of us that would like to see Domantas Sabonis moved to clear a path for Max Raynaud. That is how fleeting a player’s standing with his fan base can be, especially a fan base that has been treated so poorly by the team that it so desperately roots for.
Before this gets dark, I guess that we should look for a bright side. Progress has been made. For the longest time, ex-Kings players would leave Sacramento and wash out of the league. But as the playoffs and NBA Finals have reminded us, there are plenty of ex-Kings reaching higher levels in their new haunts (Fox may have disappointed there, but he got to the Finals), so we have gotten a little bit better at prospecting?
Retention, not so much, but yay for prospecting?
There is a segment of the fanbase that has been at this for a very long time. In some cases, more than 40 years (and those are charted in dog years, so it feels like 280). This is a group that not only does not buy green bananas, they have taken to eating the banana bread bananas right off the rack. This is a group that fondly remembers when the Derek Smith trade was the biggest mistake this organization ever made. And this is a group that legitimately wonders if they will ever, EVER, see the Sacramento Kings in an actual playoff game ever again.
There is another segment of the fanbase that has never seen the Kings advance to the 2nd round of the playoffs. Think about that. If you are under 25, you either weren’t alive or have little/no recollection of the Kings in the 2nd round of the playoffs. That is stunning.
And that is the fan base that is preparing to “welcome” the 7th pick of the 2026 NBA draft to Sacramento. I don’t know about you, but NIL money and another year of college life doesn’t look too shabby in comparison. I don’t think that any of the projected top 10 will pull out of the draft, but you can’t tell me that this is not at least a conversation piece between agents and their clients. “So, it looks like it could be Sacramento. Or you could go back to Arkansas / Houston / Illinois.” And before you know it, you are welcoming Yaxel Lendeborg to town.
The organization has become the multi-vehicle crash for which you cannot avert your eyes. The “golden age” of Kings basketball has become such a distant memory that there are fans who would rather ship the organization somewhere else and start over with an expansion team. Again, that is stunning. Give 30 fanbases that option, and how many do you think would take it? Well, I guess that would be another list that you would read from the bottom up.
Other fan bases receive ire and venom and envy from other fan bases. Kings fans receive pity. We are pitied for the team that we elect to root for. Pitied. We hold onto each other as a community, always waiting for that odds-defying miracle. And we’ll do it again, because we are Kings fans.
You sick, silly bastards. I love you, you knuckleheads. Just wait ‘til next Millenium.
Nice arena, though – section214
Again, we who follow the team, teeter on the edge for yet another season. As a (partial) season ticket holder throughout their 41 seasons in California’s capitol, this rivals the other low points (Power Balance Arena?) that had the former owners (Malooves) openly seeking to pave the road out of town. This loyal fan base, that had already seen it’s share of shitake cheered when David Stern finally found someone who would keep the team with the fans that supported it through the pity and mess that characterizes this franchise.
My season ticket group unanimously agreed to NOT sign up nor keep our seats for this season (and via discussion, not expecting to for another 2-4 seasons). If we want to see a game, we can just buy the same or better seats for a 40-60% discount.
It all comes down to the owners. Sacramento started with the giant brass cojones of Greg Lukenbill to bring the team in, followed by Jim Thomas and then good ol’ Joe and Gavin. They were actually “good” as they just goofballed their way around and let GM Petrie make the decisions which led to Rick Adelman (R.I.P.) and the Golden Age Kings (White Chocolate, CWebb, Divac, Christie, Bibby, Bobby, Peja, Hedo, JimJax, Mad Max, John Barry, Funderburke, Scot Pollard, Tony Delk, Crash Wallace and on and on).
Then they got big ideas in their little heads and the money went where it had no business going and you know the rest of the story.
Vivek Ranadive and Matina Kolokotronis. Both of them, not just Vivek. They have undermined any semblance of a good decision for 14 frikkin’ seasons now.
And I blame the NBA. Make him/them sell the team. Don’t keep trying to sell this bad product to this faithful fan base.
I keep coming back to this team because of TKH (STR) and because I live 20 minutes from Golden1 Center. This great community – and contributors like our very own Rob_Hessing are here, so here I stay.
How much longer can we/you hang on? When will the next awful decision, the next terrible season cause you to just say Eff It, I AM Out ? It’s a question I ask myself way too often.
So – Wagler, Acuff, Flemings or Brown? I know it doesn’t matter – didn’t you read Rob? and what I wrote?
