The Kings fell to the 76ers. Given the news of the last 24 hours, I’m sure we will all handle this with grace, perspective, and nuance.
Full recap to follow.
Jan 29, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey (0) shoots between Sacramento Kings Domantas Sabonis (11) and Kevin Huerter (9) and Keegan Murray (13) during the second quarter at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
The Kings fell to the 76ers. Given the news of the last 24 hours, I’m sure we will all handle this with grace, perspective, and nuance.
Full recap to follow.
Posted in the game thread, but I think it bears repeating. Piss poor effort.
I am tired of this beam. This team. I am tired of being caught up in the tangle of their lives.
Rec’d for reference.
But I don’t want to watch, man.
Management needs to absolutely nail both the trade market and the head coaching search between now and the start of next season.
And the draft, if we have any picks. Seems like we’ve been saying all of this over and over during Ranadiva’s tenure.
Stern definitely screwed us by forcing Vivek in to the MGP position.
“You can keep your team, but you must have the WORST MGP for decades to come” – David J. Stern
That’s going to start and end at Doug Christie’s office. There’s no way Vivek pays Brown and another full priced coach.
Yeah, I forgot where I heard it but I did hear that Vivek had already anointed DC as the coach for next year, the team just hasn’t proclaimed it publicly yet. Would be interesting to see the team try to message it if DC ends up with an overall crappy record this year.
No Surprise there.
Not sure Christie has the Xs and Os exp to build a young team. My feeling on Christie is undetermined. But I was right in thinking he would be exposed once teams for the film on him.
ThE constant ad nauseum of drawing from the well of Kings
halycon
days is convenient and lazy.
Then dc better pull his head out of his ass about keons minutes…wtf is wrong with these coaches
What are the odds?
Fox haters were super-silent in the threads after the last game. I expect them to come barking tonight.
Something needs to change. Wonder if they’ve thought about trading Fox.
Lol
This made me chuckle.
Oh no, what would this franchise do without the superstar that is Fox…
he is a great player, nowhere near untouchable superstar. Get some quality players plus assets you can flip for more quality players and be better off.
Be better off in how long? 2031? Flipping Fox for parts makes you worse now, and with this management, worse in the future as well. If you think otherwise then you haven’t been paying attention.
I think Fox’s value drops if we hang onto him. Fox was the main scorer under Brown and Brown’s system was designed to get Fox as many touches as possible. You see more of a free flowing, shared offense under Christie, with less focus on centerpieces. This is shown (as a small sample size) for Fox’s January averages. Fox’s averages have dropped off everywhere and he’s getting less shots up.
The question now becomes – do we strike while the fire is still hot? Or do we hang onto him, risking he drops off under Christie, potentially diminishing his value? Better question – are we contenders in the playoffs with Fox, going forward, as the team currently is?
Life is full of disappointments.
Light the SOS beam!
Well at least we don’t have to worry about Fox getting a super max with these kind of performances he’s shitting out this year! The fucking audacity of Fox to give a list of preferred teams he’d like to be traded to and then diarrhea down his leg like he did tonight is unbelievable. He’s not a super star, star, all star(definitely not this year), but instead just a solid player. Quit acting like you’re on the level of a Giannis or Steph.
We don’t have to worry about him getting a max deal either. At least not from the Kings.
Yeah true
Maxey embarrassed Fox tonight.
Overall, regression to the mean, which, for the Kings, is not a good place.
James Ham did a great job of indicting McNair and Wilcox for the team’s current predicament on KHTK today. They constructed the cul-de-sac in which the team is now trapped.
A lot of fans are going to be disappointed with what the Kings get for Fox if they trade him, fans overrate him, but I’d prefer a lesser return with some young talent that develops down the road, with the Kings keeping their 1st round pick next year, instead of some players that are just good enough to get the team into the play-in, with a loss of the pick.
You have to factor the retention of the pick or loss of the pick into any trade outcome.
