Kings have gone from bad to ugly — who’s to blame?
I like Sacramento Kings General Manager Vlade Divac a lot and I’ve come to appreciate Kings owner Vivek Ranadive as someone who truly wants the team to be successful.
But the Kings aren’t successful in the most important way they need to be successful: On the court.
And if the team isn’t successful on the court, and this lost season of dashed expectations continues on a downward trajectory, then Divac and Ranadive — great guys that they are — will and should be held responsible by a community that has supported a bad product for long enough.
Kings fans want accountability for the disaster this season has become, and they are not wrong for feeling this way.
After Wednesday’s dismal 127106 loss to a Detroit Pistons team missing key players — a new low for a group constantly redefining a lack of commitment — the Kings are 15-29 with 38 games left in the NBA season.
Do the math: To finish with 42 wins, a winning season, the Kings would have to go 27-11 down the stretch. That would be a .710 winning percentage for a team whose current winning percentage is .341.
So barring a miracle, the Kings are bound for their 14th consecutive losing season, the longest futility streak in the NBA. And do you know what else it means? This would be the seventh consecutive losing season under Ranadive. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms until the Pistons debacle, where the Kings were manhandled by a Detroit team that really only had characteristic the Kings lacked: Guts.
The Pistons were more aggressive. They attacked the basket, got to the free-throw line. They wanted it more than the Kings. That has been happening repeatedly this season as the Kings have been out-hustled, out-worked, and out-thought by teams good and bad.
Last season the Kings won 39 games. At this juncture, they were .500, 24-24. They were projected to do better in 2019-20 so, in that context, the string of futility under Ranadive takes on a different meaning than it did a few years ago.
You can’t blame the Maloofs
The Maloof brothers — the long-departed former Kings own
ers — can no longer be blamed for this endless losing. And because Divac is Ranadive’s guy and coach Luke Walton is Divac’s guy and these players were handpicked by this group, where else are fans to turn for answers?
These leaders of the Kings own this. They own every stinking, gut-wrenching, spirit-crushing moment of this season. Please don’t talk to us about injuries and how losing De’Aaron Fox, Marvin Bagley III and Bogdan Bogdanovic for significant time is to blame for what we’re seeing.
Good teams will lose games when good players are sitting on the bench in street clothes. We get it. But that’s not the prevailing narrative here — don’t try to tell us that it is. If a depleted Kings team were playing tough and yet ultimately losing games to more talented units, that would be one thing.
But that’s not what were seeing. In the last six games, all losses, the Kings have given up this many points per night: 127, 114, 127, 123, 118, 127. This from a team that was supposed to be about defense.
How many nights lately have we seen Kings defenders completely flummoxed by a simple pick and roll? On Wednesday, Pistons guards Reggie Jackson and Derrick Rose did whatever they wanted, when they wanted. The Pistons outworked the Kings in the trenches for defensive rebounds, creating more opportunities for to score. The Kings committed silly, goofy fouls, sending Pistons players to the free throw line repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Kings players seem averse to contact. And if you watch the games, it’s obvious that the word is out: You want to beat the Kings, you bully them.
Instead of matching opponents’ aggression with aggression, Kings players settle for lowpercentage shots far from the basket, where games are won with muscle and desire.
This has created two horrific stat lines: Except for the Indiana Pacers, the Kings take the fewest free throws in the NBA. They rank dead last in the number of free throws made per game. Meanwhile, they are ranked 16th in a 30-team league in the percentage of 3-point shots they make per game. Last season, they ranked fourth.