See you all tomorrow.
I finally said eff it I’m out before this season. I genuinely couldn’t believe they went into the season with the roster they did. This time last year I told anybody who would listen that the Kings were going to be SOOOOO much worse than they thought. And lo and behold, I ended up being spot on.
So last season, I just stopped watching Kings basketball for the first time in 30 years. I did not watch one second of Kings basketball. From the look of things, I didn’t miss much. The trade deadline came and the Kings continued to make awful decisions. I no longer care one iota who the GM is. I sincerely don’t believe it’s relevant anymore. Vivek Ranadive (I guess Matina as well, though, I still feel like I don’t actually know what it is she does) is responsible for this mess. We are in year 14!!!! The new owner syndrome stuff should have been out of his system over a decade ago! What we’re left with is the fact that he is both too egotistical and too incompetent to ever turn this ship around. I say that fully aware of the face that James Freaking Dolan just won a title which is actually more depressing for us as Kings fans if you think about it. James Dolan is a significantly better owner than Vivek Ranadive. That’s where we’re at.
And I’ll leave everyone with this: The Maloofs are the best owners in Sacramento’s history. They were completely incompetent, but like Dolan, they didn’t meddle at first, and the team succeeded because smart basketball people were allowed to run the team. If anything, Dolan and the Maloofs have proven that the bar to having a successful organization is not very high! It’s subterranean! Yet, Vivek Ranadive cannot even clear that.
So you’re right. Draft whoever. It won’t matter. There is only one thing that matters and it’s the one thing we can’t change.
Is do this in half a nanosecond, but what are the odds that the league actually grants Sacramento an expansion team? Would be ideal to package Vivek and this team to Vegass and give Sacramento the team they are supposedly getting but I guess things don’t actually work that way.
I really don’t see that as a possibility. The NBA isn’t going to let Vivek and the Kings relocate after all the politicking it took to get public funding to build the area. The league doesn’t want that egg on their face. They will continue to want public funds to build new arenas, so leaving a state of the art arena that the city helped fund won’t help them in those future endeavors.
“Convincing” Vivek to sell to a an offer he can’t refuse is the far better alternative. By most accounts he is in the bottom 5 of net worth of NBA owners. Ironically, he’s right around the same level as the owners of OKC and the Spurs, but those teams are properly run.
By all accounts, Vivek doesn’t have the wealth of the rest of the league, and doesn’t have the pedigree of winning like others of his financial standing. Double whammy.
Sell the team.
Makes total sense. Now we just need a multi-billionaire or a group of sub-billionaires to make the offer. Vivek can hold on to some of his stake if he wants. We just need him out as controlling stakeholder or whatever his title is.
Mike Teel of Raley’s might be the wealthiest local guy, but I’m not sure he’s even big enough.
Look at the situation with the Clippers and what has the NBA done, eh zip The commish works for the owners not the fans. so stop talking about nonsense like the league would give Sacramento an espansion franchise The rest of the NBA has essentially forgotten the Kings exists
When I read about all the trades that have been discussed is that that Kings players are just poor, or that other teams feel like they don’t have to Kings value as they are so poorly run
This roster to me would be great if we had 3 quality starters on this roster as currently best players they have are essentially spot starters and quality bench players
Thank god the Kings have the true architect of the Knicks rebuild Scott Perry, its funny that only local media mentions this and not the national media
Speak for yourself. When the Great Draft Pick arrives he’ll bring us lots of wins.
Great write up Section.
Following this franchise is like:
Until the dismissive little chap and his team leave, anything they do will be like putting lipstick on a pig. It’ll still be a pig.
P.S. Congratulations Coach Brown. We knew it wasn’t your fault all along.
Thanks for the read, Rob. Happy for Coach Brown, sad for us fans.
Also, since we’re going into the offseason portion, do we have anymore of the “Til Next Year” articles lined up? 🙂
We’ve got about a dozen in the can. Through 2006 or 2007, I think. I need to start getting more prepped.
Thanks for the update! I’ve been sending each article to my Dad to get his perspective since he’s been following them since ’85. I enjoy the discussion they bring between us!
Hell yeah!
I get a kick out of how our blog of misfit Kings fans is far better than the actual product on the floor.
If there were a blog playoff of NBA sites, we’d be perennial post season players. We even have international team members!
Love this community.