Anyway, the rest of the season looks dreary. Maybe, this is a bottom that Christie will pull the team out of, and I’d be the first to admit I’m wrong, I would love to see it, but seems unlikely.
Monte, Vlade, Petey D… who cares? Vivek is the one running the show so what’s the point? James can report whatever he wants but we’ve already multiple national reporters say that Vivek is and has always been running the show around here so none of the rest of this really matters. We can fire Monte, hire a new GM, and we’ll have the exact same results. Until Vivek sells the team or disappears, we are going to continue to have the same results.
Unfortunately and absolutely. Vivek has and will continue to suffocate the life and hope out of kings basketball.
It’s really disheartening. That he could take what we taught so hard to keep and turn it into his ego turd show.
Though he doesn’t read this still makes me feel better to say —-Vivek, please go fuck all the way off.
sincerely
kings fan
76ers 11-15 players on the roster depth chart better than Monte’s 6-10 players on the Kings bench. Team fielding about 6 reliable NBA players atm. And they looked tired tonight.
They really did look tired af. Against a very beatable 6ers squad.
Why doesn’t Doug play Carter? Or override the starters?
Sadly, they traded away the wrong guard for Domas. Haliburton was devastated when he was traded. He wanted to bring the playoffs back to Sacramento. Not afraid of the big moment. Fox don’t answer the bell when needed. Games like tonight are prime examples. And honestly, same goes for Domas. 6 shots dude? I know what people will counter with, he can’t pass the ball to himself or he was selflessly passing to teammates. However, you think Shaq would be cool with 6 shots? Not a chance. Giannis? I say this to say, Domas doesn’t demand the ball in certain situations when him or Fox are needed the most. He has no offensive prowess. I say all that to say, this current roster has reached its potential. One first round playoff appearance that they were able to take to 7 games. Collins, Grant, Kuzma, Cam Johnson, etc., weren’t going to catapult the Kings into the 2nd or WCF round of the playoffs. So many misses by the Kings over the years. What sucks is the opportunities were there. Reality has set in. This is an average team that will be lucky to survive the play in, and if they do, to get swept by the Thunder. No thanks. Please don’t miss on this trade opportunity..because if they do, there is no silver lining for the foreseeable future.
Agree with you about Domas tonight. For most of the game the tallest Sixers on the court was only 6’8”. Domas should have looked to score much more than he did.
Based on everything this organization has failed to do or deliver on. Not surprised. The organization has failed the players. Sabonis might find him self questioning why he resigned here. To deal with constant ineptitude.
I am a big Domas fan but this was one of his worst games IMO, despite the triple double and despite the fact that Sixers game plan was largely swarming him the moment he touched paint.
He should have been less hesitant about letting it fly from distance (it’s not as if others were hitting them) and he has to be more decisive in taking decisions once the double comes.
Even so, things mainly fell apart in the non-Domas minutes (and he played 40!). Lyles and Len aren’t getting it done.
I usually don’t have issues with Domas because he brings it 99% of the time. This seemed to be the 1%.
He seemed to avoid the paint for much of the game which was weird for him. And he definitely needs to look for his own shot more often in general, he is unselfish to a fault.
Him passing up open 3s to give it to Fox with the clock running down so he takes a contested 3 is infuriating.
Davion Mitchell?
yes we should’ve traded him
but unfortunately the only pg we had the pacers wanted was Hali (Fox was in the midst of a low motor bad season with no value)
Seems we have several “worst game of the season”. On to the next scheduled loss OKC
Just throw in the towel on that one. The Kings are better off forfeiting.
who is grace, perspective and nuance?
That’s who we’ll draft with the picks we get for Fox!
I HATE it when people say, “The Kings played down to their competition”, and yet, here we are.
Welcome back drama, regression and mediocrity, our most familiar friends.
Not sure what the mental mindset of this team is. I would not be surprised if some players just check out after a Fox trade.
The way everything has been handled with Brown and Fox. Monte and Vivek continued shenanigans.
