Sacramento’s bubble schedule was released Friday night, and frankly, I was pleased with the results. The Kings schedule is as follows:
July 31 – San Antonio Spurs
August 2 – Orlando Magic
August 4 – Dallas Mavericks
August 6 – New Orleans Pelicans
August 7 – Brooklyn Nets
August 9 – Houston Rockets
August 11 – New Orleans Pelicans
August 13 – Los Angeles Lakers
The Kings will play five of their eight games against teams with losing records. They will only play one game against a team in the top-five of either conference. That game is their final matchup, and it comes against a Lakers team that will almost certainly have nothing to gain by playing hard.
Overall, the Kings have the eighth easiest schedule of the 22 teams in the bubble. I’ll take it.
But wait. Let me look at the back-to-backs before I let myself be happy. After all, that’s where the league screws the Kings year after year.*
*This is mostly a joke. However, it is a fact that the Kings have played more back-to-backs than the league average for five straight years, including league-highs in both 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Thankfully, the league announced all teams will play exactly one back-to-back set. Great. It’s all fair then. Every team has to play a game on zero days’ rest, and every team will get one opponent that has to play on zero days’ rest.
Right? RIGHT?! Wrong.
As it turns out, the Kings are one of nine teams that does not face an opponent on their second day of a back-to-back. Sacramento’s immediate competition for a play-in spot against the Memphis Grizzlies fared better. The Pelicans get one of those rest-day advantages, and the Trail Blazers get two.
The Pelicans also get a second rest-day advantage since they are playing on opening night. Their positioning as a league showcase team gives them a buffer day to build into their eight-game schedule somewhere, when most teams are playing every other day.
So, who do the Pelicans play when they are coming off that luxurious two-day break? The Sacramento Kings, of course.
Remember all that chatter about how the schedule will be a reflection of what it was going to be normally? That each team would just play their next eight games against other bubble teams in the same order, or at least as close to it as possible?
Well, that would mean the Pelicans would be playing the Kings in their first game. Remember when the league shut down literally seconds before the two teams were set to face off in March? Forget all of that. The NBA can’t waste Zion Williamson’s precious first game back on the Kings. Who would even watch?
At least that is a rare occurrence. All teams have 100+ days of rest for their first game back. 77 other games will be played, and only six of those come with one team on multiple days’ rest.
Six games. How many of those games do you think come against the Kings? Really, I want you to guess.
The correct answer is HALF. Three of the six games where a team plays a game on multiple days’ rest, the team that gets the short end of the stick is your Sacramento Kings.
The San Antonio Spurs, the Phoenix Suns, and the Denver Nuggets have to face one game against a team that is coming off multiple days’ rest in the return-to-play period. The Kings have to face three different teams in that scenario. No other team is in that scenario even once.
All in all, the Kings have easily the most unfavorably timed schedule in the league. They play four of their eight games with a rest disadvantage, and play zero with a rest advantage.
For comparison, the Blazers and Pelicans both play two games with a rest advantage, and only one game with a rest disadvantage.
Wake up people, the fix is in.*
*Again, I’m kind of kidding. But also, no I’m not.
O
M
G
Why is there a hershey kiss on the foxes head?
The NBA (or national TV people more likely) doesn’t want the Kings in the big dance, obviously. It also means that those who saying that the Kings were given a strong shot to make it will be full of shit.
Cuts both ways, this does. This group will earn their entry, for better or worse. Expecting that the NBA would do them favors in terms of scheduling was and is a waste of time.
I kinda like that this format allows for the possibility that the teams with the 8 best records in a conference at the end of the season aren’t necessarily the 8 best teams once the playoffs start.
This is a good point. I agree, also.
DAMN YOU, 2020!
I can’t remember a year I’ve hated so much than this year in my lifetime thus far.
How about June 2018?
(The day that really matters)
June 2018 will continue to haunt us every October-May for the next 8-15 years
2020 Hold my Beer..
536 AD kinda sucked.
We should ask ElRon about that.
Well, junior high school years sucked for many of us.
The deaths & turmoil caused by World War I & Spanish Flu made 1918 a crappy year. Somewhere around 1177 BC would’ve also sucked due to the Bronze Age Collapse.
Don’t blame the year, you silly.
That’s right!
People can’t be years!
– 1951
Some of us try and be cats.. Some more famous like Morris, or Safety Cat. Has no one wanted to be 2020? Some of us are more famous as a Section.