Yep. It really is the only thing I follow Kings-related even when the product on the floor is unwatchable.
fully expecting us to trade #7 and Zach Lavine in a salary clearing move to ensure that Vivek doesn’t have to pay luxury tax
Gotta put Ja Morant into the trade to really make it sting.
How is Brunson considered as a defender? Good? Bad? ok?
I’ve never heard him described as a traffic cone, but i’ve never heard him described as a lock down defender either, so i’m guessing he’s somewhere in the middle.
He’s more bad than good. But the roster construction around JB has been impeccable which has helped mitigate how bad and undersized he is on D. The duds did the same with Curry, although Curry imo is a better defender than JB. Another more recent example is Hali, he has size but is not a good defender, but the Pacers have done a good job building the right roster around him.
JB and Dame are similar in many ways and Dame I believe would have had a lot more playoff success and perhaps a title had the Blazers FO ever put a proper fitting roster around him.
This is also why I’m fine if we take Acuff. A good FO will build properly around their star player. Of course we don’t have a good FO, but things can change in the future.
Thanks! Acuff was part of the reason I asked. I watched a couple of scouting videos on him and i saw some Brunson to his game. Acuff is always criticized for his defense (or lack thereof) and his game reminded me of Brunson, which got me thinking about Brunson’s d and whether there was a “lack thereof” component to it as well.
Acuff is also really well built. I think he can be an average defender, which for his size would be really good. His body type reminds me a bit of Bane or Jameer Nelson. Being able to be rough with defenders even if you’re not tall goes a long way when playing D.
Fox was awful and I’m glad the Kings didn’t tie him up in a max long term contract. He’s San Antonio’s dilemma now.
As we’ve seen over and over, NBA franchises can turn around quite quickly with good management and a little luck. Just make this 7th pick count and also find something serviceable with the two second round picks. Don’t make any stupid trades, then at next seasons mid year trade deadline move LaVine to a contending team for some draft capital. Once next season is over, we should have a good group of young players (Murray, Clifford, Raynaud, this years 7th pick, 2 young players from the second round, and all of our draft picks in hand going forward. In addition our payroll will be under control to the point where we could possibly take on a bad contract for some additional draft capital or a young prospect.
I for one am looking forward to watching a teaming with an interesting blend of young players getting better as the season progresses. I actually like where I think the Kings are heading.
I’d like to see forward looking articles with thoughts on how the Kings construct this rebuild going forward. I’m not interested in articles playing to a disgruntled fan base with regurgitated complaints. We all know the past and everything that needs to be said has already been said.
Please find something new and original to write about. This is just a bunch of rehashed redundant garbage.
Go easy on yourself there, pal. We don’t really have any worthwhile young players on the team, but your comment wasn’t quite as bad as you made it out to be.
LOL, you get what you pay for.
Dude is free loading on this site and has the audacity to complain about a well written article. SMH. I guess Section was successful in pissing in someone’s Cheerios. Dilly Dilly!
The audacity to call this article redundant when the Kings themselves are the most pathetically redundant franchise in professional sports is quite comical to me.
You want people to write about something forward thinking? Then the Kings should consider DOING something forward thinking. Like, literally anything. Like not trading for Zach Lavine or signing Demar Derozan. Like not moving assets to bring overpaid vets who are terrible players (here’s looking at you Deandre Hunter!). Like winning meaningless games at the end of the season and seeing your pick drop to 7 when you were the worst team in the sport most of the year.
Everything I just listed reflects the Kings being stuck in an antiquated way of thinking.
I have some bad news for you. The Kings don’t have an “interesting blend of young players”. They won’t next season either regardless of who they draft. All the players you listed aren’t all that good or interesting and they wouldn’t even play on most competent teams. Redundant garbage? How about trying to retain some modicum of sanity in a situation where hope no longer exists?
I’m with you man. There’s an opportunity to try something new. Don’t overpay garbage vets. Have some kind of plan or vision. Go outside the box.
play 3 bigs, play 4 guys who are 45% from 3, try to be Loyola Marymount and score 150 per night, do something:)
who cares?! Just doing what every other team does, but doing it with worse players, bad GM and terrible ownership? Exciting.
If it was coaching, would coaches leave Sacto and win NBA Championships shortly thereafter? I’m thinking, No probably not. But I’m just a stupid fan
Absolutely nailed it. If you’re going to be bad, at least be interesting! The Kings have nothing to lose so try some stuff!! Like, try anything! Just try and be interesting. I think people underestimate how quickly the city and fans would get behind a young team that’s doing exciting stuff. Even if they are terrible, nobody would care if there appeared to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Right now we’ve got nothing.