If this happens, these players need to be shipped out as part of a tear down.
I think it’ll be opposite, there should be a renewed vigor after the deadline, the games leading up to it are always tougher mentally on players
I need this
&ct=g
fox & sabonis are both weird. One want to pass the ball all day & somehow forgot he is a force going to the paint. The other one forgot his best asset is speed & somehow forgot his floater, attacking the basket & shooting the midrange made him a top 25 player lol
but hey maybe it’s the spacing on the court lol
Welp, looked like the pre-Doug Christie Kings of this season! Was Mike Brown calling in the plays from the back?
Wow…what the fuck was that?
Sabonis with six shots? We talk about Fox not being a high-motor true superstar, what was Sabonis doing out there? This isn’t the first time he’s done that, either.
The only guys who really came to play were Monk, Keegan, Keon, and DeMar.
I’m so jealous of those franchises who know how to build their teams. Kings goal seems to be making play-in only. So they go and burn their 5-6-7 guys 40 mins a game from game 1. Sign players and then use first or second round picks to get rid of them after.
rinse and repeat. Owner ego too big and too poor to play with other owners.
The Kings are a lot better team when Keon gets more run. Keon needs to get around 30 minutes a game, and when we were winning he was close to that. They need to get back to that, and push the pace.
Yup, 96 guard minutes, keon should have 30 of those, addd in 3 guard lineups and it’s even easier to do. Insane for him to have 18, actually hard to believe it’s happening.
He didn’t look very good offensively at all last night, IMO. Not that anyone besides Keegan really did.
Keegan was aggressive attacking the hoop, but I’d hardly call 0 for 5 from 3pt range “good”.
Starting group the last 4 games are a -1, down a bit from their +1.8. Next most used lineup replaces fox with keon and it’s +24, just like it’s been for the rest of the season. Roughly the same as when you replace monk with keon.
keon proceeds to get 18 minutes tonight and we lose. Whaaaaaat are these coaches not seeing??? What’s the obsession playing fox/monk together. I’m literally so confused how professional people cannot see something so obvious.
keon fits perfectly next to either guard and that should be reflected in the minutes. 96 for guards, balance that shit out, it’s not rocket science.
Yeah, it’s been this way all season. All of the Keon lineups are a huge Net positive on the season and it was exactly the same last year. I don’t know why they can’t figure this out.
That said, Keon actually played like crap tonight. One of his worst games of the season.
Yeah, Keon was chaotic and not in a good way.
He had many open looks from 3 and just missed them.
I’m talking more defensively. Like he tried to do too much and as a consequence often was slightly out of position. Sorry, I can’t explain it better.
The Kings have been playing a lot of blitzing and/or zone defenses lately. Keon tends to freelance a bit on defense so maybe he’s not at his best in those schemes.
I know what you are getting at. Almost like he is playing overly aggressive to a fault because his minutes are in question every night so he is trying to make an impact for 3-5 minute stretches he is out there.
I’m sure there is a stat that shows if Keon plays over 25ish minutes (or a threshold similar to that) that Kings record is probably pretty good. Playing 18 against a team that had many 3 small guard lineups is coaching ineptitude.
Maxey, Lowry, Jackson, Eric Gordon were the small guards…
If the Kings aren’t going to use Keon to the best of his abilities, then I would like for them to trade him to a team that will. He’s too good to be relegated to sub 20 minute games on a team with massive depth issues.
I am leaving that darn cat alone.
We are quick to hide behind scheduled losses, but if anything should have been a scheduled win, this was it. Bad team, riddled by injuries on a Segababa, and we looked like the team with dead legs.
The shine of Christie is slowly fading, it seems. Not all his fault, but still.
I think he was def outcoached last night. It’s bound to happen as he gets his coaching legs under him.
Single game sample sizes should be taken with a huge grain of salt, obviously. But when Monk and Sabonis were on the floor, the team had a positive net rating.
