The tanking discourse has dominated the headlines all season with a decent chunk of teams seemingly doing their all to avoid winning as many games as possible in order to secure a top pick in a loaded draft. Up until now, the Kings have largely avoided being in that conversation despite their terrible record, mostly because they’ve just been bad, and also because they’ve probably done the most to harm their prospects of a top pick of any of the worst teams, going 9-15 since the All-Star break.
The focus quickly turned to the Kings however on Tuesday against the Warriors, when the Kings intentionally fouled Seth Curry away from the ball with 3:15 to go despite being up by 1. The Kings were already in the penalty at the time, so that foul resulted in two free throws for the Warriors. The Kings would go on to lose the game 110 to 105, and after the game, clips of the foul began circling social media without any further context. Draymond Green even got into the fun in the post game, saying in reference to tanking this season that he “I saw a team tonight foul Seth Curry with three minutes to go in a game for no reason”.
Now, the NBA is reportedly investigating the Kings and the foul according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, with the Kings claiming it was simply a strategic mistake by head coach Doug Christie. The NBA has already levied hefty fines this season for intentional tanking to both the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers, but that was regarding player availability, not an action done by a player late in the game.
The truth of the matter is, the Kings weren’t fouling Seth Curry for “no reason”. As broken down in an expertly done video of the situation by Rob Perez, the Kings likely fouled Curry at that time because Doug Christie wanted to call a timeout. At the time, the Kings had three timeouts, but if the clock had gotten to 3 minutes, they would have lost the timeout. Perez showed several situations in recent games where the Kings have called that same timeout in various situations on dead balls in order to get some use out of it, showing this is something Coach Christie likes to do. The mistake on Christie’s part however was not remembering or failing to notice that the Kings were in the penalty. But even after the foul, he proceeded to use the timeout, and what he drew up after the time out was a three pointer for McDermott to put the Kings up ahead by three. Their eventual loss had nothing to do with that previous intentional foul.
Also just for Draymond, Perez brings up the great fact that since the All-Star break, the Kings actually have a better record than the Warriors themselves (9-15 vs. 8-16). Compare that to the other NBA’s tanking teams:
- Brooklyn (5-21)
- Indiana (3-21)
- Utah (3-21)
- Washington (3-23)
Thanks to that, the Kings have dropped from the NBA’s worst record and a guaranteed shot at a top 5 pick to now having a 52.2% chance to pick between 6-8 (and an outside shot at 9). Those odds could manage to get even worse if they manage to pass up the Utah Jazz in the standings over these final two games, and if I was a betting man, I’d bet they end up doing just that. If the Kings are truly tanking, they’re doing a terrible job of it.
The NBA is set to vote on some new proposals to hopefully reduce the need for teams to tank, and I do agree that something needs to be done. It doesn’t feel good to be upset when your team wins a game, which has been the case for myself for most of these games since the All-Star break.
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