I think the Kings are gonna come out strong. I’m really confident in De’Aaron. All this time off was basically an off-season. I’m very hopeful he is going to come out looking like an absolute stud. Tie that in with nobody wanting to get up in Buddy’s face and I see 3’s and drives to the basket getting us to the 8 seed.
Also, that last game against the Lakers will be a Kings win. I think the Kings are going to need the win to ensure their spot, and the Lakers are gonna sit back and take notes to prep for the 1st round.
Oh and one last thing. I put $20 on the Kings to win it all in Boomtown over Winter break (I think I was set to win around 10 grand lol). I’m gonna start to get real excited if that Kings/Lakers series gets to game 6/7.
Thankfully, everyone else is going to be super tired!
Yeah I know but what I meant by that was more about Fox maturing his game by an off-season.
“they have been screwed by back-to-backs yet again … They don’t want to see us win”
Kings fans:
Checks schedule, sees one back-to-back and reads this:
“Overall, the Kings have the eighth easiest schedule of the 22 teams in the bubble.”
Grasping for NBA relevance –
Now add in the fact that they actually have the 3rd (by pure W/L%) or 4th (by Hollinger’s weird system) easiest schedule.
Yeah, this feels like we’re digging for reasons to be aggrieved. I’m sure the Blazers, and nearly every other non-Pelicans team would happily trade schedules with the Kings considering we have the 3rd easiest SOS. They also get two games against the team that is likely their biggest competitor to reach the play-in.
And we’re talking about 8 games with zero travel after 100 days off. The impact of back-to-backs or an extra rest day should be next to nothing.
The short story is if the Kings don’t make the post-season, they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves. We really need to stop digging for excuses for falling short.
Yeah, but how will we have our own graves then?
Excuses? Our GM always recovers. He recovered from his bad signing of Ariza which he recovered by trading for Parker. And though Parker might not recover as a King (rimshot) Vlade knows how to use the stretch provision now.
I will blame it on the return of MB3… because it fits my narrative
I would accept this scheduling gaff on the premise that the Kings had the worst record of the invitees, but there’s the Suns and the Wizards sitting at the bottom with us and I didn’t see them having the same problem so…
Well, as I understand it the Suns have the seventh (7/22) most difficult schedule (based on cumulative opponent winning % at time of stoppage) and the Wizards have the tenth (10/22) most difficult schedule. Compare that with the Kings having the twentieth (20/22) most difficult schedule.
I love a good Kings conspiracy but I just don’t see that dog hunting here.
Maybe I am misunderstanding this data:
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Cumulative opponent winning percentage, old schedule (at the time the season was suspended) vs. new schedule. <a href=”https://t.co/46L1z1HHH7″>pic.twitter.com/46L1z1HHH7</a></p>— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) <a href=”https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1276667520821362688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>June 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Also, the Kings have five (5) games versus the remaining sub .500 teams (only team with more is the Pels):
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Games vs. the 9 teams currently under .500…<br><br>1: LAL, MIA, PHX<br>2: DEN, POR, TOR<br>3: HOU, IND, MEM, MIL, OKC, SAS, WAS<br>4: DAL, LAC, ORL, UTA<br>5: BOS, BKN, PHI, SAC<br>6: NOP</p>— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) <a href=”https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1276671814060646400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>June 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
[Edit: Links:
https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1276667520821362688
https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1276671814060646400
Yeah, the only team the Kings are competing with (MEM, NOP, POR, SAC, SAS) you could really argue have an easier overall path are the Pelicans. MEM and POR have two of the most difficult schedules. SAS is about average but they have the extra half game to make up.
Again, the Kings destiny is almost entirely in their own hands and it’s relatively favorable. They have one of the easiest schedules, don’t have to actually make up any ground to reach the play-in, and get to play the Pelicans twice. Honestly, I don’t think they could have really asked for much more from the whole situation. Asking for extra days off between games would be ripe for a meme about entitlement.
The team that should be kinda pissed is Portland. They’re the only team on the cusp who’s SoS got significantly harder as seen in 1951s links.
As a sidenote, It’s kinda crazy that the Pelican’s opponents have a .495 W%. They’re the only team that’s under .500. It makes sense since, I believe, they had the easiest remaining schedule before the stoppage. But still.
I think the Pels are the biggest beneficiary of the stoppage because they’ve gotten guys healthy. But whether that translates to anything on the court…..that’s the question.
So we should know which players are entering the bubble by Wednesday right? One would assume that means we’ll know if the Kings plan on playing Bagley at that point. There’s no point to bring him unless the plan is to play him.