Nobody said what’s been done has been anything but terrible. From this point on I’ve laid out the plan toward success. Another bitch session about all the mistakes over the years does nothing for me. I think this guy just plays to an audience and there’s nothing new here. I like hearing ideas on how to move the team forward.
Yes, both of which the Sacramento Kings have had a plethora of over the past 41 years.
Said it before and will say it again, best coach since Adelman and losing him set the franchise back years
there are posters who will always complain about the coach as a personality trait. They complained about him, probably about joerger if you look at their post history (our only other solid coach), and will bitch about the next solid coach we get in another decade
Seems like Vivek wants a yes man as his HC, hence, Brown and Malone were never going to work under Vivek. But a good yes man like DC will do for Vivek.
I’m one of those 40-year guys (the Kings came to town my sophomore year of high school in Stockton, so it was a pretty big deal at the time).
And at this point, count me as one of those who would rather start over with an expansion franchise than continue going forward with this drecky-trainwreck.
For context…
As bad as Ranadive is, the A’s John Fisher (also known as #FJF) is largely agreed to be the worst owner in professional sports at the moment.
He’s so cheap that, during the pandemic, one of the first things he did was instruct all the A’s minor league affiliates to stop providing condiments for the players’ food spread.
And of course, he’s the one who ripped the team out of Oakland.
As bad as Ranadive is, he’s never taken away the Kings’ ketchup packets.
—
Now with that said, #FJF has owned the A’s for 20 seasons now, and in those 20 seasons, the A’s have made the playoffs four times.
Once every 5 years.
And they’re competitive this season, with a young core that will likely make the playoffs in the next few years ahead.
Which means…
Even the worst owner in professional sports has been more successful (with FAR less money) than Vivek Ranadive has been.
—
For the second time in three seasons, we’ve just watched a former Kings head coach take his very next team to an NBA Championship, while we ran both of them (Malone and Brown) out of town, inferring that they were incompetent.
There’s a level of stupid in this organization that doesn’t actually have a strong enough word to describe it. Somehow, it’s even worse than if they were outwardly, directly sabotaging the franchise.
It’s literally the strangest thing I’ve witnessed in my 56 years on this Earth.
Look on the bright side — wasn’t it only 15-16 months ago that many hardcore fans were telling us that Kings should’ve kept Fox and Sabonis to keep building? Both top-25 players in the League?
Now we can’t give Sabonis away and the Spurs will be doing everything possible to move Fox in order to give his PT to younger, better players.
if the team is going to be bad anyway, at least we’re not paying Fox $60M per year and can focus on the clocks ticking on Lavine and Sabonis.
Well, to be pedantic, it was Halliburton that should have been kept to begin with.
You know, the former Kings PG that played in last year’s NBA Championship before the former Kings PG that played in this year’s NBA Championship.
Sooner or later, everyone needs to realize that it isn’t the players that are the problem. It isn’t the coaching that is the problem.
It’s the rotting piece of crap at the very top of this stupid, pathetic franchise.
Full stop.
The experts said at the time that Hali was the better player, but the Kings couldn’t get a good player or wild collection of picks in return for Fox. The hardcore enthusiasts here clung to the belief that Fox was a top-25 player in the NBA and should be kept.
You’re right of course — keep the best player in Hali, trade Fox for whatever you can get, then keep building. But whatever, it ultimately doesn’t matter and never will. Kangz made the playoffs that one year and won 48 — hooray! All is good.
“The Utah Jazz are $500k lighter in the wallet and selecting 2nd. Your Sacramento Kings took their version of the high road and will be selecting 7th. Think the Kings would pay $500k right now to swap picks with the Jazz?“
Uhhh…..
I just found out last week that Vivek blocked the Siakam and Anunoby trades because he didn’t want to pay them. (tweet referenced below.) You can now pin all the bad moves and non-moves on Vivek. As someone who was all-in on one of the TOR wings, I’ve decided Tim Maxwell is right. There is no hope with Vivek. As Mark Cuban says on Shark Tank, I’m out on the Sacramento Viveks.
https://x.com/JillAdge/status/2064938827106648345?s=20
This season made it really easy to decide to cancel league pass. Was a local fan for a long time (starting with OG Arco), a distant fan for a long time…. can’t be bothered anymore. I still hope the Kings do well but I can’t be bothered to spend time or money on it.
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