When they were off the floor, the team was outscored by (an astronomical) 84 points per 100 possessions.
This is a consistent issue with the bench rotation, but it’s also another indictment of the “franchise player”. Mike Brown, for all of his flaws, seemed prescient here:
“You’ve got to figure out how to get to that level without having somebody piss you off because you’re a great player and great players get to that level on their own.”
Otis, I was a bit late to the party in the previous thread, but it is good to see you.
Did you hear you got a shoutout from Jerry Reynolds on the TKH podcast?
Good to see you too Rik! Amazing how you all have kept the faith so long – true fans who deserve to see this team win the whole thing.
I hadn’t heard about the podcast, but back in the day, I think he had mentioned me and it wasn’t super positive 🙂 . But Jerry’s still the man.
It’s hard to tell whether it’s keeping the faith or desperately clinging to hope, but rarely a dull moment with the Kings.
For me it is clinging to hope because I have zero faith in this FO
Monk and Domas, generally players looking to create for others with their unique passing skills, have a positive net rating…meanwhile, the guy that is inefficient and tends to shoot high volume, has a negative net rating.
I know Fox is 2nd on the team in APG, and that baffles my mind. His usage is also 5 point higher than the next guy (DeRozan). So inflated counting stats because of usage?
Much rather have a SG that can hit the 3 at a high level and play some solid defense out there with Monk, Domas, and DeMar. Things would be much more open offensively, and much better defensively.
I agree with this but that was a bad game by Domas IMO despite the triple double.
The Sixers were missing their centers, mostly he was playing against 6’8″ guys and he takes 6 shots? And seemed to barely touch the paint most of the game.
He is unselfish to a fault at times and over handles the ball at times where he should just rise and shoot, especially with those matchups.
Between Lowry, Gordon and Yabusele those are some thick guys and they pushed the skinny Kings around quite a bit. Love his game but I have noticed Keon defends speed and quickness very well but struggles against the stronger guards and forwards.
Most of the opposing guards on this road trip have gone right at Keon when he’s guarding them instead of trying to get past him. Murray and Westbrook in Denver backed him down effectively, Brunson pushed off on him successfully, and even DLo had some success bumping him around.
Yep
Of all the obvious blunders from this FO the choice of uniforms tonight has to be the most inexcusable and offensive. Who is responsible for sending our players out in Sixers unis? The NBA just HAS to have a rule against a team wearing your colors on your floor. As a fan I’m embarrassed, and the franchise deserve a FAT fine!
And the Sixers looked like the Suns in those LAME spectrum colored pastel rainbow looking jerseys. I almost thought I had the the wrong game on!
So many ups (mostly) and downs (sadly) since the dawn of the Doug Era. For perspective I thought I’d run another episode of the Monte Chronicles. On 7/8/22, these were the Kings:
Sabonis
Lyles
Barnes
Murray
Huerter
Ellis
DiVincenzo (about to leave)
Fox
Monk
Mitchell
They hit their peak 10 months later. The rest, you already know. This has been another episode of the Monte Chronicles.
Sam Amick on 1140 rn calling the end of the Fox era in Sac.
I missed it. Can you add some more context?
I didn’t listen in, but I saw this on my Bluesky feed:
on top of that…
WTF? DeRozan is upset now? Does anyone have his quote?
Welp, we’re going to need a new thread again.
Oh for fuck’s sake. This smells like a “blow it up” situation.
Problem Solved!
Well, the writing was on the wall when Fox signed with Klutch. Has any player that signed with Klutch ever stayed on the that team? It seems to end badly every single time.
Just trade DeRozan and Fox. Monk might not be happy when those two leave, so he can be traded if he wants too.
Build a better shooting team around Domas, Keegan, and Ellis. Supplement them with what they get back in the trades. Tired of the drama, and the the Owner isn’t going to step down any time soon. We had one season with no drama (23-24) and then back to Kangz.
Well, that was poor.
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