Here’s my rabbit hole regarding these 8 games. Couldn’t be reasoned that the Kings may be better off playing the 1-4 teams in each conference? Those teams have very little to play for other than conditioning. There is zero home court advantage in the playoffs so teams like the Lakers, Bucks, Raptors, etc. may treat these 8 games as pre-season. It wouldn’t shock me to see the likes o LeBron and Giannis play only about 15-20 minutes per game for the first 4-5 games to back into game shape. Their teams have no incentive to play them heavy minutes in fear of injury.
From my perspective the teams the Kings should fear the most are those on the bubble. Am I wrong to have wanted teams like the Bucks and Lakers in early games one as opposed to the later part of the 8 games where their stars will get more minutes?
[Kings schedule ranks difficult]
Kings fans: It’s a conspiracy! They are trying to keep us out!
vs
[Kings schedule ranks easy]
Kings fans: It’s a conspiracy! They are trying to keep us out!
I have a novel idea: the Kings should just try to win more games each year! 😉
I’m not saying there is any conspiracy, it was just my thoughts on what I would have liked to see. From my perspective the top 4 teams in both conference have very little to play for, so they might be the teams the Kings could do best against.
I know. I am making a larger point and your comment just happened to be a place to put it!
My point is that if the schedule/back-to-backs/the hotel/etc matter then that just means that the Kings still aren’t good enough to make those things not matter!
Win more games and none of this matters! (hashtag thanks ViVladalton!)
Wait Wait Wait. I thought the regular season didnt matter. You mean to tell me the first 40+ games of the season had an impact on their seeding?
That’s just fanboy hooligan hater propaganda. The only information that matters is the spin the franchise tells you through 1140.
So you know… Without conspiracy theories, all we have is hope. So please, for all our sake, stop trying to debunk them! Reality is a cold, cold place for a true Kings fan.
You still have hope?
I do think it’s going to be really interesting how the “in” teams work their rotations and playing time. On one hand, they want to quickly get into top form. On the other, they want to make sure their players are rested for the play-offs. Personally I think they’ll all be playing hard to reach top form quickly. They’ve had plenty of time off.
I thought that how well those teams play could affect their seeding?
It can, but there is no home court advantage. Seeding just determines who they play.
Determining which team they play against could be considered enough of an incentive that they might feel they have something to play for.
If I was ranking scheduling issue that could impact win% I think I’d put start time above back-to-backs. The Kings just always seem to suck in games that are played during the day (except for that one time they beat the Clippers).
This is in no way equivalent, but I know WAY BACK in high school, when we’d play AM or even early PM games in tournaments and in Regional and State finals it was always hard for me to loosen up and get my energy up.
Obviously, that’s just me and at a comically lower level, but I do think there’s something to start times. Of course, we’ll have the same start time as the teams we play against, so there won’t really be advantage or disadvantage we can really model.
Yeah I was thinking like % of total games played before 5pm. So if the Kings won a coin flip, and they got to choose a) you get no games against teams with zero days rest, but 4 games that start before 5pm, or b) 4 games against teams with zero days rest, but zero games that start before 5pm, then the players would choose option b.
Although, I guess one could make the argument that these guys won’t be tempted to enjoy all the nightlife that Disney World has to offer, so the circumstances are different for this specific 8 games. I do think though that you have a point that early start times impact your game day routine.
It’s a different sport, but there was a bit of a joke that the Sharks never start playing until 7:30 PM PT, regardless of when the puck actually dropped (the Sharks sucked enough this season that starting time didn’t affect their performance).
FIFY:
Or if you really prefer brevity:
I don’t think I’ll be able to get my head around the fact that the Kings have been sucked so much for so long. If somebody said I got to be the Kings GM for 14 years guaranteed, but I’d get exiled to Siberia if I couldn’t get the team into the playoffs at least one time, then I honestly wouldn’t be stressed out about it at all. You almost have to actively sabotage your team to not even luck into a playoff birth once in a while.
There have been teams that have gone through 2 rebuilds that same 14 year period and made the playoffs as a result of those rebuilds.
Meanwhile Kings cant make it through one rebuild.
With the Kings, it’s called a rehash, not a rebuild.
re-hash?
?itok=–w64fEN
I heard Covid-19 cases are really low in Siberia and social distancing is really easy there.
There’s probably a ban on Americans in Siberia.
Just a side thought, but I assume all the games including playoffs and Finals, will be played to reach a wide TV audience. Does that mean all games will be shown 4pm or 5pm PST? We aren’t gonna get any evening games, are we?
My guess is that those games will probably start at 5:30 or 6 PM PT.
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