Kings Report

It definitely feels like the honeymoon period of Doug Christie’s head coaching career has come to an end. Yet another rough week for the Sacramento Kings as they navigated the longest losing streak since Christie took over the head coaching job in December. Luckily, the Kings kept the losses to four in a row with a win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, which will be their first game of a seven-game home stand.

Let’s start with the bad news; we only got one full game out of our best player, Domantas Sabonis, who missed six games with a hamstring injury earlier this month. Sabonis returned to action on Friday, March 14th, against the Phoenix Suns, but that didn’t seem to help much; the Kings only played one decent quarter that whole game. They allowed three players on the Suns to score over 20 points and three other players to score in double digits. It was horrendous. The Kings lost, 106-122.

While Monday’s game against the Grizzlies went a lot better, it was not a good night for Sabonis. In the first quarter, a hit to the face by somebody’s head sent Sabonis to the locker room with blood trickling down his face. He was able to get stitched up in the locker room and returned to the game with a bandage above his eye only to roll his ankle in the fourth quarter. It was apparent that it was serious when he quickly called the bench over to help him get up and off the court. We have now been told that Sabonis will miss at least 10 days…oof.

The timing could not be worse with the Kings pushing hard to maintain that play-in tournament spot. I was hoping we might even jump back into that 8th place position, but since the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday, they are five wins ahead of us in that 8th spot, and it looks like we might struggle just to hold on to 9th. The Dallas Mavericks, who have been plagued with injuries, and the Phoenix Suns, a team full of superstars who can’t seem to figure out how to win, are right behind the Kings in the standings. The Suns did seem to figure out that winning thing against the Kings the other night, but let’s hope they don’t end up on a winning streak.

Let’s end with a couple of good notes: newly acquired forward Jake LaRavia enjoyed his “revenge game” against his former team, the Grizzlies, on Monday night. He and rookie Devin Carter, who was facing his dad, a coach for the Grizzlies, really hustled out there. LaRavia scored 12 points and two steals before getting ejected in the fourth quarter and Carter got four steals. Hopefully, they can continue the hustle because we are going to need it with Sabonis out and some very tough teams coming up, including the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are first in the Eastern Conference and were recently on a 16-game winning streak.

We will have played the Cavaliers by the time you read this, and then we will play DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine’s former team, the Chicago Bulls, on Thursday, March 20th, the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday, March 22nd, and then a back-to-back against the No. 2 in the Eastern Conference Boston Celtics on Monday, March 24th and the No. 1 in the Western Conference Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s going to be a tough week in more ways than one. Go Kings!